Malcolm Jones 1943-2024

Malcolm Jones 30 July 1943 – 23 July 2024

Obituary by Pam Thompson

There can be very few members of the UK and Ireland branch of IAML who are not aware of Malcolm’s immeasurable contribution to the work of the Association. Indeed, there are equally many beyond our two countries who know of his lifelong dedication to music, to its libraries and to its documentation. Malcolm died suddenly following a stroke on 23 July 2024 aged 81. His funeral took place on 20 August at St. Richard’s Church, Heathfield, where he had been Priest-in-Charge from 2008 to 2013 and Vicar from 2013 to 2015. Many of his colleagues from over the years were present; many who travelled considerable distances to be there. We celebrated his myriad achievements and interests, alongside his wife Frances, daughters Helen and Katy, granddaughter Molly, whose French horn playing entranced us, and many friends from the church. I must acknowledge all the details they passed to me for inclusion in this obituary, alongside their assurance, determined by Malcolm, that loved ones should not be made to sound too perfect.

Malcolm (officially Philip Malcolm Jones) was born towards the end of the second world war in Birmingham where he lived with his parents, Albert and Dorothy and younger brother, Andrew. He went to school in Shirley and Solihull, where during A level studies he switched from science to arts subjects, while also taking lessons in organ and bassoon at the Birmingham School of Music (now the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire). It was there that he met Frances, family legend recording that he offered to correct her four-part harmony. They were married in 1964 when only 21 and 18, as soon as their studies ended. At the University of Southampton Malcolm gained an honours degree in Music and English Literature, then taught in a boys’ school while continuing to be a church organist, until he soon gained a post as a graduate trainee with Birmingham Public Libraries. By 1970 he had gained a diploma in librarianship and, when just 27, was appointed Birmingham’s first Head of Music Services, charged with the development of the service in and around the city. No traditional library bureaucrat, he was soon involved in work for NALGO (the National Association of Local Government Officers – now Unison), was a union representative and eventually president of the branch. Newspaper clippings from the time report a successful rebellion against a plan to combine Libraries with Parks and Gardens. There was also a sponsored solo cycle ride from Birmingham to Brighton to raise funds for NALGO, as well as the organisation of choirs for their carol services each year.

In 1972 and 1975 his daughters Helen and Katy were born, and the family settled in Moseley in Birmingham. Alongside his library work, Malcolm was from the early 1970s a Reader in the Church of England, having gained a Diploma in Theology and he continued as church organist and choirmaster in various churches around Birmingham, frequently involving his family. He also with a friend rescued a William Hill organ from a disused church in Leicester and had it rebuilt in his local Birmingham parish church. Variety rather than single-mindedness was ever present in his life, as must later be described, but music was a constant as was the vital importance of libraries.

Malcolm was soon involved in the work of IAML. There are few branch Annual Reports and Newsletters over the decades which do not include his name. He served on almost every committee the branch ever devised: Executive Committee, Finance and Administration, Trade and Copyright, Conference, the LA/BPI Consultation Group, Performance Sets Provision, MARC Harmonisation, and the Documentation Committee of which he was a member to this year.  I recall a memorable era when the small Finance and Admin. Committee was graced by no fewer than three Malcolms: Jones, Lewis and Turner.  As he finally left the Executive Committee in 2010, Richard Chesser, then President, noted in the Annual Report that “especial mention must be made of Malcolm Jones, who has stepped down from the Executive Committee after nearly 40 years’ continual service in various capacities. Without doubt that is a branch record, and one which illustrates how tirelessly he has worked in support of our profession and IAML in particular”. Long before, in 2001, Malcolm was awarded Honorary Membership of the branch.

