For nearly 90 years, Gramophone has been the leading authority on classical music recording, but it has also, in the margins of its reviews, interviews and features, reported on some of the most important events in world history. And no historical event was more tumultuous for the readers and writers of Gramophone than the Second World War. To trace the evolving drama of the conflict through the volumes dating from the 1930s and '40s is fascinating. Editor Compton Mackenzie would frequently make use of his editorial to comment eloquently – and sometimes mournfully and even angrily – on the heavy toll that the war was taking on everyone’s lives. But, as we shall see, he was not alone.  

However, In January 1937 Mackenzie’s thoughts were not on the ‘gathering storm’ in continental Europe but closer to home. King Edward VIII abdicated in December, 1936, announcing: ‘I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge my duties as king as I would wish to do without the help and support of the woman I love.’ Mackenzie felt the pain of Edward’s decision keenly, and in his January 1937 editorial described his inability to focus on a new recording of Beethoven’s Quintet in C major, a work with which he had until that time been unfamiliar: ‘[The Quintet] was played a third time when I was trying to exclude from my mind, in order to concentrate on my own work, all thoughts about late events, and most of all a black rage which had come over me at hearing immediately after the news of the abdication the prices on the Stock Exchange read by the six o'clock announcer out of their usual order. Was that the true anodyne for a nation's sorrow, a rise in the shares of some wretched motorcar company? Financial anxiety is intelligible, but decency, even if it was but a piece of humbugging decency, should have kept Stock Exchange prices at such a tragic moment to their proper place in the lees of the news.’ 

Mackenzie goes on to relay the happier – if more parochial – news that the Haydn Quartet Society has found a way to continue its activities, but he can’t bring himself entirely out of the gloom: ‘This is good news, indeed, for Haydn’s is music for any mood, and during this melancholy December no music was better able to allay heartache. Well, as Winston Churchill said in the House of Commons, history will be the judge of what we have done.’

In 1938, tensions in Europe were growing, and all eyes were on Germany. The occupation of Austria (the Anschluss) by Germany in March was the first push for the expansion of the borders of the Third Reich by the Nazis. Mackenzie reacted in his May 1938 editorial with disgust: ‘Had one desired a tragic farewell to Vienna one might have chosen the Funeral March from the Eroica, but most of us will prefer the mood of the Haydn Military Symphony. This was the music of a century when England and Austria were so often comrades in arms, and it may actually have been written when Haydn was living at Bury Street, St. James's. Certainly it had its first performance in London. We can think of the devoted Elssler copying it out on bleak March days of 142 years ago, and how little would Elssler and his master have imagined the possibility either of the symphony's being recorded or of the absorption of Austria in Germany. The one eventuality would not have seemed less fantastic than the other. Vienna, the capital of Europe, to rank below the King of Prussia's Berlin!...Let us hope that the publication of that superb performance of Brahms's Tragic Overture with Toscanini conducting was not an omen of the immediate future.’

Mackenzie’s sense of foreboding was justified. In September the Nazis claimed the Sudetenland and the threat of all-out war paralyzed Europe. Mackenzie’s editorial from this month begins, ‘It is not my desire to inflict upon readers of Gramophone one superfluous word about the crisis in mundane affairs which at the moment of writing is still at the height of its fever; but I should consider it an evasion of my duty if I did not take this opportunity to remind our readers of the immense advantage they possess in their interest in recorded music and urge them to lose no occasion throughout this coming winter to convert their friends and acquaintances to an appreciation of the intellectual and emotional privileges which recorded music can provide for a distracted world.’ 

For Mackenzie, as I’m sure for most of our readers, music wasn’t merely an idle interest, something to enjoy in leisure hours, it was of central importance. Later in the editorial, he describes listening to Schubert’s C major Quintet, ‘When the Quintet was finished I sat back in my chair and solemnly asked myself if in all the years during which I had been absorbed by the gramophone I had ever fully appreciated its magical influence upon the mind until this moment. Oh yes, I had repeatedly testified in the pages of Gramophone and elsewhere to the boon of having the music we wanted at the moment we wanted it. I had even explicitly warned readers that if another war came the necessary restrictions that it would impose upon broadcasting would make a gramophone and a good library of records indispensable. Nevertheless, I do not think I myself realized quite how indispensable until this September.’

Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain continued to pursue his policy of appeasement in handling Hitler. It was a policy that divided opinion not only in parliament, but throughout the country – should the Nazis be bought to account by force or not? Europe stood on the edge of a precipice. Mackenzie goes on to describe how radio broadcasts were likely to be severely disrupted in the event of war, and highlights the importance of being able to have access to one’s music at a time when it is most needed. ‘As I write these words the result is not yet known of Mr Chamberlain's noble indifference to his own future renown by staking his present reputation on the policy he believes to be right; but, whatever the result may be, there is not a man, woman or child in this country who is not aware that this September has brought us nearer to European catastrophe than any month since August 1914. It is difficult at the moment to feel extremely optimistic about the future, and I shall hardly be called an alarmist in drawing the attention of readers to the necessity of thinking about the future in every direction.’

Chamberlain's September visit to Munich, from which he infamously returned waving a signed agreement with Hitler and declaring ‘peace for our time’, was reported in an intriguing letter to the magazine from a reader in Munich and published in the November 1938 issue: ‘You hardly can imagine how popular Mr Chamberlain is here. One afternoon he visited a beer garden “incognito”, the result was when he left it one hour later some hundreds of people stood at the door of the beer garden to cry, “Heil, Chamberlain!” Germany will never forget Mr Chamberlain…he is a great statesman — and a charming man. So at last our dream is reality — political friendship with this great nation of yours… May I close today with a hip-hip-hooray for Mr Chamberlain and Great Britain. God save the King! [Signed] H Jungermann, Munich.’ 

