In the late 1970s (16th July 1977) the BBC
broadcast Alwyn's opera Miss Julie. Alwyn's name
was unknown to me so I wrote to the BBC expressing my enjoyment
of the opera and seeking more information on the composer.
I waited many months for a reply during which time I read
Francis Routh's chapter in Contemporary
British Music (Macdonald 1972) and started to explore
the symphonies on the Lyrita recordings that were then emerging.
Eventually my letter did elicit a reply - from the composer!
He informed me that the opera had been recorded by Lyrita
with the same cast. He went on to say how his music was
much more appreciated abroad than at home and from other
sources I became aware of the way the BBC had actively suppressed
broadcasts of music by British composers of that generation
rather than promoting them. He also mentioned that it was
to be his 75th birthday that November and he hoped that
the BBC would allow him a talk feature on his life. This
spurred me to write to all the magazines and the BBC to
try and ensure there was some sort of celebration to mark
the event. Gramophone promised an article, which did not
emerge, but the BBC did broadcast the 5th symphony from
Croydon. My local Recorded Music Society sent a birthday
card with a Rossetti drawing as Alwyn was an early collector
of the Pre-Raphaelites. He was delighted and an even longer
letter arrived. This was all very exciting for me because
I had never had contact with a composer before. My only
regret is that I never met him; although I did eventually
meet Mary Alwyn at the premiere performance of Miss Julie
at the Norwich Theatre Royal in 1997. In 1995, ten years
after the death of William Alwyn, Andrew Palmer founded
the Alwyn Society with the aim of deepening the knowledge
and appreciation of his work and encouraging live performances.
I offered to create a web site
for the Society using the experience gained from creating
a website in my role as a University Biology admissions
officer. I approached Chandos for permission to copy all
the booklet notes to their recordings and, with the help
of Rob Barnett of the British Music Society, we added biographical
material. This was placed on the University Biology server.
MusicWeb stems from
that. [The Alwyn Society became inactive
following the death of Mary Alwyn]
The Alwyn site was successful in attracting
attention and even praise. Hunting round the web showed
very few sites devoted to British composers. Two that stood
out at the time were the Elgar and Delius Societies. It
seemed an obvious move therefore, to extend from the Alwyn
site and include other composers. Clearly this could not
be done unofficially on the Biology Server. Fortunately
it was at that time that the Coventry Performing Arts Centre
amalgamated with the University and, with the enthusiastic
encouragement of the staff of the Educational Development
Unit, I was able to persuade the Performing Arts Centre
that a British composer site would be of great assistance
to their students and be useful for any part-time courses
run for Coventrians. Hence the site became official (
by which I mean that it was tolerated by the University
administration - there was never any finance made available
for development although I was able to use University notepaper
which lent authority) and was located on an EDU
server. In 1997 a press release announced a free service
to any composer Society or Trust wishing to have a web presence.
For the next couple of years there was a steady flow of
enquiries and many Composer Societies ended up being represented
on MusicWeb.
Whilst researching Humphrey Searle I discovered
a biography written by David Wright and sought his permission
to republish it alongside the composer's memoir which had
not been able to find a publisher. It transpired that David
had a large and growing collection of such biographies and
they became the mainstay of MusicWeb. I had long been a
member of a Recorded Music Society and had witnessed the
common problem of the membership dropping away - many dying
without being replaced by new younger members. My own society
had, in a period of only 12 years, dropped from a regular
turnout of 40 to only 8. I suggested to the Federation
of Recorded Music Societies that a web presence would
enable the affiliates to advertise their programmes and
perhaps attract new and younger members. This became a flourishing
part of the site looked after by Reg Williamson who finally
persuaded me to join the FRMS committee. Eventually Reg
retired and the FRMS decided in 2003 to run the website
themselves.
Most of the British composers represented
on the site belong to the 'forgotten' generation composing
in the 50s and 60s. This was not by design - more a reflection
of my own taste and the lack of exposure offered to these
composers. In fact the site will become much more comprehensive
although present day composers tend to have a well established
presence on the web - either through having their own sites
or being represented by their publishers. The site is not
restricted to British composers and I was soon approached
by the Dvorak Society and
the Respighi Society to
see if I would help them. There are now a goodly number
of specialist articles on non-British composers such as
Leo Brouwer (one of the
most popular sites), Mahler,
Luis de Pablo, Egon
Wellesz etc. Nevertheless it is the British composers
that have received the in-depth treatment to date and where
necessary articles have been commissioned (Britten,
Bridge, Holst
). Future needs are for similar studies of Arnold, Bliss
and Gershwin. We also have in-depth studies of Gundry
and Butterworth who
were little known and I was proud to be able to persuade
Colin Touchin at the Warwick Arts Centre to include Arthur
Butterworth's fourth symphony in one of their programmes
as a 75th birthday tribute (see review
by Paul Conway). Arthur came with his family and we cut
a cake in the interval. In one of those unfortunate coincidences
that dog us through life, it was that very day that ClassicO
chose to lay down the premiere
recording of the first symphony which Arthur was therefore
unable to attend.
