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The protagonists of the Early Music Revival
The revival of interest in early music remains a prominent and influential
feature of the Western classical music scene. But the revival had roots in the
19th and Early 20th Centuries with proponents as diverse as Felix Mendelssohn,
Arnold Dolmetsch and Wanda Landowska. Without these pioneering and zealous
individuals, and the famous 19th and early 20th century collectors of musical
instruments, the revival may never have occurred nor reached such a wide public.
This list is a summary on the lives and work of collectors, enthusiasts,
craftsmen and musicians who had an impact on the course of the early music
revival.
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Isolde Ahlgrimm
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Coming
from a traditional Viennese pianistic background, Ahlgrimm (1914–95) taught
herself the playing techniques of early keyboard instruments from Baroque
treatises and thus laid some of the foundations for the development of
performance on period instruments in the 20th century. As the wife of the
art dealer Erich Fiala, she had access to a uniquely rich and constantly
changing collection of historical instruments, which eventually served to
provide a whole orchestra for her later recordings.
She made numerous concert tours in Europe and the USA and was one of the
first musicians to perform a complete cycle of keyboard works by a single
composer, recording her Bach cycle for Philips in the 1950s.
She was one of the original pioneers of the early music revival alongside
Arnold Dolmetsch and Wanda Landowska (1879–1959), yet unlike these figures
she sank into oblivion owing to such factors as World War II and the Nazi
annexation of Austria. |
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Wulf Arlt
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The
musicologist Wulf Arlt conducted from 1970 to 1978, the Schola Cantorum and
built up the research department. |
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Early in
the 60's, Jonathan Mark Askey (1948-2017) was teaching crafts in a local school in Bradford and
having already made a number of guitars, he continued making some viols and
other musical instruments. He has been always proud that one of his first racketts formed part of David Munrow's collection.
Jonathan Askey has
profoundly influenced the development of the early music movement and the
quality of instrument making since he joined J Wood & Sons Ltd. back in
1972. He managed Woods Bradford music shop, 'The Early Music Shop' for many
years. The Early Music Shop was set up in 1968 along with a workshop
manufacturing replicas of medieval and renaissance instruments. Jonathan
drove the Woods' workshop until 1999 when he bough the complete workshops
and continued its production with a new name: the Renaissance Workshop
Company Ltd.
Encouraged in the early years by the late David Munrow and many of his
pioneering contemporaries, it is true to say that Jonathan has been in the
early music field as the early music revival itself. He has certainly
contributed to the continuing interest there has been in this music, making
early music and its performance on original instruments accessible to a
growing number of people.
See our history |
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Anthony Baines
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Anthony
Cuthbert Baines (1912-1997) was an English organologist who produced a wide
variety of works on the history of musical instruments, and was one of the
11 people founding of the Galpin Society in 1946, the first ever dedicated
to musical instruments, named after the foremost British authority and
collector up to that time Canon Francis W. Galpin, which Journal Anthony was
to edit for twenty-one years. He started learning clarinet and bassoon,
and collecting musical instruments, particularly old wind instruments.
While still a student he was noticed by Sir Thomas Beecham and offered in
1933 the job of bassoon and contra bassoon player with the London
Philharmonic.
His first book, Woodwind instruments and their History was published in
1957.
In 1968 when Philip Bate presented his outstanding collection of woodwind
instrument to the University of Oxford, Anthony Baines, by then the world's
leading authority on woodwind instruments, was the obvious choice for the
position of curator, and took up the post in 1970, where he was until his
retirement in 1980. His book Brass Instruments was published 1976 followed
by numerous articles for the New Groves.
The Bate Collection being a playing collection, he founded the Bate Band
which gave concerts of Haydn and Mozart on the Collection’s instruments.
These were among the earliest performances of music of this period on
original instruments. |
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John
Robert Barnes, (Windsor, 11 Oct 1928- Edinburgh, 9 March 1998). One of the
most knowledgeable figures in the world of early keyboard organology. John
Barnes trained as a physicist at the University of London. In 1962 he began
to pursue professionally his interest in early keyboard music and
instruments by building and restoring harpsichords and clavichords. His work
was always carried out with excellent technical skill and this was
complemented by his methodical scientific approach.
