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admin · Posted: Wed Aug 29, 2007 11:33 am Post subject: Professor Michael Hurd

In the words of one leading newspaper, we were told ‘Music world mourns death of composer’. This headline referred to the death in August of Michael Hurd, very well known to so many of us as the Professor of Harmony and allied musical subjects at the Royal Marines School of Music during the years 1953 to 1960.

I was among the first of his pupils and I was lucky enough to get to know him really well. His soft, gentle manner coupled with a bright, acerbic wit, soon endeared him to all the members of his various classes. There would not be one man in any of them who could find a criticism of his teaching technique, always a kind word of encouragement for those that found the mysteries of the ‘passing six four’ in the same class as the Theory of Relativity. For the ‘bright’ and the ‘not so bright’ student he was patience personified and could be relied upon to show, by musical example, how something could be made more acceptable than the student’s original. His own musical education was completed at Oxford where he read music under the gentle guidance of Sir Thomas Armstrong, later Principal of the Royal Academy of Music, who befriended many of us that were lucky enough to be selected to go there and complete our own musical educations.

Michael was always an extremely private man and even those that were closest to him in the world away from the Royal Marines School of Music, knew little of his private life. This is hardly surprising when one considers the bulk of work that he achieved; over 18 books, all on the lives of English composers, in particular those of the songwriter, Ivor Gurney and of Rutland Boughton. His own compositions, of which there are many more than we knew about, are characterised by a gentle, lyrical quality. His wonderfully witty way with words is seen to best advantage in some of the light-hearted works that he wrote for amateur choirs. Works such as Mrs Beeton’s Book in which he uses, as a text, the classic recipes and day to day instructions for servants in that famous set of house-keeping rules, formulated in Victorian times, by Mrs Beeton.

He was a highly regarded conductor and choral trainer, and on several occasions was appointed Composer in Residence in Australia where this quiet, gentle and above all witty Pom was happily accepted as a civilising influence.

He is greatly missed by all that knew him. Vale, Michael Hurd.
Thomas Lambert\0\0
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