Ian Lace and Rob Barnett already knew each
other and approached me with the idea of a supplementary
site specialising in Film Music. This started in early 98
and is a major, flourishing part of the site. Ian Lace was
appointed Honorary Editor for Film
Music on the Web which now carries its own domain
name (www.FilmMusic.uk.net).
Ian was keen to edit a site that treated film music with
the respect it deserves. It embraces responsible news coverage
and comment, articles, composer profiles, and most importantly
in-depth reviews of books and CDs of current and historic
film scores. Ian is also keen to include coverage of concert
and operatic music by film music composers such as Korngold,
Franz Waxman, Miklós Rózsa, and George Antheil.
A new classical music-orientated innovation began on Film
MusicWeb in March with
a regular feature entitled: If Only They Had Written
for Films, the first of which was devoted to the music
of Kurt Atterberg. Ian retired as Hon Ed in December 2002
handing that job over to Gary Dalkin and curently Michael
McLennon.
With Ian keen to include reviews of
CDs, we needed to link the reviews to on-line web-stores.
Accordingly, the site would clearly be defined as 'commercial'
and would be contrary to the University regulations for
web sites. There were other problems with the University
too. They would not permit me to support local events such
as the Coventry Jazz Festival and the Warwick Arts Society
even though I perceived that to be a service to the local
community, which the University was supposed to serve. It
became necessary to think about leaving the University.
In the end it was a technical reason that caused the site
to move entirely onto a commercial server. The Educational
Development Unit decided to use Microsoft Front Page to
administer their files. This was fine when I was working
in the University but impossible using a dial-up modem externally.
Hence the whole site migrated to the ISP Force9 and it was
months and months before the search engines caught up with
that move! The Force9 site was closed down on 2004.
I was actually already running a dual site
at the time because of the Gerard
Hoffnung pages. When I was a teenager, Gerard Hoffnung
was much loved and his little books were sought-after Christmas
presents. He died very young and his memory gradually faded
and I realised that none of my students had ever heard of
him. Most of his books were also out of print. I took steps
to trace his widow, Annetta, and invited her to the University
where we designed a site to the memory of Gerard. Annetta
had a small cache of the little books so the site was created
and sales links
generated for the Oxford Union Bricklayer speech on
a BBC tape, the two CDs (EMI and DECCA), the remaining books
and delightful sets of postcards of the cartoons. We also
had detailed a range of Hoffnung jig-saws but that sole-trader
business folded just as the site got under way. The 
Hoffnung site has been immensely popular and sells the
Hoffnung artifacts to all parts of the globe. We may not
make much money out of it but we like to feel that we are
helping to keep these recordings in the catalogue. Gerard
would have been 75 in 2000. To celebrate that his cartoons
were on display at the British cartoon Centre and the little
books were privately republished by Annetta and may be purchased
from the website.
Because of the wish to put CD reviews on
the Film Music site (and Ian was already well established
as a reviewer for Fanfare and BBC Music Magazine
- and he regularly contributes reviews to Rob Barnett's
Classical MusicWeb, more of which below) the decision was
made to mount the entire site with Force9. This was because
the site was clearly going to exceed the usual offers of
20Mbytes or even 50Mbytes (it is currently (March
04) approaching 800Mbytes with over 24000 pages)
and Force9 were the only UK ISP to offer unlimited webspace
with business use. We had severe problems with them at first
because they did not provide sufficient bandwidth and the
site was very slow and even unreachable at times. This markedly
improved once Force9 were taken over by Plusnet and the
unlimited web space offer still stands. What none of us
had appreciated was that there was a limitation on daily
downloads and with the burgeoning success of the site we
were beginning exceeding that limit fourfold so a more serious
solution had to be found. However, the move to Force9 did
allow me to represent the Warwick
Arts Society who have a large site now as well as the
Coventry Jazz Festival.