His own keyboard building output has been small, but he has exerted
considerable influence through his unqualified support to builders of
historical building practices. He was generous in the extreme with his
knowledge and expertise.
He has published widely in all aspects of the organology of the
harpsichord, clavichord and early piano.
He affected the production of harpsichord kits along these lines through
his association in the mid-1970s with Zuckermann, and with J.Woods and Sons
Ltd. in Bradford (the former Early Music Shop' workshops, now the
Renaissance Workshop Company).
He knew that the old methods and materials had produced superb results.
His principle was: Try the historical method first. It will almost certainly
work well. If it really doesn't, then think again perhaps. |
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Philip Bate
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Philip
Argall Turner Bate (Scotland 1909–1999) was a musicologist, broadcaster and
collector of musical instruments. Beginning from the time he was at
school, Bate had been interested by old musical instruments, which he began
to collect and study. Bate spent most of his career working for the BBC's
music department.
Whilst in London he made friendships with those who shared his interests,
one lifelong friend being Canon Francis Galpin, who encouraged Bate to turn
his scientific education to the study of musical instruments. Bate used his
woodworking skills to make and restore instruments in his collection and
after learning metalworking techniques, made reproductions of draw-trumpets
which were used by David Munrow's Early Music Consort of London.
In 1946 Bate and a group of friends founded the Galpin Society, the first
group to specialize in the history and study of musical instruments. He was
its first chairman and from 1977 was its president until his death. As well
as writing articles for the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Bate
wrote several books.
By the mid-1960s his collection had grown until it covered the history of
woodwind from 1680 onwards, as well as including some brass instruments and
an important collection of printed instrument tutors.
Convinced that the collection was of value to those concerned with the
interpretation of music, and that the instruments should be used and
properly maintained, he gave the Bate Collection of Musical Instruments to
the University of Oxford in 1968, on the condition that it was used for
teaching and was provided with a specialist curator to care for and lecture
on it.
Bate continued to add to the collection, and it grew through the
acquisition of collections made by many of his friends and colleagues in the
Galpin Society. |
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Walter Blandford
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Walter
Fielding Holloway Blandford (28 Dec.1874 - 23 Jan.1952) was a horn-player
and musicologist educated in Natural Science in 1886. After some years as
lecturer in entomology he changed careers and switched to law. During World
War One, Blandford worked in the censor's department of the War Office, and
seems not to have returned to his legal practice. Blandford's interest in
music seems to have begun at school. At about 13 he took up the cornet 'as a
means of sublimating my musical libido' but was forced to give it up by
internal trouble. Although details do not survive it is clear that
throughout his twenties and thirties he was playing a great deal, at a
semi-professional level, and that he continued to do so on a less frequent
basis well into the 1920s.
Besides being a player Blandford was also a collector and musicologist,
and his writings on the horn and other instruments, though few, were very
highly regarded by the next generation of organologists. In 1920 Blandford
met the man who was to become his closest musical friend and correspondent,
Reginald Morley-Pegge. Blandford had the leisure to correspond very widely,
and although the Morley-Pegge letters are the most numerous, there are also
substantial surviving collections of his letters to Lyndesay Langwill and
Philip Bate, Kathleen Schlesinger, Arthur Falkner, and T.S.Wotton. |
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Thomas Binkley
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Thomas
Binkley (1932-1995), lutenist and musicologist, began his professional
career with the Munich-based performance ensemble Studio für Alte Musik in
1959 with Nigel Rogers, Sterling Jones, and Estonian singer Andrea von Ramm.
The group, later known as the Studio für Frühen Musik, has been one of the
most influential ensembles ever in the performance of medieval music. From
1973 to 1977, Binkley taught and performed at the Schola Cantorum
Basiliensis in Basel, Switzerland and upon his return to the U.S., he was
visiting professor at Stanford University (1977, 1979).
