Start aome other way: Edgar Hunt’s career journey through and beyond the 1930s, mainly avoiding Haslemere

Abstract

Edgar Hunt is remembered and deservedly admired for work he did to promote the revival of the recorder in mid twentieth-century Britain, especially its use in schools. He and Arnold Dolmetsch’s son Carl were close contemporaries, building careers as recorder advocates and expert players at the same time. Since Dolmetsch was a family name synonymous with ‘early music’, and Dolmetsch recorders were the best in the world, Carl enjoyed advantages that Edgar had to manage without. (Though along with the advantages went heavy responsibility, for the livelihoods of Dolmetsch workshop employees and for maintaining traditions that Hunt was free to subvert.) Never at home in Dolmetsch circles, Hunt looked for opportunities elsewhere, and proved remarkably adept at both finding and exploiting them.

‘Start Some Other Way’ follows Hunt on his career journey through the 1930s, on through the Second World War (when military service interrupted it), and out the other side. It sheds new light on episodes omitted from Hunt’s later autobiographical accounts, on lines of development connecting different types of recorder featured in the story, and on Hunt’s role as a design influencer. The British school recorder movement instigated by Hunt massively expanded the market for all makes of instrument. Even Dolmetsch had to adapt their designs and manufacturing methods to keep up with demand.

Prior research by Alexandra Williams and Robert Ehrlich is gratefully acknowledged. To tackle questions not so far resolved, this article introduces new evidence – some of it recently unearthed by Professor Ehrlich, and with his permission published here for the first time.

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