The hip-hip-hooraying wasn’t to last. When war was declared in September the following year, Mackenzie maintained that – as far as possible – it would be business as usual for Gramophone readers: ‘We may have to reduce our size. We may have to appear in the middle of the month instead of at the beginning. We may have to keep our readers waiting for reviews of some records until the following month. We may have to issue an appeal for six-monthly subscriptions. Nevertheless we shall continue. Our printers have given us the assurance of their support. The general feeling of the trade is one of optimism. We have at least as much right to crave the patience, indulgence and sympathy of our readers as the BBC of their listeners, and I hope that in our own humble way we shall make less of a mess of it than the BBC have made of broadcasting and that the Gramophone will not assume the characteristics of a newspaper edited in one of the lower forms of a girls' school.’

During the war, Gramophone had the sad duty of announcing the deaths of many notable musicians. But perhaps the most poignant of which was the death of violinist Philippe Willoughby. ‘Mr Willoughby, a fine musician and violinist, was the arranger of most of the music played by the JH Squire Celeste Octet, of which he was a member for nearly 20 years. An HE bomb destroyed his house in the night and nothing was found afterwards of Mr or Mrs Willoughby except part of his hand showing the indentations of violin strings on the tips of his fingers…He was a fine athlete, an officer in the RFA in the last war, a true artist and a true friend. RIP.’

In 1941 came an insight into the logistical difficulties of running a magazine in wartime. ‘In normal times the answer of “Out of Print” would either indicate bad management or a big jump in sales. Today, owing to paper rationing, the former is not the case, but it is the increase of new readers that has caused the last three issues to go completely out of print, with the result that many readers have been disappointed. To make matters worse, owing to enemy action, two consignments have been lost at sea, which will mean that a number of our overseas readers will be without their copies for December, 1940, and January, 1941. We know that most of our readers keep their copies, but if you are one who does not, would you like to send it to us and we in turn will send it to the exporters without further charge to them. We need 50 copies of December and January.’

FW Gaisberg – one of the earliest recording engineers – was a frequent contributor to Gramophone and let it be known in no uncertain terms what his feelings for Hitler were in 1943: ‘I do not know what Hitler's reaction to Beethoven's music is, but I feel pretty sure what Beethoven's reaction to Hitler would have been. I feel no confidence that Wagner, Brahms, Schubert or even Mozart would have stood up to Hitler, but I feel absolute confidence that Beethoven would have treated him as contemptuously as a bit of horse dung in a Vienna street.’

Gramophone received many letters from service personnel overseas, which often paid tribute to the positive effect that Gramophone was having on men starved of their music collections and home comforts. The following is a letter from a gunner stationed in the Middle East: ‘I thought you might be interested to know of the welcome with which my friends and I greet the arrival of the Gramophone in these arid wastes each month. It is read with interest and regret — regret that we are not in a position to enjoy the excellent, if limited, fare which the Recording Angels are providing for the more fortunate ones at home — and with thanks to you for carrying on as you have done during these awkward days. So far, in nearly two years, only one issue (February 1943) is missing, but as we had North Africa and Sicily to contend with as well as mailbags this can be understood.’ 

It is remarkable that copies of Gramophone should find their way through war zones, but perhaps even more remarkable that Gramophone continued to be produced at all, as Mackenzie noted: ‘It is pleasant to be able to announce that our circulation has grown steadily during the last eighteen fateful months, but the difficulty of getting paper makes it imperative now to reduce our size still further. To what exiguous content we shall finally shrink I dare not guess, but I feel that we can count on the loyalty of our readers to see us through, and I look forward, un bel di, to reading in a quiet shady corner of one of Mr Churchill's sunny uplands a Gramophone of the old size with all the old advertisers back again.’

It is unusual indeed for a magazine to comment on such everyday topics as paper rationing, but during the war the feeling prevailed that the readers and the editorial team were bound together in an effort to keep the precious spark of classical recording alight. This was emphasized in Mackenzie’s first editorial since the end of the war in 1945. ‘First of all I shall thank our readers — the old ones who continued to support a sadly shrunken publication and the new ones who enabled us to achieve a circulation comfortably more than double what it was when the war began…I think we have a right to believe that nobody would spend a shilling on a specialist publication like ours unless it was usefully serving enthusiasts whose enthusiasm for music that the gramophone gives had become keener than ever during the last six years…I regard music as the greatest potential influence for mundane peace that humanity possesses.’ 

The end of the war in 1945 presented an opportunity to look forward with optimism, something that hadn’t been possible for a good many years. Mackenzie, never one to hold back his views on the central importance that music should play in everyone’s lives, looked forward with excitement to the recordings that lay ahead: ‘I hear rumours of wonderful recordings in the offing; but the records of the future are kept as closely by the gramophone companies as the records of the past by the guardians of official secrets. What I think I can say is that we are likely from now on to have all sorts of agreeable surprises. Let us hope that the unfair treatment of the recording companies in the matter of shellac will soon be a thing of the past. I might add the same about the allotment of paper, which has been a scandal from the day war broke out. It is insufficiently realized by the British public how many very stupid people are still enjoying too much power. The power granted to stupid people in time of war is not the least of its horrors.’