Thomas Binkley was perhaps unrivalled in his field, particularly in the
performance practice of medieval monody. He was a charismatic person whose
thoughts and feelings about music-making, teaching, performance, and
musicianship challenged and inspired all who came into contact with him. |
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Suzanne Bloch
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Suzanne
Bloch (born in Geneva in 1907 - died in New York in 2002) was a
Swiss-American musician and an influential pioneer of Early Music Revival
during the 20th century. She went to Paris to study music with Nadia
Boulanger in 1925, and decided to become a lute player after hearing an
early-music concert. She went on to study music in Paris and Berlin, and she
met Arnold Dolmetsch in England in 1933. Dolmetsch sold her a lute from 1600
that he had restored himself. In 1935 she performed at the Hazelmere
Festival in England, and soon afterward returned to New York, where she
began her concert career. She was one of the founding members of the Lute
Society of America in the 1970's. |
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Erwin Bodky
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Erwin
Bodky, founder of the Cambridge Society for early Music, was born in East
Prussia n 1896. By the age of twelve he was known as a child prodigy on the
piano. In the 1920's Bodky made some of the first authentic instrument
recordings of early music for L'Anthologie Sonore using an original Ruckers
harpsichord.
In America Bodky began conducting the school's orchestra in early music
concerts at Harvard's Germanic Museum. In 1942 he and a group of supporters
formed a committee to continue the series in the Houghton Library at
Harvard. The next year, the Cambridge Collegium Musicum was formed with
Wolfe Wolfinsohn, Iwan D'Archambeau, and Erwin Bodky as its nucleus. In
1952, the Collegium was reorganized as the Cambridge Society for Early
Music. |
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Nadia Boulanger
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Juliette
Nadia Boulanger (16 September 1887 – 22 October 1979) was a French composer,
conductor and teacher who taught many of the leading composers and musicians
of the 20th century. Boulanger was the first woman to conduct many major
orchestras in America and Europe, including the BBC Symphony, Boston
Symphony, Hallé, New York Philharmonic and Philadelphia orchestras. She
was instrumental in the revival of early music.
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Josiane Bran-Ricci
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Frans Brüggen
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Frans
Brüggen - once the world's most famous recorder player, today he is
considered among the foremost experts in the performance of eighteenth
century music. He was born in Amsterdam and studied musicology at the
university there. In 1981, he founded the Orchestra of the Eighteenth
Century, which comprises some sixty members from 19 different countries. The
musicians, who are all specialists in eighteenth- and early
nineteenth-century music, play on period instruments, or on contemporary
copies. |
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Richard Burnett
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English
pianist Richard Burnett has been collecting historical keyboard instruments,
concentrating on early pianos, for some 40 years. By the mid-1970s the
collection was housed at Finchcocks, a large country house near Goudhurst in
Kent, and can still be visited there. Formerly, a group of ten highly
skilled craftsmen conserved, maintained and restored the ever increasing
number of instruments. One of the craftsmen, Derek Adlam, Richard Burnett's
business partner, concentrated on building replicas of harpsichords,
clavichords and early Viennese pianos. |
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Safford Cape
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Safford
Cape (Denver 1906 - Brussels 1973), American conductor, composer and the
founder (1933) and director of the Pro Musica Antiqua Ensemble of Brussells. |
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Thurston Dart
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Robert
Thurston Dart (3 September 1921 – 6 March 1971), was a British musicologist,
conductor and keyboard player. From 1964 he was Professor of Music at King's
College London. During this time at Cambridge (1947-1962), Dart was the
most effective British supporter of the modern early music revival, in part
through his influence on those who ultimately formed such groups as the
Early Music Consort of London.
