Dr Len Mullenger (1942-2025)
Debts, Adventures, Memories
by Rob Barnett
If you were wondering whose “Debts, Adventures, Memories” I am referring to, they’re mine and they’re to, around and about Len Mullenger. This ‘article’ is, of necessity, a Graingerian ramble. Please forgive odd-ball asides, curlicues and dead-ends.
Len and I met a few times while I was a “hands-on” editor for his site and he was unfailingly kind and thoughtful. He always left me in awe of something else as well: his generosity, which was something I could not fathom. Where I was unashamedly acquisitive and wanted to expand my collection – much to the chagrin of my wife – when it came to review copy CDs, Len was open-handed. There were a couple of occasions when he bought a disc for me to review. When I went to his house in Coventry, of which I have vivid memories, he gave me free rein to choose from whatever CDs had arrived in his torrential post. I would leave with him those discs which had arrived with me and which I did not want to review. He would then redistribute my ‘orphans’ among the throng of appreciative reviewers. Thousands of CDs passed through his hands and he held on to very few of them for his own collection and reviews.
He was a hub for music – and irrepressible with it. I knew Len and visited occasionally (maybe once every six months) before his family move to another house in Coventry. I say ‘hub’; have a look at the site’s list of reviewers. There were those who wrote hundreds and those who wrote just a few. Names and personalities that are memorable and prominent include: Bob Farr, Glyn Pursglove, John Quinn and Jonathan Woolf, all of whom were whirled into Len’s world. They, and many others, sustained MWI as a ‘force in the land’ and a focus for musical knowledge, discovery, excitement, advocacy and enthusiasm. This is not to downplay the roles of people who write for and worked discreetly for the site – all at no payment – but who Len never met ‘in person’. I think of Phil Scowcroft and his Garlands (I still have stacks of his handwritten articles to transcribe for the site), Paul Conway and Holbrooke advocate, Michael Freeman; there were many, many others.
I suppose the MWI ‘estate’ was and is typical of the way the internet has drawn like-hearted people together to enthuse, to alienate at times, to disagree and to share. Some contacts, while invaluable, were transient: I think of Charles Hooey (notable for his knowledge of vintage operatic singers); of Mike Herman (well-regarded for his international discographies); Paul Serotsky (trailing billowing clouds of programme notes). Definitely not a transient was the wonderful Patrick Waller, whose contribution to all aspects of the site and especially his work on cello concertos of the world has been invaluable. A constant and vital if discreet presence has been that of David Barker. Let’s not forget Nick Barnard, Bob Briggs, Byzantion, Dominy Clements, Tony Duggan, Lewis Foreman, John France, Paul Corfield Godfrey, William Hedley, Stephen Lloyd, Ralph Moore, and Ates Orga. There have been many others and I apologise if I have not mentioned your name.
When I first got to know Len, the Mullenger house had a garage which he had converted into an office for the radiation of review discs to a constantly swirling pool of volunteer reviewers. Boxes of discs, labels, packing materials and coffee populated this place. The house became the mark for occasional visits by friends and reviewers – you could be both. Len’s own collection – no more than say 600 discs – resided on the shelving to one side of the garage-office. His tastes can be gauged, to some extent, from his MWI reviews including Holst and Shostakovich. He revered the music of William Alwyn and did all he could to promote it; likewise that of Arthur Butterworth a concert performance of whose Fourth Symphony he and the site sponsored. In addition, his operational office where the PC, internet connection, book-cases and books could be found was a small and crammed room at the top of the stairs in the house.
Len was an influential presence in the recorded classical music industry. I remember him encouraging me to come along to a business meeting with Klaus Heymann and his assistants in a London hotel. That was but one example. He was at ease with that world. His contacts ranged far and wide. They extended to Nimbus at Wyastone Leys, its mansion, industrial estate and concert hall just outside Monmouth. While I was always needily on the look-out for new CDs to hear, and in some cases to review, Len was energised by the whirl of that world: new recordings, old recordings, musicians and recording business executives. He sought out and was welcomed by Nimbus’s Adrian Farmer and Anthony Smith, both of whom praised and supported the MWI site… and did so even when, occasionally, a review was not entirely favourable.
