BBC Music in the Glock Era and After : A Memoir

From 1959 to 1972 William Glock, as Controller, Music, stamped his personality memorably on BBC Radio, gathering around him a talented staff that included emigrés and experts in Continental music new and old. Among the young recruits was Leo Black, an intelligent musician with an affinity for singers and Austro-German music. In his 28 years at the BBC - years that extended well beyond 1972 - Black learnt the system, worked with leading BBC figures and musicians, produced countless programmes and discovered his own identity. This memoir not only recalls 'the Glock Era and After' in a series of informative, poignant, witty and judicious vignettes, but is also a key text for understanding one of the great ages of British music.Leo Black is the author of Franz Schubert: Music and Belief and Edmund Rubbra: Symphonist, both published by the Boydell Press.

Leo Black was born in London in 1932 and educated at Wadham College, Oxford. Between 1960 and 1988 he was successively producer, chief producer and executive producer for BBC Radio Music. Since then he has written a series of essays on Schubert for The Musical Times (1997) and Opera Quarterly (1998) and a book, Schubert: Music and Belief (2003), for the Boydell Press. He paid tribute to a former Oxford tutor with his recent study of Edmund Rubbra, Symphonist (Boydell, 2008)
Christopher Wintle (Editor) is a Senior Research Fellow at King's College London. His monograph on Benjamin, Britten, All the Gods, was published in 2006 (Plumbago), and he has edited four volumes of writings by Hans Keller and a further two by Hugh Wood and Bayan Northcott respectively.