From 1986 to 1989 Malcolm served as President of the UK branch, a period which included the constitutional changes which were one of his enthusiasms and, more significantly, long-debated proposals about the desirability of national membership of IAML alongside international membership, a concept then alien to much of the international body, but one which soon spread to other countries and was accepted. His presidency also coincided with preparations for the UK’s hosting of the international IAML conference in Oxford in 1989 and included his participation in the international conference in Japan in 1988.  With most organisers for the Oxford conference lacking any experience of international meetings, his presence was vital, though I must confess to an abiding disappointment that on the opening Saturday he and Alan Pope abandoned me alone in the conference office, just when delegates were arriving, in order to play at a wedding. Without Roger Crudge’s arrival and voluntary assistance a comfort break before 9pm would have been impossible. The music came before any other consideration.

Music was always at the centre of Malcolm’s life and work, not just for appreciation and enjoyment, not just as a listener and practitioner, but as someone who understood its fundamental value and how it enriched life. He strove to bring it into the lives of as many others as possible, no doubt motivated considerably by his own family’s musical achievements. This happened in very practical ways, by public service, by documentation and by harnessing the technology to support it, and by a determination to communicate the importance of music in people’s lives, be they amateurs or professionals, whole audiences or individuals.

As a foundation to much of that, in 1979 his first book Music Librarianship was published, a specialist overview of and guide to the profession. Forty-five years on it can still be found in collections around the world. Numerous articles and conference presentations followed, as well as negotiations with many other organisations. That gradually led to the realisation that music catalogues in printed form would never suffice when technology was emerging to bring them together. It was a vision which dominated Malcolm’s work for all the following decades.

As music librarians we know that the hundreds of performances around the country every year by orchestras and choirs depend heavily on music libraries for the provision of the sets they need. Performance sets are beyond the means of most but, equally, so vast is the repertoire that no one library can possibly meet demand. In the West Midlands, Malcolm addressed this by a 1997 project to bring together information on sets into one local catalogue. From that grew the vision to produce a National Union Catalogue of Vocal Sets, bringing together a database of all the sets of music around the United Kingdom. This did not just involve discovering who had what where, travelling around, usually at his own expense, to uncover all that, but also persuading sometimes reluctant authorities, working out how to accommodate different systems and standards and then exploring and implementing the technological means to achieve that one combined catalogue. Many of Malcolm’s colleagues around the country played their part, but it was he who was the lynchpin. Following his early retirement from Birmingham Libraries in 1995, he devoted huge quantities of time to the project and the negotiations required, establishing principles and standards while discovering the huge resources which libraries held. In 1999, an application for some funding became possible, and with the support of many in the branch the bid for it was successful and he finally gained some recompense for the years devoted to its establishment. The project gained a name: Encore! It was launched by Baroness Blackstone, in a rare government acknowledgement of music library endeavours, and Malcolm was its first project manager. That also helped the acquisition of Frances and Malcolm’s long-desired narrow boat, called, unsurprisingly, Encore!

In those early days, Encore’s use of the Norwegian Mikromarc library system also cemented his close association with that company. Encore! was not perfect and many consider it is still not perfect, but it was a pragmatic solution for the time and there was much more that could have been – and still could be – developed, if only there were funding. But it continues as a vital element in tracking down sets of music for performances all around the country, with online access to data. Nor was that national project all that Malcolm helped to develop; he became involved in the work of what became Musica International, a pan-European collaborative, multi-lingual, multimedia database of the world’s choral repertoire. It is not so often that music librarians receive their due in awards, but in 2002, Malcolm was awarded by CILIP, the Library and Information Association, the Tony Kent Strix Award for outstanding practical innovation or achievement in the field of information retrieval.

None of this was Malcolm’s first foray into international arenas. Far back, from 1983 members of the branch’s Trade and copyright committee, principally Malcolm Jones of Birmingham, Malcolm Lewis of Nottinghamshire County Library and Alan Pope of Blackwell’s Music Shop, all good friends as well as colleagues, identified the need for an International Standard Music Number (ISMN). It took over eight years for it to be developed as a standard and for acceptance to be gained, but in 1992 it was finally recognised and approved internationally. It remains invaluable for music publishers, retailers and librarians around the world. It was a mighty achievement. At the 1995 Annual Study Weekend, Special Achievement Awards were made to Malcolm, Malcolm and Alan for their work over many years regarding the inception and implementation of the ISMN. Each received a copy of the first ever music publication to bear an ISMN: Du brauchst ein Lied by Rolf Zuckowski (mit seinen grossen und kleinen Freunden). ISMN: M-003-02727-2, which they sang!

