Peter Gammond

The son of John Thomas Gammond (1892–1970), a clerk, and Margaret Heald (1898–1985), Gammond inherited his musical interests from his father, who was a skilful and well-known amateur cellist and instrument repairer.

Peter Gammond (30 September 1925 – 6 May 2019) was a British music critic, writer, journalist, musician, poet, and artist.

Peter Gammond was born in Winnington, Northwich, Cheshire.

After early preparatory school in Weaverham, where he lived from 1930 to 1950, he was educated at Sir John Deane's Grammar School, where he attained distinctions in English and Art in the Higher School Certificate examinations.

He won a scholarship to Manchester College of Art, having at the time an ambition to be a cartoonist, but at the age of 18 in 1943 was called up and served in the Royal Armoured Corps as a tank driver mainly in the Far East and India, ending with the 25th Dragoons, which was involved in the Hindu-Muslim conflict prior to Indian independence in 1947.

Upon returning to civilian life in 1947 Gammond continued his studies at Wadham College, Oxford, until 1950, where he read English.

While at Oxford, he became well known in literary circles as a poet, appearing in three editions of Oxford Poetry, and as a cartoonist and writer with Cherwell.

As poetry editor of the university magazine, The ISIS, Gammond worked under editors R. J. Harvey, Alan Brien, Robert Robinson, and Derrick Cooper.

Gammond appeared in Oxford Viewpoint, where a study of his poetry by Irving Wardle was also published.

During his time at Oxford, he composed and produced an operetta, Love and Learning, and played trombone in a university jazz band led by John Postgate.

On leaving Oxford, Gammond worked for a time in a West Country pub and as a rates assessor in Willesden, before joining the publicity department of the Decca Record Company in 1952, as an editor and sleeve-note writer, which led to his liaising closely with some of the leading classical and operatic performers of the time.

He left the company in 1960 to become a freelance writer, critic and author.

Gammond was a member of Rotary International since 1962 and was President of the Shepperton Rotary Club from 1969 to 1970.

From 1964, Gammond edited Gramophone Record Review, later known as Audio Record Review, and remained as Music Editor when this was later incorporated into Hi-Fi News, until 1980.

In 1964, Gammond founded an informal music group which to this day meets on the first Tuesday of each month in members' houses.

Taking place in the environs of Shepperton, Sunbury-on-Thames, Walton-on-Thames, Chertsey, Weybridge, and Woking, the meetings explore the musical repertoire through recordings and live performances.

Gammond is particularly well known for his six contributions to the Bluffer’s Guides, including the best-selling Bluff Your Way in Music, which launched the series in 1966.

So influential was his contribution in this area that The Times dedicated a leading article to Gammond on his death, celebrating the way in which 'the pioneer of talking off the top of your head enriched the national conversation'.

As editor of Audio Record Review, Gammond instigated the annual 'Audio Awards', later the Hi-Fi News & Record Review Audio Awards', for 'services to the gramophone', which were the first of their kind for many years; recipients included Sir Neville Marriner, Sir Peter Pears, Dame Joan Sutherland, and Dame Janet Baker.

Gammond was a regular broadcaster for BBC Radio, contributing criticism to programmes on jazz, providing interval talks (for instance on Gilbert and Sullivan), and featuring in the BBC Radio 3 'Building a Library' in Record Review on Saturday mornings, for instance with his choice of recordings of operetta and Johann Strauss.

He also had an extended slot on the BBC Radio 2 arts programme, Round Midnight and on Forces Broadcasting.

Gammond served as the British representative on the annual panel of adjudicators for the Grand Prix du Disque at Montreux in the 1970s and 1980s.

Gammond was a prolific poet.

He was a long-standing and frequent contributor to The Friends of Torbay's annual 'Torbay Musical Weekend' at the Palace Hotel, Torquay since its inauguration in 1970 until 2007; he was appointed its vice-president in 2009 and served as president from 2014.

It was at Gammond's invitation that musical conductors including Georg Solti addressed these gatherings.

He was much involved in local charitable work and in 1990 helped to found 'Care in Shepperton', a group of volunteers which offers neighbourly help and support to the indisposed, elderly and housebound; he served as its chairman from 1991 to 1996.

Contributions to:

He was long an admirer of John Betjeman and was a past Chairman (1997-2002) and a Vice-President (from 2010 to 2019) of The Betjeman Society, the journal of which (The Betjemanian) he edited from 1996 to 2006.

Gammond's publications include a number of volumes and bibliographic studies on Betjeman, and he scripted and appeared in the award-winning video Betjeman's Britain and its sequel Betjeman's London.

From his early days, but in particular during his time with Decca, Audio Record Review and Hi-Fi News, as well as in connexion with adjudicating the Grand Prix du Disque, Gammond encountered many of the most prominent musicians of the post-war decades.

As a boy he met Elgar, he played bar billiards with Finzi while at Oxford, where he also lunched with Sir Thomas Beecham on the same day he hosted Dylan Thomas, and years later he dined with Stravinsky at the Savoy.

While compiling articles and publicity material he encountered such composers as Sir Malcolm Arnold, Benjamin Britten, Aaron Copland and Sir William Walton, and interviewed such singers as Kirsten Flagstad, Renata Tebaldi, Dame Joan Sutherland, Birgit Nilsson, Victoria de los Ángeles, Régine Crespin, Frederica von Stade, Sir Peter Pears, Carlo Bergonzi, Plácido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti.

Gammond also interviewed and wrote about a number of eminent conductors, including Sir Malcolm Sargent, Leonard Bernstein, Antal Doráti, Josef Krips, Herbert von Karajan, Sir Georg Solti, Richard Bonynge and Sir Neville Marriner.

Sir Yehudi Menuhin provided the preface to Gammond's The Meaning and Magic of Music, and he counted among his friends Daniel Barenboim and Jacqueline du Pré.

Through his writing on jazz, Gammond met Duke Ellington and had extensive contact with André Previn.

Gammond gave talks for several recorded music societies, many of which he served as president, including the Sunbury Music Club, which was based in Upper Halliford until its disbandment in 2015.

He died in May 2019 at the age of 93.

Gammond's publications number over forty books, among them studies of Schubert, Mozart, Offenbach and record collecting.

His oeuvre also includes volumes on jazz, ragtime and music hall, with biographical studies of Duke Ellington and Scott Joplin, and the Oxford Companion to Popular Music.

Record sleevenotes, for virtually every record company of the day, accounted for a large percentage of his freelance work and total over three hundred.