While serving in the navy in the second world war, the music critic, journalist and author Michael Kennedy, who has died aged 88, wrote a letter “in a fit of homesickness” to Ralph Vaughan Williams, whose music had moved him. That was to initiate a lasting friendship. In his will, Vaughan Williams stipulated that his personal life should be documented by his widow Ursula, while Kennedy should write about his music. The two books complemented each other, as intended. Kennedy’s The Works of Ralph Vaughan Williams (1964) was not a detailed critical appraisal – only the symphonies and a handful of other major works are discussed – but it provided a magnificently comprehensive catalogue of information about the entire oeuvre, clarifying and correcting chronologies and setting the works in a biographical context.
The Vaughan Williams book was typical of writing irradiated by the kindness and empathic understanding that he demonstrated on a personal level. Next came his Portrait of Elgar (1968), equally meticulously researched and eloquently written. As one of the earliest modern studies of the composer, Kennedy’s book was a seminal contribution to an understanding of the complex psychology of Elgar: a provincial, Catholic outsider who masked his deep insecurities by the construction of a country squire’s image, complete with tweeds and bushy moustache.
Kennedy contributed three volumes to the Master Musicians series: Mahler (1974), Strauss (1976) and Britten (1981), all demonstrating a commendable grasp of recent scholarship, while addressing themselves to a wider lay readership. His informed enthusiasm for the music of all three is evident on every page. He had no compunction about defending works by Strauss – notably Intermezzo, Ein Heldenleben and the Symphonia Domestica – frequently criticised as “tasteless”, dismissing such claims as (to use a favourite word of his) “rubbish”.
William Walton, having read and admired Kennedy’s Portrait of Elgar, asked him to be his biographer, on condition that the work would not be undertaken until after the composer’s death. The Portrait of Walton (1989) was duly written, as Kennedy said in his preface, “out of admiration and affection for a fellow-Lancastrian”. Again Kennedy shone a light into some dark corners, suggesting that Walton’s unorthodox emotional entanglements exemplified a Houdini-like penchant for escaping from difficult situations.
Kennedy’s indispensable 1999 study, Richard Strauss: Man, Musician, Enigma, tackled at greater length the problematic issues surrounding the composer’s conduct during the Nazi era. While admitting that Strauss committed serious errors of judgment, Kennedy scornfully rejected the wilder charges laid at the composer’s door. His exculpation of Strauss’s moral flaws reflected an imaginative perceptiveness and a generosity of spirit rare in commentary on the Third Reich.
Interwoven with these monographs on composers was a wart-free but otherwise exemplary biography (1971) of the conductor John Barbirolli (with whom Kennedy was on friendly terms) and another of Adrian Boult (1987), along with valuable histories of the Hallé, the Royal Manchester College of Music (as the Royal Northern College of Music was then known) and later of the RNCM itself. All of these publications attested to his painstaking diligence, but none more so than the Oxford Dictionary of Music (1985), on the second edition of which he worked with Joyce Bourne, his second wife.
He was associated with newspapers throughout his life. At 15 he joined the Manchester office of the Daily Telegraph, where his responsibilities including making the tea and collecting galley proofs from the printers’ stone. He went on to become northern editor for 26 years, remaining with the company until 2005, though he had switched to the Sunday Telegraph in 1989.
The son of Hew, an army officer, and his wife, Marian (nee Sinclair), Kennedy was born in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester. His parents separated when he was 12 and he never saw his father again. Called up at the age of 18, he joined the Royal Navy towards the end of the war and was dispatched to the Pacific, where he witnessed the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Returning to the Telegraph after the war, he was promoted in due course to chief subeditor; he also began to review concerts regularly for the paper. As northern editor from 1960 he was responsible for more than 50 staff. For a time he was chief music critic and also contributed to the Gramophone, Musical Times, Listener, Opera and other periodicals, as well as to BBC Radio.
Joyce, a retired GP and, later, author, whose books include Who’s Who in Opera (1998), entered Michael’s life in 1976. His first wife, Eslyn Durdle, had developed multiple sclerosis, but at her request he continued to care for her; only after Eslyn’s death in 1999 did Michael and Joyce marry. Together they crossed the globe in search of operatic nourishment: Salzburg and Wexford were favourites, as were country house venues such as Glyndebourne and Garsington. He was appointed OBE in 1981, CBE in 1997, and received an honorary doctorate from Manchester University in 2003. In 2011 the couple inaugurated at the Royal Northern College of Music the annual Joyce and Michael Kennedy Award for the Singing of Richard Strauss, of which they were very proud.
Michael was held in great affection and admiration by his colleagues and by the larger musical world, to which he made such an inestimable contribution. He is survived by Joyce.
• George Michael Sinclair Kennedy, music writer, born 19 February 1926; died 31 December 2014