[Both now run their own websites-2003]
Rob Barnett was well known as a reviewer
for the British Music Society and editor of BMS News. With
the success of the CD reviews on the Film Music site he
was appointed honorary editor of Classical MusicWeb and
Classical CD reviews were started in late 98. We now review
around 200 Classical CDs and 70 Film Music CDs each month
with a smattering of middle of the road, jazz, musicals
etc. that Ian includes in what he refers to as his Curio
Corner.
The number of reviewers has gradually grown
to meet the demand and we currently list just over 140 contributors
to the site. There are usually around 25 reviewers active
at any time. We constantly seek new reviewers with specialist
interests so if that is you just send an email (Len@musicweb.uk.net)
Summer 2000 I was sitting under my gazebo
chatting to Peter Grahame Woolf and his charming wife Alexa.
Like me, he is semi-retired but still practices as a psychiatrist
and had travelled to Birmingham to see a patient, calling
on me on the way back to London. We both had converging
ideas. I thought that the site could be used to promote
budding artists. We could perhaps mount their CVs at little
or no cost and act as a contact point - I had already had
a preliminary chat with Diana Hirst along those lines. Peter's
concern was that such artists now had had little exposure
as most of the daily Newspapers had stopped printing concert
reviews and consequently young artists did not have the
previous opportunities of producing a portfolio. Peter had
been writing about music for more than forty years. He had
been a contributor to Strictly off the Record which eventually
failed through lack of support. The result of that meeting
was Seen&Heard which
presents reviews of live concerts as soon as possible after
the event. We will usually present one or more new reviews
every day. Marc Bridle, Melanie Eskenazi and Bill Kenny
are the current editors of a greatly expanded Seen&Heard.
CD reviews had originally been presented monthly but often
a recording is of such great interest that we wished to
draw attention to it immediately. Consequently in November
1999 we started a Daily Review on the site. The first was
Dracula followed by the first of the Bostock Nielsen
cycle in the revised scoring. I had attended the Press launch
in Liverpool where Bostock also gave a live performance
and came away clutching the CD. Live concert reviews also
occasionally appear as a daily review if it is part of a
continuing cycle. The daily reviews attracted a small but
dedicated following. Following the success of that it was
decided in May 2000 that all Classical reviews would be
posted as received to add a daily interest to the site.
Around ten a day are added - usually fivedays a week. Each
month between 150 and 200 classical CDs and DVDs are reviewed.
The site looks better and navigates better
than it did. Unusually for web sites we maintain an archive
of previous incarnations so the early front page can still
be seen. Early visitors to the site may recall that 'headless
witch' spinning a web on the front page. Reg Williamson
hated it and it was soon replaced by the Hoffnung Drumming
Turtles. New front pages were developed in-house (i.e. by
me in my house) but we were precipitated into a redesign
when we learned that Internet Magazine was proposing a site-survey
of Film MusicWeb. I had always admired the presentation
of Helen San's Film Music site www.cinemusic.net and she
kindly offered to rebuild the Film Music front page for
us around some ideas that had been floating around in my
mind. [Helen has now retired] We got a kind review from
Internet Magazine but with some adverse comments about site
navigation which we hope have now been addressed. We were
so impressed with Helen's work I commissioned a new front
page for the classical site. I should add that Film MusicWeb
has been greatly admired and is the preferred site of many
search engines, including Yahoo.
All this talk of commissions and sales makes
the site sound like a thriving commercial enterprise. Sadly,
like Amazon, it is not. We were receiving in excess of 75,000
unique visitors each month, but they did not buy enough
CDs and site did not cover its cost and had survived
through a combination of donations and the editors putting
their hands deeply into their pockets. All the contributors
work for nothing although the reviewers do get to keep the
discs which do not cost the site anything. It was my desire
to be in a position to pay the reviewers for their hard
work and travel expenses and particularly to reward the
editors. It is sheer obsession that has got us where we
are. We have a questionnaire on the site and from the returns
there are indications that some people would be willing
to pay a subscription to visit the site but that is
a road I would rather not follow.
In September 2000 I contacted Len
Dight who ran the Classical music section of Vavo.com. It
was interesting that there were two of us called Len (a
comparatively rare name) running music sites and I asked
him to look over mine with a view to a link to the
site being placed on Vavo.com. Vavo.com is a portal site
marketing to those aged 45 or over. The result of this innocent
enquiry was that we were invited to join Vavo.com. This
gave us the opportunity to be placed on a fast American
server, attract advertising and have access to e-commerce
facilities. The move was been controversial because the
site now carried banner advertising and many would wish
it did not. For obscure technical reasons some previous
visitors have been disenfranchised because they can no longer
access the site. In many cases this is because they needed
to upgrade their browser to a later version that supported
JavaScript but solving access for some others has not proved
possible. For the first time the site had a real potential
income which will not only support the "staff" but will
allow all sorts of possibilities from overhauling the site
design (not easy with thousands of pages) to promoting concerts.