Len arranged occasional MWI lunches at the Nimbus mansion located amid Wyastone Leys’ dramatically wooded valley. These lunches in spacious surroundings were populated with MWI’s reviewers and formed a venue to meet and talk things over with colleagues. Things buzzed. The meetings and lunches were all the more vital because everyone was a volunteer and yet needed to be channelled, steered and to feel vitally valued. Names and faces, quite naturally, came and went over the years, so keeping in touch was to some extent the encouraging ‘glue’ that kept the reviews coming. I mentioned Nimbus and certainly that connection paid dividends beyond MWI. As a result, both Paul Conway and myself as a follower were drawn into the rebirth of Richard Itter’s Lyrita label on compact disc. It also saw the two of us as willing enlistees in advising on the release of off-air BBC recordings on the Lyrita REAM label. Adrian and Ant immersed Paul and I in Richard’s rooms full of music books, magazines, cassettes (sent to Richard Itter for appraisal), acetates, 7” and 10” tape reels, music scores, orchestral parts, and equipment including reel to reel recorders and the whole panoply of top-flight audio. This came together with Nimbus’s own archives of 78s, reels and state-of-the-art audio technology. Decisively, Adrian and Ant, as trustees and as business people of acumen, took decisions that were and are unshackled from pure commerce. They continue to do so and this reflects also the valour and percipience of Richard Itter to this day. I am sure that is why Len was drawn to them. Back to the main flow …. In the earlier noughties Len held and footed the bill for dinners and lunches at local hotels not far off the M6 and Corley Services. He clearly enjoyed the conversation, the enthusiasm and the bustle and bonhomie of it all.
Len liked the cut and thrust of the debate on the audio-technical side of recordings and this spilled over into a well-informed inner circle. Len, John Quinn and David Dyer instigated and sustained the MWI Listening Studio which paid particular heed to the technical side of recordings and of how this served the music. They steered clear of the Scylla and Charybdis of snobbery and tricks – no more ping-pong or trains entering and emerging from tunnels. There was no room at the inn for the sort of thing that dogged the early days of stereo hi-fi. John’s reports of these sessions trace the lineage of these sessions.
From the years 1999 to 2013-14 or thereabouts Len and I were much in touch via email. I never got into the whole HTML business (despite trying evening classes) but I did take up an editorial role that at one time had all non-film music reviews coming to me. These were many. I read, worked over – not that they needed much of that – and brought them into a standard format. The headers needed close attention. As I say, large numbers of reviews came in and to survive I gradually became an adept of Microsoft Word shortcuts and tips. I did not shrink from rewriting sections: never to change the reviewer’s verdict on the music and or performance/audio values. Len allowed me the ‘rope’ to do this. The priority was to get reviews to him in Word format in quantity and as rapidly as I could. Each weekday we fed the never satiated maw of the site’s appetite for a torrential flood of reviews. Mostly these were reviews of newly issued CDs but Len was open-minded and the occasional disc from before the days when MWI was founded (in 1995) was given admittance. In those days I always saw MWI as more of an encyclopaedic resource. It was not just an attempt to appraise and document the latest releases in a CD world that continued and continues to produce new projects – new music, new performances, new transfers of old recordings and so on. Evidently Len was happy to see these ambitions in play. Even if they were impossible of complete achievement, they were goals for which they were worthy of Ixion-like striving. This approach was handsomely vindicated because statistics show that, to this day, our readers regularly access old reviews, using MWI not just as a source for reviews of new releases but also as an archive.
With an absorbingly full-time job and family all this work for MWI involved me waking impossibly early and working late at night. Len had me OCR-ing music books, scanning music images and generally doing things for the site. This was not a hardship and I never felt that this was an imposition or a trudge. As a non-musician, non-music academic and non-executant, I am sure I learnt things about music, and CDs and the repertoire including things I did not like (Verdi and Wagner). This was all down to Len.
In those early noughties he realised that my PC was stone-age slow and generally obsolescent. He invited me down to his home. We went to a contact of his and he specced up a PC for me to use. At no expense, I drove home to Merseyside with a brand new top-of-the-range PC as well as the latest cardboard fruit-box of classical CDs to write up. Delight!