As ever with Malcolm, activities and work beyond music continued in parallel and unabated. In 2004, after six months of full-time study he was ordained as a deacon and then as a priest. We were personally honoured to be invited to his ordination in Birmingham. His first post was as curate at St. Paul’s in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter, taking on the church’s running when the vicar moved on. When Malcolm and Frances chose to relocate to Sussex, I was fairly astounded to be asked by him to provide a reference for his application to be Priest in Charge at St, Richard’s in Heathfield. My knowledge of his work in the church was extremely limited, but he stressed that he felt it important that recommendations from beyond the church were important, so I duly wrote to the Bishop of Chichester. His application was successful, surely not from any effort on my part, but more from Malcolm’s recognition that lay activities can have significant impact. His parishioners seemed to agree, with their “overwhelming memory of a thoughtful, kind, committed priest with teaching and pastoral care at the heart of his ministry”, as church warden, Heather Bruce, reported at his funeral, not failing, as he would have wished, to mention problems with his parking, time-keeping, pedantry and untidiness.

After retirement from St. Richard’s in 2014, Malcolm and Frances  bought a beautiful oast house in Northiam, with Malcolm still licensed to continue to take services in the Chichester and Canterbury dioceses. An additional attraction was almost certainly the proximity of the Kent and East Sussex railway for which he trained to be a stationmaster at Northiam station and then proudly displayed photographs of himself in full regalia, uniform and cap. He did though allow his grandchildren to call him affectionately The Fat Controller.

His daughters’ summary of all his hobbies and interests bewildered but perhaps did not surprise us: buses and cars, gliding (he trained as a pilot), amateur radio and morse code, sailing, and eventually canal boats. The narrowboat Encore! was eventually replaced by Frances Anne (Frances’s names) and they were selected to take part in the flotilla of narrowboats on the Thames for the Queen’s Golden Jubilee, a lovely if very damp excursion. There was his extensive knowledge too of natural history, plants, birds and insects, and gardening – with a delight in evening bonfires. There was also the mixed reception his DIY engendered and a probably unsurprising reference to hand-building both a clavichord and a harpsichord, neither of which was ever quite finished.

Many will also remember his passion for correct usage and pronunciation of (not only) the English language, sometimes viewed as pernickety, but generally absolutely right. Command of foreign languages was equally important to him, put to frequent good use in restaurants, not to mention when camping in France to minimise branch costs and hunting down cheaper clerical wear in Poland and Italy. His recollection of a journey from Germany to France may have revealed somewhat less linguistic precision, when Alan Pope, by then a former Lord Mayor of Oxford advised him to depart early to avoid disruption, only to find that Alan’s connections had led to railway personnel hunting him down, holding a train for him and rushing him and his luggage to his seat, all the while addressing him as “Herr Yoness”.

Alongside all this, there remained Malcolm’s devotion to music libraries and to Encore!, attempting to accommodate changing catalogue standards, expanding online possibilities and the sometimes unrealistic but always understandable desire to improve it as a service.  For many of us in the profession Malcolm served as an exemplar, not least for the time he devoted to his work, and as an inspiration in determining as vital new visions for the profession. How he also found time for his family, which he certainly did, is a total mystery, though for all that their forbearance and support must have been unending. He also found time for friendship, very long-lasting friendships, and for fun, so much fun. Many of Malcolm’s visions will live on and will continue to develop, but the chats the ideas generated and the mutual support he offered are lost to us, and so many of us will miss those so much.