The musicologist and keyboard player Bob Gilmore, who was born in Northern Ireland, has been named the new editor of Tempo, a journal for contemporary music published by Cambridge University Press. The journal, published quarterly, was instigated in 1939 by Erwin Stein, pupil of Arnold Schoenberg, and was originally the ‘house magazine’ of the publisher Boosey and Hawkes. The first editor was Ernest Chapman and, with the exception of a hiatus during the Second World War, the journal has been published continuously since then.

Past editors incluce Anthony Gishford, Donald Mitchell, Colin Mason and David Drew. The outgoing editor, Calum McDonald, has edited Tempo since 1974. Past issues have focussed on individual composers, including Richard Strauss, Béla Bartók, Igor Stravinsky, Frederick Delius, Benjamin Britten and Peter Maxwell Davies and occasionally issues have included scores of specially commissioned works.

Gilmore, who is now based in Amsterdam, has written widely about Irish composers (largely in this magazine) and is notably the author of Harry Partch: A Biography about the American composer, theorist and instrument builder. He is also the director and keyboard player of the Dutch group Trio Scordatura, which focusses on microtonal music, and was recently appointed a Senior Research Fellow at the Orpheus Institue in Ghent, Belgium. On his own musical interests, Gilmore writes, ‘…the underlying thread is my fascination with creative individuals with strong, distinct identities.’

Read Gilmore’s articles for The Journal of Music here.