As a continuo player he made numerous appearances on the harpsichord, and
made many harpsichord, clavichord and organ recordings, especially for the
L'Oiseau-Lyre label; he was also a conductor. He served as editor of the
Galpin Society Journal from 1947 to 1954 and secretary of Musica Britannica
from 1950 to 1965. |
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Alfred Deller
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Alfred
George Deller (31 May 1912 – 16 July 1979), was an English singer and one of
the main figures in popularising the return of the counter-tenor voice in
Renaissance and Baroque music during the 20th century. He is considered the
first modern counter-tenor. As an early proponent of 'historically
informed performance', Deller was an influential figure in the renaissance
of early music. After singing in the concert which inaugurated the BBC Third
Programme in 1947, he made hundreds of broadcasts, both as a soloist and as
a member of the Deller Consort, a group of singers he founded in 1950,
helping to bring this form of performance to the popular consciousness.
In 1963 he founded Stour Music Festival, one of the first festivals in
the world devoted to early music which continues to this day. |
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Bruce Dickey
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Bruce
Dickey is one of a handful of musicians worldwide who have dedicated
themselves to reviving the cornetto - once an instrument of great virtuosi,
but which lamentably fell into disuse in the 19th century. The revival began
in the 1950s, but it was largely Bruce Dickey, who, from the late 1970s,
created a new renaissance of the instrument, allowing the agility and
expressive power of the cornetto to be heard once again. In addition to
performing, Bruce Dickey is much in demand as a teacher, both of the
cornetto and of seventeenth-century performance practice.
He was a member for over ten years of Jordi Savall’s Hesperion XX |
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Christian Döbereiner
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Arnold
Dolmetsch
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Eugène
Arnold Dolmetsch (24 February 1858 - 28 February 1940), was a French-born
musician and instrument maker who spent much of his working life in England
and established an instrument-making workshop in Haslemere, Surrey. He was a
leading figure in the 20th century revival of interest in Early Music. His
interest in early instruments was awakened by seeing the collections of
historic instruments in the British Museum, and, after constructing his
first reproduction of a lute in 1893, he began building clavichords and
harpsichords for Chickering of Boston (1905–1911), then for Gaveau of Paris
(1911–1914).
He went on to establish an instrument-making workshop in Haslemere,
Surrey and proceeded to build copies of almost every kind of instrument
dating from the 15th to 18th centuries, including viols, lutes, recorders
and a range of keyboard instruments. His 1915 book The Interpretation of the
Music of the XVIIth and XVIIIth Centuries was a milestone in the development
of authentic performances of early music. In 1925, Arnold Dolmetsch passed
the direction of recorder production over to his younger son, Carl.
He was also largely responsible for the revival of the recorder, both as
a serious concert instrument, and as an instrument which made early music
accessible to amateur performers. He went on to promote the recorder as an
instrument for teaching music in schools. |
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Carl Dolmetsch
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The
youngest son of Arnold Dolmetsch, Carl Frederic (born Charles Frédéric) (23
August 1911 - 11 July 1997) was an outstanding figure in the history of the
revival of the recorder in the 20th century, with a performing career, as a
soloist and with the Dolmetsch Recorder Consort, that lasted about 75 years.
Carl was a craftsman of the recorder in the family workshops and took the
direction of the company in 1925. He also directed the Haslemere Festival
from 1947 to 1996. He published and lectured extensively, being responsible
for many editions of ancient recorder music and also for commissioning new
works by contemporary composers. He founded and directed the Dolmetch
International Summer School, originally for recorder and now including
viols, keyboards and other instruments.
Carl personally invented and developed in 1947 the inexpensive
plastic recorder which did much to promote the instrument for use in
schools. |
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David Dushkin
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David Freeman
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David Freeman (1937-2009) introduced the viol to many
new players in Czechoslovakia after moving there from England in 1988,
establishing courses in making and playing period instruments under the
umbrella of the organization Modi Gaudio, which he founded with his wife,
the Czech musicologist Michaela Freemanova. In the 1990s he served as the
VdGSA's official representative in the Czech Republic. When it proved
difficult to obtain good strings, he appealed successfully to the VdGSA
membership to fill the need, through Presidents Ellen Powers and Richard
Bodig. An ancillary benefit of the interest he inspired was the production
of inexpensive student viols made in Czechoslovakia (later Czech Republic)
and sold there, in the U.S., and elsewhere as well, enabling new enthusiasts
to take up the viol. He and his wife ran the Czech Early Music Festival in
Prague for several years and have promoted early music in many ways, through
workshops and concerts as well as courses in performance, tuning and
temperament, and instrument making. |
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George Guest
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Francis Galpin
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Canon
Francis William Galpin (Dorchester, 1858 - Richmond, 1945) Church of England
clergyman, musicologist, and antiquary who spent a lifetime in the practical
study of old instruments, in collecting them and recording their history.
