My friend Malcolm MacDonald, who has died aged 66, was a highly respected writer on music, who also used the professional name Calum MacDonald. He had a formidable intellect, an encyclopedic knowledge of classical music, and a fluent and evocative use of language.

From the early 1980s he was editor of Tempo, a contemporary music magazine published by Boosey & Hawkes and then by Cambridge University Press. Under his editorship, Tempo covered a wide range of composers, from Hanns Eisler to the Swede Allan Pettersson, from Schoenberg to Havergal Brian. He did not include anything to do with popular music, even though he listened very widely to music of all kinds; Malcolm was marvellously catholic in his tastes.

Born in Nairn to Donald MacDonald, a geography teacher and gifted jazz pianist, and his wife Christina (nee Lamont), Malcolm started off studying English at Downing College, Cambridge, before realising that his passion was music. After graduating, he moved to London to work as a tape librarian at Saga Records.

From there he gradually worked his way towards becoming a freelance writer and educator, and for 40 years contributed articles about music to the Radio Times and the Listener. He recorded many programmes for BBC3, gave pre-concert talks at the BBC Proms and elsewhere, as well as writing programme notes for concert promoters including the BBC and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and hundreds of CD notes on composers including the late Robert Simpson and David Matthews. He also wrote standard books on Brahms, Schoenberg, Edgard Varèse, Brian (whose work he had long championed), John Foulds and Ronald Stevenson.

In the 1990s he and his wife, Libby Valdez, moved from London to Stroud and developed a love of gardening, butterflies, bees, whales and woodwork. Malcolm continued his interest in naval history and sci-fi fiction and films.

He is survived by Libby.