You may hear more Butterworth yet!
Len Mullenger
written in February 2001 and gradually updated
FOOTNOTE
Dec2001
Our Association with Vavo.com ran for ten
months and was financially successful but was then terminated
as Vavo hit the same buffers as other dot.coms. We are currently
on our own again and pursuing other avenues.
Dec 2002
Ian Lace retires as Ho Ed for Film Music
on the Web and Gary Dalkin picks up the reins.
Sept 2003
Through the good offices of Simon Foster
I was put in touch with the Classical Network Ltd who ran
the website Ludwigvanweb.com
This site supported independent classical labels whose disc
are offered for sale or download. In return for a monthly
payment we reviewed discs from their associated labels and
these reviews appeared on both MusicWeb and Ludwigvanweb
accessible to MusicWeb's 50,000 weekly visitors to their
site. They had a hands-off policy so did not try to influence
the MusicWeb reviews. They agreed the reviews would be meaningless
if that were not the case and have put up with some stinkers
(although not all those were published on their website).
Regrettably, although both sides have held to their bargain
our visitors did not play ball. They did not even sell enough
discs to cover what MusicWeb was costing them. So as we
headed towards 10 years old the future of MusicWeb is still
uncertain.
March 2004
MusicWeb published its 10,000th classical
review. However MusicWeb has always suffered from Server
down-time and these have a devastating effect on visitor
numbers. In March and June 2004 there were two periods of
over a fortnight when MusicWeb was not available. As a result
of this we were offered a new home with Harold Moores Records
shop and visitor figures are slowly climbed again. An attempt
was made at making the site more commercial and adverts
were accepted for the first time in some years. We also
commenced a makeover process with Seen
and Heard being the first section to benefit from the
designer hands of Bill Kenny.
November 2004: As a lead up to our 10th Birthday
celebrations the site name was changed to MusicWeb International
www.musicweb_international.com This reflect the diversity
of both our reviewers and of our audience.
2005-6: Eventually the relationship with
Harod Moores and Classicall.net had to be ended. They were
not paying us and we were owed a great deal of money. This
is a recurring refrain of MusicWeb! We have found a new
server and currently survive on the money raised by the
site and by donations.
Feb 2007
The site was given a makeover with a new
logo and much improved navigation.
April 2011
Seen and Heard, the live concert and opera
review site, was given a make-over. To make it more flexible
and easier for contributors to load their reviews, Bill
Kenny and his team spent several months developing a database-driven
site using WordPress. This also allows instant notification
of new reviews by e-mail to those who want it.
The new site can be seen here.
http://www.seenandheard-international.com/
Bill Kenny says
The
old Seen and Heard design has served us very well –
our readers seemed to like it – but it had three disadvantages
from our point of view. It was both inflexible and difficult
to adapt to our changing needs and it was awkward to maintain.
Its greatest disadvantage by far however was that it required
a huge amount of manual labour by our Webmasters simply
to keep it up to date.
With
often more than 20 new articles and reviews to add twice
weekly these days, and with having to index every new entry
manually, an average upload day with the old design could
take up to 6 hours to complete, a fact that could often
delay the publication of some reviews by as long as a week
– or longer if the review just happened to miss one
of our twice -weekly deadlines. We simply had no more time
available for updating.
So
enter our new shiny design which is built in WordPress and
which can be updated daily – or at the very least
on the five working weekdays anyhow. WordPress is an amazingly
flexible tool too and a typical review or article can now
be set up, then indexed automatically in several useful
ways and even emailed to our readers in less than a couple
of minutes after it has been edited. Readers in their turn
can add their comments to every piece that we publish now,
which the members of the reviewing team hope will become
a regular feature of our output.
We
are reasonably sure that most people will find the new design
an improvement on the old one but we would still be glad
to hear from anyone who doesn’t. And if readers tell
us why they don’t like the changes, we are also optimistic
that WordPress – and the Editorial team – will
be sufficiently flexible to overcome any snags that do show
up.
With
that proviso out of the way, we are looking forward to adding
new features to Seen and Heard, to reporting even greater
numbers of musically interesting venues and to making some
new friends in the process. We might even take up Tweeting
if our readers would like that. Let us know and we’ll
certainly look into it.
Bill
Kenny, Consulting Editor. March/April 2011
Bill Kenny announced that he will retire from his sole
as S&H Editor and webmaster in September.
