King's Music

John Mansfield Thomson

It is very sad to record the death of John Thomson, for many years better known in England than in his native New Zealand. More recently, when he returned to live here, he made a significant impact as a writer, scholar, critic and lecturer. We visited him just before we departed to England in July 1998. He had just moved into his new flat in a particularly nice part of Wellington, within walking distance of shops and cafes, bus routes, close to town. By the time we returned here, twelve months later, he had become ill. I rang him just after he had come home from a spell in hospital. He sounded cheerful, a little soft-voiced, but his normal self. We went away for a three-week tour, heard that he had gone back to hospital, and, several days before our return, learned of his passing.

His funeral was held in the magnificent Victorian 'gothic' wooden church of old St Paul's in Wellington. The repertoire performed bore witness to John's wide interests. Singers sang, in turn, Purcell and Richard Strauss, the New Zealand String Quartet played Beethoven, pianist Margaret Nielson played Douglas Lilburn, two of New Zealand's best-known poets, Vince O'Sullivan and Lauris Edmond, spoke and read poems, a Tallis Scholars' recording of Brumel was played, and there were tributes from friends and family. A large gathering demonstrated that John's qualities were indeed recognised at home, something that I am pleased to report he did realise.

He is perhaps best-known to the readers of this journal as the founding editor of Early Music and several books, the most recent of which was the Cambridge Companion to the Recorder. To New Zealanders he was known as the author of the Oxford History of New Zealand Music, a ground-breaking work which, like all his books, was enjoyable to read, scholarly, detailed, a very human history. The Victoria University of Wellington conferred an honorary doctorate on him in 1991, and lists him among its 'great graduates'. There are countless New Zealand musicians who found in him, in London, and latterly in Wellington, a friend and mentor, an invaluable source of advice, guidance, and marvellous company. He had covered all the concerts during the Wellington Festival of Early Music, held in our sometimes merciless month of May, worrying his friends who knew how trying he could find the cold and often violent weather of the Wellington winter. His determined support perhaps brought on the attacks which heralded his final illness. He will be as deeply mourned in England as he is here in New Zealand.

Robert Oliver

I associate him chiefly with Early Music, for which all involved in early music must be grateful, and early meetings of the NEMA Council (initially very much his organisation, with which he never lost touch). I was intrigued to find that in 1964 he had designed the logo of a magazine for music librarians, BRIO, which I later edited for about ten years. I am glad that my last memory is of him on his home ground, braving the early-spring winds at Robert's favourite viewpoint of Wellington Harbour and the Cook Straits.

Clifford Bartlett

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