Honouring him, The Galpin Society was created in October 1946.
Website
of the Galpin Society |
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Gusta Goldschmidt
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Violet Gordon Woodhouse
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Hugh Gough
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Peter Harlan
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Nikolaus Harnoncourt
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Nikolaus
Harnoncourt (6 December 1929) is an Austrian conductor, particularly known
for his historically informed performances of music from the Classical era
and earlier. Starting out as a classical cellist, he founded his own
period instrument ensemble in the 1950s, and became a pioneer of the Early
Music movement.
Around 1970, Harnoncourt started to conduct opera and concert
performances, soon leading renowned international symphony orchestras, and
appearing at leading concert halls, operatic venues and festivals. |
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Ian Harwood
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Ian
Harwood (August 29, 1931 - July 27, 2011), became a chorister at Winchester
Cathedral at the age of 10. From 1948 until 1952, he studied an aircraft
engineering. Ian's interests in music and aeroplanes were to shape the rest
of his life. He bought his first playable lute from the lutenist Diana
Poulton, who also taught him to play the instrument. Together, in 1956, they
founded the Lute Society, the world's first such organisation.
In 1958 he embarked on a precarious career as maker and player of lutes
combining with research in the Oxford libraries. In 1960 he made his debut
as a professional lutenist, and in 1964 he was awarded the Tovey Prize for
his research into the sources of English lute music. He founded the Campian
Consort in 1967, performing and recording much 16th- and 17th-century music
with this and other ensembles.
In 1979 he resumed instrument making, this time concentrating on
reproducing renaissance viols to apply the results of his research into
pitch standards. Ian suggested that the different sizes of surviving
17th-century instruments could best be explained if two pitch standards had
been used.
When a large order from an American university was cancelled without
compensation, in 1984, he put musical instrument making and performing to
one side and returned to his earlier interest in aviation.
In 1998 Harwood was elected president of the Lute Society, in succession
to Robert Spencer. |
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Friederich von Heune
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Born and
raised in Germany, he emigrated to the US in 1948 and served as a flutist in
the US Air Force. In 1956 he graduated from Bowdoin College (ME) and began a
four year apprenticeship with the legendary flute maker Verne Q. Powell.
Friedrich von Huene was a pioneer in the reproduction of historical
woodwinds for over half a century. In 1960 he founded The von Huene
Workshop, Inc. and began producing his own recorders. In 1966 he was awarded
a Guggenheim Fellowship for a comparative study of historical woodwinds,
becoming one of the first makers to produce copies of original 18th century
recorders.
Mr. von Huene designed the extraordinarily popular Rottenburgh recorders
for Moeck as well as the first high-quality plastic recorders for Zen-On. |
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Paul Hindemith
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A. J. Hipkins
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Christopher Hogwood, a celebrated conductor, musicologist and keyboard
player, is universally acknowledged as one of the most influential exponents
of the historically informed early-music movement. His catalogue has over
200 recordings with the Academy of Ancient Music on Decca.
Christopher is Emeritus Honorary Professor of Music at the University of
Cambridge and Professor of Music at Gresham College, London.
Christopher Hogwood's
official site
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Frank Hubbard
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Edgar Hunt
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Carleen Hutchins
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Carleen Hutchins 1911-2009) deepened the understanding
of viola da gamba construction. She was featured in Life magazine and
Scientific American for her contributions to violin-making, and received
grants from the Guggenheim Foundation to further her research in acoustics,
founding the Catgut Acoustical Society in 1963 to share and encourage
research. She developed free-plate tuning techniques for testing and
refining the front and back plates of an unassembled instrument to ensure
the best possible sound from the finished product—techniques that are widely
used today—and generously shared her approach with other makers of
violin-family instruments and viols. She also developed the "new violin
family" of eight instruments from treble violin to contrabass. |
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Dietrich Kessler
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Born 1929 Zurich Switzerland, d.2006 London UK.
