Death of a classical magazine editor
RIPWe have been notified of the death from cancer of Máire Taylor, founding editor of International Record Review and its guiding spirit for 15 years.
Before that, she worked at Gramophone.
Martin Anderson writes: Sad news. Those of you who remember International Record Review (last issue April 2015) May also recall its excellent editor, Máire Taylor, who accompanied Barry Irving when he left Gramophone to set the magazine up. I wrote for IRR from the start, and was always happy to know that my copy would pass through her capable hands before it appeared in print. After IRR folded, Máire joined the Toccata team, as freelance editor and volunteer proofreader, and constantly arrested infelicities on their way into print — she was good! My past tense means you already know what I am going to say: Máire died on Tuesday of last week (14 May), from what seems to have been cancer of the bile-duct. Her daughter gave me the news at the weekend, but I have been hoping that she might have been able to send me a photo I could post. The camera-shy Máire seems to have been one of those people who do good in the background — but do good she did. Over the 20+ years we worked together, we also became good friends, and I shall miss her.
How sad – Maire was a wonderfully supportive editor at IRR. It was such a pleasure to write for her and so sad when the magazine folded – I genuinely preferred it as a publication to the competition.
Agree absolutely. Lovely person to work with (and not her fault we waited so long for payments!) Maire lived on a canal barge when I was wit IRR
No indeed – she was very open with me about the payment issue when I started.
Very sad news indeed. I switched from Gramophone to IRR about 25 years ago, after Gramophone was sold to the Haymarket Group and, for want of a better term, started dumbing down and becoming little more than a comic. Prior to that, I had been buying it for 37 years and valued the superb journalism and perceptive reviews.
IRR was everything that Gramophone used to be; added to that, it was not bulked up by adverts. The reviewers were big names in the classical music world and it was always a wonderful read. I was shocked at its demise nine years ago (it seems a lot longer) and nothing has replaced it. The only publication that matched it in erudition was the American Fanfare magazine, which used to be available at the Harold Moores record shop – not one of my favourite shops but worth an occasional visit just to get hold of Fanfare. I believe it is still extant (Fanfare that is, not Harold Moores, which bit the dust a few years ago) but the price of a subscription is prohibitive.
The fact that there is no successor for IRR in the UK speaks volumes for the cultural shift that has taken place over the years. The BBC Music magazine is no substitute. The ascendency of YouTube and Spotify seems to be hitting the recorded music industry and admittedly they are great for sampling an almost limitless number of classical works. But I am old-fashioned enough to have enjoyed going through shelves of LPs and the thrill of taking home the latest acquisitions, lowering the pickup into the groove and sitting back to enjoy the music. I still do occasionally, and I also enjoy CDs for the clarity of sound; as with LPs, I enjoy owning them as much as playing them.
That world has now vanished for good, not only with the end of IRR but of all those record shops – The Gramophone Exchange in Wardour Street (not to be confused with that awful successor Gramex), Direction Dean Street, Caruso and Company, Henry Stave and the phenomenal Farringdon Records, with its delightful maitre d’, the ever cheerful and helpful Tony.
Sic transit gloria mundi.
I still subscribe to Fanfare and the cost of the subscription is worth it, especially as it gives one full access online to all the record reviews going back to the 70s.
I worked in London. I would go into these
Record shops a few times a week.. and buy
Records/cds. They were the good old days.
Could there be a connection between IRR folding and the fact it was never, as you put it, “bulked up by adverts”. Or am I being naive?
Interesting point Jeff – but it did survive for over 15 years in that format. It’s certainly true that it went bankrupt so you may be right.
Thank you for these recollections. Don’t forget Imhofs and EMG Handmade Gramophone Co off Oxford Street.
Very sad indeed. For detailed and well written record reviews I now rely on musicwebinternational.com. Almost on a daily basis there will be 5-7 new reviews plus a Deja vu reminder of outstanding older CDs.
Good suggestion – very useful. Records International was also a good site for new releases but it’s not what it was; the latest monthly listings appear erratically and the content is not what it once was. Presto Classical is also a good source of news about new releases.
Very sad news indeed, Maire joined Gramophone in, I think, 1985, as my pa: she’d worked as a typesetter and could key text at a colossal speed
When Barry Irving suggested that we publish a ‘Good CD Guide’ this inevitably created a burden in respect of creating new copy: Maire merrily volunteered to help and quickly identified people within the reviewer community who could help her. It was in this way that Maire, who had no knowledge of classical music when she joined us, began to gain the experience which stood her in such good stead after she and Barry left Gramophone to start IRR
Those who worked with Maire will confirm that she was an immensely hard-working person, a highly-intelligent and funny colleague who took no prisoners in her determination to get the job done
She was a fantastic asset to both Gramophone and IRR
There is an interesting online review magazine called Classics Today, with some excellent reviews by people like Jed Distler. Then there is its reviewer and executive editor, David Hurwitz, who also has a You Tube channel with something like 30,000 subscribers.
Just to add to Chris P’s tribute, I had the good fortune to be the founding editor of IRR together with Máire and Barry: after Haymarket bought Gramophone and its specialist quarterlies, we decided it was no longer a conducive place to be. And how thrilling it was to create a magazine from scratch in a mere three months: I was touched how many excellent writers were eager to come on board. It was an unashamedly specialist magazine with an international roster of critics and, in its heyday, the best around. As an editorial team-mate, Máire was second to none, arriving each day (weekends meant nothing to her) with her black lab Bella in tow, one of several animals who shared her bucolic narrowboat home. And when, a few years in, I left for adventures new, there was no doubt that Máire and Barry would give IRR their all, as indeed they did right up to Barry’s premature death in 2015. How terribly sad that Máire has also gone too soon.
A lovely tribute. A life well- lived. If only more people aimed for that!