Classical champion has been Post-ing reviews for 50 years
Christopher Morley has been taking a critical look at Birmingham’s music scene for these pages for half a century. He recalls the changing times with RICHARD BRATBY
FIFTY years is a long time. Picture Birmingham in 1969: a city of blue-and-cream buses and smoke-blackened brickwork. The Victorian Central Library is still open, but the Rotunda is brand new and out at Gravelly Hill the first pillars of Spaghetti Junction are just starting to rise.
That’s the world in which the Birmingham Post’s chief music critic, Christopher Morley, filed his first classical music review for the paper. To put it another way, when the CBSO celebrates its 100th anniversary next year, he will have been covering its concerts for more than half its entire existence.
“I hadn’t realised that!” says Christopher. Talk to him – or read any of the thousands of articles in which, over 50 years of concertoing, he’s praised the good, chided the complacent, mocked the pedantic and generally celebrated the region’s music-making from grassroots to international level – and you’d never guess that he was such a… well, “veteran” doesn’t seem right. He’s still far too enthusiastic – too open-minded
– for that.
In uncertain times for print journalism he’s single-handedly upheld the Post’s reputation for the best classical coverage on any regional paper.
He’s recently set up a website, www.MidlandsMusicReviews.com to take his reviews and those of his assistants (he calls them his “heroes”, and I’m proud to be one of them) to the global audience that he feels Birmingham’s music deserves.
And yet when he first wrote for the Post, journalism was still in the steam age. Each night, Christopher would have barely 30 minutes to write his review and dictate it down the telephone. He remembers it vividly.
“The work of the girls on the copy desk was amazing. They had to take the copy from theatre, music and ballet reviews, copy from the House of Commons, sports results. I mean, I’d be in the middle of dictating a review and the copyist would say, ‘Sorry Chris, we’ve got to stop a minute. We’ve just got the results from the Hall Green dog track’!
Christopher Morley came to Birmingham from Brighton. His mother came from Naples (his parents met in Italy while Morley senior was serving in the British Army) and Neapolitan song echoed through his childhood.
At Birmingham University he studied music under the late John Joubert – a defining experience.
“I fell in love with Birmingham, and I fell in love – so I decided to stay”.
Journalism was not, at first, part of the plan.
“I had ambitions to lecture at university and I did – I taught at Birmingham Conservatoire for 22 years. I had ambitions to conduct, which I did.’’ He still cherishes memories of conducting a run of
West Side Story at Dudley Castle in 1992. “And I had ambitions to write about music, which I did and am doing”.
Until the Post’s Terry Grimley offered him the position of chief music critic in 1988 (it was April Fool’s Day, he recalls) he also taught music in Halesowen. For a period, he also ran his own music shop in Moseley. “That was a means of escaping from school!” he laughs. “I was hopeless as a businessman”.
And music criticism has had its ups and downs too. No sooner had Christopher got his break on the Post than he was sacked (he’d confused the violinists Ralph Holmes and Raymond Cohen in a review – well, we’ve all been there) then discreetly rehired a few weeks later after it had become clear that the paper couldn’t cope without him.
‘‘Against that were highs: reporting for the Post from Edinburgh and the Proms, touring the world with Birmingham’s choirs and orchestras; chronicling the CBSO’s rise under Simon Rattle and his successors. After half a century, you see things that others miss. Christopher was the first critic in Birmingham or anywhere else to spot that Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla was destined to follow Andris Nelsons at the CBSO.
Criticism can be a thankless task, and more than one performer has mistaken Chris’s tough love for a personal attack. That’s an occupational hazard. We laugh now at the amateur operatic group that took the huff and banned him from future productions. But real artists value intelligent criticism, and while Christopher has reviewed giants ranging from Boulez to Pavarotti, he continues to take amateur music every bit as seriously. Students, choral societies and amateur orchestras across the Midlands know that they’ll get no fairer – or better informed – appraisal. It’s what makes the work of Christopher and his team so vital.
“Our role is to support the arts,” he says. “To support, to give constructive advice, to recognise everything that is going on here. We all take each other seriously, we respect each other’s integrity. There’s no ‘them and us’ feeling.
‘‘The Post has an incredible history of arts coverage, and I’m proud to be part of that. The musical life of Birmingham and the Midlands is too good to be ignored.’’