Trained at the Swiss Violin Making School at Brienz under Adolf König.
Worked for Arnold Dolmetsch Ltd. in Haslemere, UK, later moving to Albert
Arnold Ltd. in Charing Cross Road with Cyril Jacklin until that business
closed in 1955. From 1955 to 1969 he worked freelance for the Withers shop
in Wardour Street, London, succeeding to Stanley Withers on his retirement.
In 1987 he sold the shop (which continued with the Withers name under Adam
Whone) and worked from his home in North London. From an early period
specialised in viol making, building a commemorative viol for the coronation
of Queen Elizabeth II 1953. He concentrated
on English instruments, particularly viols.
In a world so often noted for its secrecy and
closely guarded expertise, he was generous with his knowledge, and
effortlessly maintained a sense of wonderment at instruments and their
craftsmanship.
Kessler was born in Switzerland, and was accustomed
to hearing and taking part (as a cellist) in the family chamber music. His
playing skills not quite sufficient to merit further study after attending
his local Steiner school, he turned to his other interest, woodwork, and
went on to study at the recently formed school of violin making in Brienz,
from 1946 to 1950. Instruction there was not just the conventional stringed
instrument family, but covered ukuleles, guitars, balalaikas and viols.
After a four-year apprenticeship, he came to
England - to enlarge his experience with a range of instruments - first
working for the stringed instrument department of Dolmetsch in Haslemere,
Surrey. There he made viols, worked out how to make a lute and carried out
repairs. But his wish to broaden his knowledge of fine old instruments still
eluded him, so in 1952 he left to work for Sotheby's expert Cyril Jacklin at
Albert Arnold, in London's Charing Cross Road, where he carried out repairs
and modernised old English violins bought at auction by Jacklin (put in
longer bass bars, longer necks), work which today would be regarded as
heresy, but at the time was considered a service to musicians.
After Jacklin closed down the business, Kessler
turned freelance, and managed to suport his young family through repairs,
working for the trade. At home, he had started making viols, and sold these
to a gradually expanding base of customers. In 1969 he bought the last
remaining violin shop in Soho's Wardour Street, Edward Withers Ltd, and
employed a stream of makers and repairers who needed to adhere to his work
ethic of quality and speed. |
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Ralph Kirkpatrick
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Ton Koopman
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Günther Körber
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German
maker of renaissance wind instruments. |
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Sigiswald Kuijken
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Wieland Kuijken
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One of the leading exponents of the viola da gamba of
the late 20th century, Wieland Kuijken (b. 1938) has been an important
teacher of viol and Baroque cello at the Brussels Conservatoire and The
Hague for many years, inestimably influencing the world of viola da gamba
performance through his students as well as his own playing. Especially
known for his performances with his brothers Sigiswald and Barthold (violin
and Baroque flute), he has recorded with such early music leaders as Gustav
Leonhardt, Frans Brüggen, and Alfred Deller. |
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Wanda Landowska
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Wanda
Landowska (July 5, 1879 – August 16, 1959) was a Polish (later a naturalized
French citizen) harpsichordist whose performances, teaching, recordings and
writings played a large role in reviving the popularity of the harpsichord
in the early 20th century. She was the first person to record Bach's
Goldberg Variations on the harpsichord (1931). Deeply interested in
musicology, and particularly in the works of Bach, Couperin and Rameau, she
toured the museums of Europe looking at original keyboard instruments; she
acquired old instruments and had new ones made at her request by Pleyel and
Company. These were large, heavily-built harpsichords with a 16-foot stop (a
set of strings an octave below normal pitch) and owed much to piano
construction. (These instruments have completely fallen out of fashion in
the past four decades.)