The much-missed Ian Lace – film music editor for MWI and already an out and out enthusiast long before he made contact with Len – became a dynamo for the Film Music on the Web part of the site. Smaller gatherings at Len’s house often included Ian who also farmed out some film music CDs for me to review. I recall these included not only ‘doubles’ but discs of commercial status, OSTs of TV films and PC game soundtrack CDs. I remember several of the then obscure music of people like Jeffrey Beal long before Beal’s atmospheric ‘Jesse Stone’ scores. Film music was a strong theme of the site as also, for some years, was Donald Clarke’s Penguin Encyclopaedia of Popular Music, the full text of which Len was very happy to host for quite some time. Rawsthorne, Alwyn and Bax were among the figures represented on MWI and at no expense to their societies, composer families and interest groups.
It was a joy to be Len’s honorary Classical Editor and this facilitated my being able to keep in the swim of what was being issued by the labels. Why did Len light on me and give me the chance to do these things? I was a gamble for him. He only knew me because he was a member of the British Music Society and I had been the editor of its quarterly newsletter from circa 1988 to about 2013. For my part I relished the role for what it actually entailed, for its unstemmable flood of CDs and as a vehicle for my tastes. I was and remain one of those fuddy-duddies who lamented the passing of magazines like Records and Recording. I was frustrated that the once beloved and exciting Gramophone had at times become becalmed in the shallows, in the stagnant mangroves of PR and the superficial sheeny fashions of mainstream composers and labels. The rising superficiality of billing and cooing BBC Radio 3 presenters also disappointed. By contrast I was delighted by the tempo and standards set by the USA’s Fanfare magazine. I wanted to recapture and amplify the values that reached out to composers and music at the periphery. Although we could not steer the way to perfection, Len was the focus for enthusiastic advocacy in the form not only of reviews but also of features and articles. This ferment continues and Len had unchained it and smilingly encouraged its pacing and exponential growth.
Charlecote House, its National Trust treasures, grounds and library loomed large in Len’s affections; especially its many books on which he was a dedicated authority. He volunteered at the House for many years as a guide to the public and valued helper. I recall meeting Len there one sunny day, and also at another NT venue, Little Moreton Hall.
I do not know about Len’s academic and research accomplishments: these are touched on elsewhere. They and the indulgence of Coventry University formed a springboard for MWI. MWI was originally hosted at the University site. It’s worth adding that, with the leavening of the occasional and increasingly rare sponsorship or advertising cheque, Len personally funded the site after it migrated from the University auspices. It was for him an avocation not a commercial proposition.
He was also the soul of kindness to musicians, including the percussionist Maggie Cotton. He had me transcribing from LP to CDR several LPs including James Blades’ ‘All About Music’ percussion LP and some rare and private recordings on one of Maggie’s LPs. I learnt and honed new skills to do this and use those skills to this day; not that I am anything other than an amateur who has lived to liberate valued analogue material (tapes, cassettes, vinyl) into CDR format, clicks and all. He wrote to me about the Blades transfer: “You are a miracle worker! Perfect transfers with no rumble or distortion. Whatever the problems were with side 2 you overcame then. Certainly no skipping. I cannot thank you enough.”
Len’s skill-set entailed diplomacy as well. Occasionally there would be spats over reviews and for these Len stepped into the line of fire and dealt out a kindly justice, as befits the site owner. He also indulged the occasional errors that I perpetrated and otherwise unwittingly let through the gates. There were moments when he was much engrossed in correcting reviews in their html form after the review had gone onsite. He was far from averse to doing this and never upbraided me.
I also met Len at one of the Malcolm Arnold celebration weekends in Northampton where he was keen I should meet the movers and shakers in the Arnold Society. I always regret that I did not make time to attend the Arnold weekend where all nine of the symphonies were performed in concert in Northampton at the Royal and Derngate Centre. Len attended that signal event.
At a personal level he needed no encouragement to tell you about his family, his pride in his children and his own life story. He held a court that was lively, sometimes stormy and always mercurial. He introduced me to so many friends and contacts in the music world. I am sure that his values and practices have endured and spread far and wide among those for whom music is a dominating force. That his life has been documented by so many voices from the music world attests to the high regard in which he is held and the enduringly relentless grip of his achievements and encouragements.
Rob Barnett
December 2025
