A FORMER Clydebank music teacher and highly-respected classical music critic, has died at the age of 73.

Before Michael Tumelty joined The Herald in 1983, he was principal music teacher at St Columba’s High School, Clydebank.

At this time he also contributed music reviews to the northern edition of the Daily Telegraph.

Michael was steeped in the joys of classical music from a young age by his father. He left school at the age of 16 without a single O-level before going on to study at James Watt College for the Merchant Navy, but his time there did not end particularly auspiciously.

In time, however, he did an honours music degree as a mature student in Aberdeen before attending teacher training college.

His astute, well-informed, well-written criticism made him a firm favourite with readers and musicians alike.

He was not one to be unduly awed by the biggest names in the field. In 1990, reviewing a high-profile Glasgow concert by the celebrated tenor, Luciano Pavarotti, he criticised what he described as the “sloppy amateurism” of the delayed beginning, the quality of the sound, and of the singer’s habit of disappearing between songs.

Michael was a steadfast champion of Scottish composers and artists such as Sir James Macmillan and Nicola Benedetti, and of numerous Scottish orchestras. Benedetti is among his admirers, alongside such names as the pianist Steven Osbourne, the novelist Bernard MacLaverty and the composers Sally Beamish and Lyall Cresswell.

During his years at The Herald he interviewed everyone from Sir Charles Mackerras, Leonard Bernstein to Jerry Goldsmith and Elmer Bernstein. The latter once invited him to his birthday concert in London and wrote to him to show his appreciation of his writing.

Michael also, for a time, presented Sunday afternoon classical concerts in Perth Concert Hall.

He spent long periods on the road in the company of Scottish orchestras on tour. He was once hospitalised in Canada after what was described as “horseplay” on a BBC SSO bus; on another occasion, he was held at gunpoint by security services in Zagreb for having a suspiciously large number of batteries on him; the batteries were for his tape-recorder.

He retired in 2011 and is survived by five children.