Though Bach, Handel, and others had composed myriad harpsichord pieces,
by 1900 virtually no one played the instrument and works written for it were
generally transposed for piano. But Landowska was determined to play these
works on the original instrument, despite discouragement from musicologists
and fellow musicians. |
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Gustav Leonhardt
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Gustav
Leonhardt (30 May 1928, Graveland, North Holland - 16 January 2012) is a
highly renowned Dutch keyboard player, conductor, musicologist, teacher and
editor. Leonhardt has been a leader in the movement to perform music on
period instruments. He has performed and recorded on the harpsichord, pipe
organ, claviorganum (a combination of a harpsichord and an organ),
clavichord and fortepiano.
Leonhardt has performed and conducted a variety of solo, chamber,
orchestral, operatic, and choral music from the Renaissance, Baroque and
Classical periods. He and Harnoncourt undertook the project of recording the
first complete cycle of Bach's cantatas on period instruments; the two
conductors divided up the cantatas and recorded their assigned cantatas with
their own ensembles.
Leonhardt has had a significant influence on the technique and style of
many harpsichordists of the second half of the 20th century, through his
recordings, editions, and teaching. |
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Victor-Charles Mahillon
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Felix Mendelssohn
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Jakob
Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (3 February 1809 – 4 November 1847),was a
German composer, pianist, organist and conductor of the early Romantic
period. In Germany he revived interest in the music of Johann Sebastian
Bach.
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Hermann A. Moëck
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Hermann
Moëck founded in Celle the company 'Moeck Verlag und Musikinstrumentenwerk'
in 1925, making recorders. In 1960 his son Dr. Hermann Alexander Moeck ( -
110 July 2010) took over the business.
In 1964, the company acquired the designs and rights to produce the
entire range of historical woodwind instruments which had previously been
developed and made by Otto Steinkopf in his own Berlin workshop since the
early 1950s.
These instruments were produced in a separate historical department
within the Moeck recorder factory, which produced an astonishing range of
historical wind instruments: renaissance krummhorns, cornamuses, kortholts,
rauschpfeifen, racketts, shawms, dulcians, cornetts, and serpents, plus
baroque flutes, oboes, bassoons, racketts, and chalumeaux, and a classical
clarinet.
Due to retirement, the historical workshop was closed at the end of 2008. |
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Christopher Monk
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Christopher Monk was an English maker of cornetts and serpents. Christopher
Monk was amongst the first to make reconstructions of the cornett (since the
early 1950’s). Monk made the instrument easily available to enthusiasts by
manufacturing reliable reconstructions in resin which were (and continue to
be) excellent instruments for getting started. In the 1970s Christopher
Monk began playing and later making Serpents.
Following Christopher Monk’s sudden death in 1991, the instrument making
concern was taken over by Jeremy West. The workshops were relocated from
rural England to new premises in London, and in partnership with craftsman
Keith Rogers, instrument manufacture continues today. |
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Jeremy Montagu
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Jeremy
Montagu is a world-famous authority on musical instruments world-wide who
began playing percussion. He was curator of musical instruments at the
Horniman Museum in 1960 and of the Bate Collection of Musical Instruments
(1981-95) where some ten percent of his personal collection is on loan.
He began lecturing and teaching on musical instruments of the world and
built up a major collection of instruments, world-wide and all periods from
prehistoric to the present, for research and to illustrate those lectures
and mounted exhibitions of instruments.
He has published many books and innumerable articles on instruments of
all periods and cultures and has been Secretary of FoMRHI, the Fellowship of
Makers and Researchers of Historical Musical Instruments from 1975 to 2000
At present he is the President of the Galpin Society, formed in October
1946 for the publication of original research into the history,
construction, development and use of musical instruments. Its name
commemorates the pioneer work of Canon Francis W. Galpin (1858-1945) who had
spent a lifetime in the practical study of old instruments, in collecting
them and recording their history.
Website of
Jeremy Montagu |
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Reginald Morley-Pegge
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Reginald
Frederick Morley Pegge ('Morley', the name most used by his friends, was
originally a Christian name which eventually mutated into his surname) was
born in London on 17 January 1890. His interest in brass instruments had
begun in his prep school days presumably as a horn player.
