Derek Hulme rose above the Shostakovich “wars”, in which the composer’s political leanings were posthumously and rancorously picked over, to become perhaps the only figure to attract universal praise.
His catalogue of Shostakovich’s work became the starting point for any research, and Emmanuel Utwiller, director of the Centre Chostakovitch in Paris, which is run in collaboration with the composer’s widow, Irina Antonovich, described Hulme as “always having been at the centre of the library”.
Derek Crawshaw Hulme was born in 1924. His family, originally from Patricroft near Salford, moved to Derby. There he became a draughtsman for Rolls-Royce, a spare-time dance-band trumpeter and amateur entomologist. He joined the Derbyshire Entomological Society in 1948 and was, at the time of his death, its longest-standing member. As the Recorder for Derbyshire he compiled a catalogue of the county records from the 19th century. A Scotophile, he holidayed north of the border and married Helen in 1950. Thirteen years later they moved to Muir of Ord, west of Inverness, to run pioneering wildlife tours in the Highlands.
Meanwhile, in 1942, he had bought, on spec, six expensive red-label HMV 78rpm discs of Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony. He later joked that he must have had a liking for fifths, having also acquired Tchaikovsky’s, Beethoven’s and Sibelius’s. But it was Shostakovich’s that gripped him, and he began scouring the Radio Times for the rare broadcasts, making notes about each new work that he encountered. This cuttings file became an invaluable starting point for what became Hulme’s life work.
He had a false start in 1973, with a “suitably epic” monograph, abandoned after four years. The new plan was for a catalogue, establishing the basic facts about each of the composer’s works, with publication details, discography and bibliography. In 1982 this appeared as a self-published work and became an invaluable tool for the composer’s followers. Shostakovich’s growing popularity brought an increased flow of recordings and publications, and Hulme kept up, learning Russian to help his research. He visited the Soviet Union, where he bought rare recordings, and swapped records with collectors there: in return for hard-to-find Shostakovich discs, he sent jazz records that were equally inaccessible to them.
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He also corresponded with the composer, and one question received a startling — and telling — response. When Hulme inquired about the wartime song recorded in the US as Oath to Stalin, Shostakovich returned the list of queries with the title heavily scored out.
At 500 pages, the catalogue’s second edition (OUP, 1991) was twice as big as the original, with appendices including notable BBC broadcasts and works by other composers dedicated to Shostakovich. It also had a foreword by Shostakovich’s widow.
The third edition, from Scarecrow Press (2002), had grown to 700 pages, only 12 of which had remained unaltered over the previous 11 years. Sixty years after first encountering the composer and 20 after beginning the catalogue, Hulme announced this as the final catalogue, though he would issue occasional supplements. Occasional articles in the DSCH Journal would reveal snippets of new research. However, in 2010 Scarecrow published a fourth edition of more than 800 pages, taking the catalogue beyond the composer’s centenary year.
His expertise was regularly called upon by record companies, and he even gave evidence in a copyright case. He also arranged some of Shostakovich’s light music as Three Pastiche Dances for wind quartet. He spoke at conferences on the composer in Milan (1996), Glasgow (2000) and Cambridge (2006), where his descriptions of the development of his catalogue brought fascinating and welcome light relief.
Quietly spoken and immensely modest, he was scrupulous in thanking those who had helped him, not least the library service which, given his remote address, was central to his work.
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He is survived by his wife Helen, whom he married in 1950, and by three sons.
Derek Hulme, expert on Shostakovich, was born on May 2, 1924. He died on February 14, 2011, aged 86