Michael Kennedy (music critic)

George Michael Sinclair Kennedy CBE (19 February 1926 – 31 December 2014) was an English biographer, journalist and writer on classical music.

Kennedy was born in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester, and attended Berkhamsted School. On 17 November 1941, he joined the Manchester office of Daily Telegraph at age 15, as a tea boy. Following service in the Royal Navy, he returned to the Telegraph as an assistant to the night editor. He began writing music criticism for the paper in 1948, and became staff music critic in 1950. He served as chief sub-editor, and later Northern Editor of the Telegraph from 1960 to 1986, joint chief music critic from 1986 to 2005, and chief music critic of The Sunday Telegraph from 1989 to 2005. He was on the Board of Governors of the Royal Northern College of Music from 1971 to 2006.

As a writer, Kennedy had particular interests in late Romantic music and the history of music-making in Manchester since the 19th century. He was particularly known for acute and sympathetic studies of the works of Ralph Vaughan Williams (who was during his last years a close friend),Edward Elgar, Benjamin Britten, Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss. Kennedy wrote biographies of Vaughan Williams, William Walton, and of John Barbirolli, with authorisation from the composers themselves and the Barbirolli family, respectively. He is also noted for writing The Oxford Dictionary of Music, which he did whilst serving as Northern Editor of the Telegraph. Its second edition was published in 1994.

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