Auteur Dance Music of the Renaissance

The Art of David Munow: Complete Warner Edition, 21CDs, (Warner Classics, 2026)

15 May 2026 marks the 50th anniversary of the death of alte musik brat, David Munrow, who hanged himself in 1976, aged just 33 years old. As with everything else he set his ferocious mind to, Munrow was determined to succeed — having made an unsuccessful attempt on his life the previous year. Warner Classics have done the decent thing to mark the anniversary and gathered up a healthy selection of Munrow’s prodigious recorded output, some 50 plus albums in barely a decade, in a handsome 21 disc edition.

Prior to the ascent of Munrow and his collaborators, Christopher Hogwood et al., early music, indeed a lot of Baroque repertoire as well, was fairly staid in its conservatism, underperformed, and played with no real concern for period accuracy or ambitious programming. Munrow was at the forefront of the movement to sweep all that philistinism (masquerading as decorum) aside. And, to a certain extent, he did this from outside the academy, without kowtowing to the reactionary elements of established tradition.