TEMPO describes itself as a ‘review of new music’. Not a ‘journal’, nor a ‘magazine’, but a ‘review’, a term which seems to imply both scrutiny and some sort of timeliness. In TEMPO we are interested in many different types of review, but in two particular formats – the longer articles at the front and the shorter reports on concerts, new books and recordings at the back – and so two different types of scrutiny and timeliness: more extended at the front, more immediate at the back.
When Bob Gilmore became editor he changed TEMPO’s subject from ‘modern music’ to ‘new music’ but he preserved the tradition of these two different ways of responding to the music of our time. He did, however, alter the way TEMPO was put together. His predecessors, Colin Mason, David Drew and Calum MacDonald, took charge of everything, from front to back covers, but Bob decided to share the work, creating the post of Reviews Editor and inviting Juliet Fraser to take on the job.
It was an inspired decision. I remember talking to Bob soon after he had become editor and he explained that by dividing the work he thought it would give both him and Juliet the chance to focus on their parts of each issue and thus be more effective in their rethinking of what it was that TEMPO should be doing. Most editors tend to be journalists, music publicists or academics, but as an active performer of new music Juliet brought a quite different perspective to bear, providing Bob with both a sounding board for his own ideas and a source of fresh ideas of her own. The Profile feature, in which a leading figure in new music is asked a series of questions on their life and work, is one of Juliet's innovations, as is the introduction of artwork.
As anyone who was a TEMPO reader before the Gilmore–Fraser takeover will know, many new contributors have started to appear in the reviews section and Juliet has told me of ‘the lovely feeling that creeps over me when reading through a review that is beautifully written, intelligent, well informed and interesting. I feel excited for our readers when that happens'. She has also overseen a change in editorial policy. Just as Bob attempted to shift the emphasis in the articles section to focus only on the most recent music, so the reviews section under Juliet's direction has tended to move away from the mainstream musical outputs of large musical institutions towards more innovative work, wherever it is to be found.
When I took over the editorship four months after Bob's death, Juliet had already seen an entire issue through to press and she helped me enormously as I began my work. But this is Juliet's final issue. She had committed herself to three years of TEMPO and that time is up. She is an extraordinarily gifted soprano and people need to hear her wonderful voice often and everywhere. Meanwhile, her successor here will be Kate Molleson, whose writing will be familiar to readers of the Guardian and Gramophone.
Juliet's parting remark on her editorial experience was that ‘I still don't really believe in reviews!’ It's an excellent way for Kate and me to begin the next stage of TEMPO’s life, with some thoroughly existential questions. Whom do reviews serve? The listeners or readers who can, or will, make up their own minds about a concert, a recording, a book? Or perhaps the performers, authors and their promoters? In an age when we can all instantly post our opinions, what value is there in a concert report which doesn't appear until many months later? I suspect that there are good answers to these questions, some of which will change the way TEMPO goes about the business of being a review, but meanwhile Juliet deserves enormous thanks for everything she has done to enliven this publication.
In Juliet's last issue it is appropriate that once again we have a chance to consider Bob Gilmore's many achievements. TEMPO 272, published in the wake of Bob's horribly early death, paid tribute to his qualities as a friend, teacher, writer, and musician, but Bob's influence has continued. His last major project with Ensemble Scordatura, a set of completions of madrigals by Nicola Vicentino (1511–72), was completed with a concert in the Muziekgebouw in Amsterdam on 29 November 2015, and on 1 and 2 March 2016 ‘The world according to Bob’, a two-day symposium inspired by his work, was held in London. In this issue of TEMPO we publish ‘A Bob Gilmore Festschrift’, five of the papers presented during that event; Patrick Ozzard-Low, who together with Frank Denyer and Elisabeth Smalt organised ‘The world according to Bob’, has written a brief introduction. I think Bob would have appreciated the way in which this collection of reflections on the materials and circumstances of music today demonstrate that reviewing can be as much about the future as the past.
