Movers and shakers
Early music pioneers 1920s: Violet Gordon Woodhouse A remarkable artist, Woodhouse (above) was the first harpsichordist to perform in broadcasts. Her recordings present a wholly individual talent giving crisp, virtuosic and detailed accounts of Bach, Scarlatti and Elizabethan music. The instruments she played were built by her friend, the great early music pioneer Arnold Dolmetsch. She attracted admirers, lived with four men and was also beloved by women including Ethel Smyth and Radclyffe Hall. 1930s: André Mangeot Originally from France, the violinist settled in England where he played in Henry Wood’s orchestra and took part in early experimental broadcasts. With his string quartet he recorded Ravel’s Quartet with the composer’s approval, and worked with Peter Warlock on Purcell’s fantasias. Christopher Isherwood, who was Mangeot’s secretary for a year, immortalised him as ‘Monsieur Cheuret’ in his novel Lions and Shadows, describing the ‘comfortable untidiness’ of their Chelsea house, with ‘the violin on the chair next to the tennis racquet’. 1940s: Alfred Deller
When in 1935 the young Alfred Deller asked for an audition, the BBC replied: ‘We have to inform you
that male altos are not normally employed by us’. Being billed instead as a countertenor did not help either: ‘There is no countertenor part in Messiah,’ the BBC told him. But Deller (above), with Michael Tippett, launched the Third Programme in 1946, and became a popular voice on the BBC with over 60 broadcasts by 1949. 1950s: Imogen Holst
In 1931, the BBC employed Imogen Holst both as a piano accompanist and to play the virginals for some Shakespeare songs (fee: £2.2.0). She became a pioneer in reviving very early music; after working at Dartington Hall in Devon, she worked for Britten in Aldeburgh and edited many works for him. Her series of late-night concerts of medieval music (including Pérotin) in Aldeburgh Parish Church, performed by her Purcell Singers, was paid for and broadcast by the BBC Transcription Service. 1970s: David Munrow
The brilliant recorder and wind instrument player founded the Early Music Consort and became a landmark broadcaster with his Radio 3 programme
Pied Piper, which was a success with an audience far beyond the young listeners it was aimed at. He made an astonishing 655 programmes with a unique blend of enthusiasm and information before his untimely death in 1976.