In the 1930s he was invited to recatalogue the wind instruments in the
collection of the Paris Conservatoire, a mark of the esteem in which his
scholarship was already held.
During the World War II Morley-Pegge was in Edinburgh and was able to
play with the Reid Orchestra, and began a close friendship with Lyndesay
Langwill; their letters, which all survive, demonstrate their passionate
enthusiasm for the history of brass and woodwind instruments, and, as with
the Blandford-Morley-Pegge correspondence, gradually develop into intimacy.
Most of his collection, and all his papers, were secured for the Bate
Collection; Philip Bate had been a friend since 1939, first by
correspondence and then in person.
From its inception in 1946 Morley-Pegge was active in the Galpin Society,
of which he was a founder-member. |
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David John
Munrow (Aug. 12 1942 - May 15 1976) did more than anyone else in the second
half of the last century to popularise early music in Great Britain, despite
a career lasting barely ten years. Munrow has even be regarded as the
"inventor" of early music as a new movement per se. Of course, there were
other musicians ploughing the same field. But it was David Munrow who helped
to popularise it like no other in the 20th century. David Munrow left
behind him not only his recordings, but a large collection of musical
instruments. Munrow's research into instruments and music of the past led to
specially commissioned careful reconstructions otherwise unobtainable
antiquities from such instrumental families as the cornett, rackett,
kortholt from makers such as Otto Steinkopf, Christopher Monk and Jonathan
Askey.
Munrow and his future wife Gillian Reid began giving workshops and
recitals on 'early music' to schools and music societies. In 1967 Munrow
became a part-time lecturer at Leicester University in early music history
with his wife Gillian Reid. The same year he founded the Early Music Consort
of London with Christopher Hogwood and other friends.
In his hands and, largely through the Early Music Consort of London, the
cornetto began to regain its former popularity.
Website dedicated to
David Munrow, by David Griffith |
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Andres Mustonen
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Richard Nicholson
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Paul O'Dette
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Kees Otten
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Marco Pallis
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Tevor Pinnock
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Philip
Pickett (born 1950 in London, England) is a recorder player who began as a
trumpet player. He met Anthony Baines and David Munrow who encouraged him to
try early woodwind instruments such as the recorder, shawm and
rackett.director and founder of early music ensembles, notably the
world-renowned New London Consort and Musicians of the Globe.
Philip Pickett is considered one of today's most eminent advocates of period
performance.
New London
Consort, Philip Pickett's official site. |
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Michel Piguet
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Diana Poulton
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Diana
Poulton (18 April 1903 - 15 December 1995) was an English lutenist and
musicologist, co-founder (with Ian Harwood) of the Lute Society in 1956,
biographer of John Dowland (1563–1626) and editor of his complete works for
lute. She studied Fine Arts from 1919 to 1923, but was spirited away from
the visual arts when she began to accompany her mother to Arnold Dolmetsch’s
recitals in London. She was entranced by the sound of the lute and
determined to learn to play it herself. She became Arnold’s first lute
student. Her three years lessons with him (a very irascible teacher) were
not happy. Then, she continued her researches into original sources at the
British Museum, encouraged to do so by Rudolph, Arnold’s mild-mannered and
brilliant son.
A leading member of the 20th century’s revival of the popularity of
the lute and its music. For many years she was the only professional
lute-player in England, making over 400 broadcasts for the BBC, giving
recitals all over the country and providing regularly lute music for
performances of Shakespeare's plays. |
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Peter Reidemeister
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Denise Restout
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Anthony Rooley
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Konrad Ruhland
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Paul Sacher
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Paul
Sacher, (Basel, Switzerland April 28, 1906 - May 26, 1999), was a orchestra
conductor and musical philanthropist. In 1926 Paul Sacher founded the
Basel Chamber Orchestra (=Basler Kammerorchester) to which was added the
Basle Chamber Choir in 1928; the purpose of both was to perform music
written before the classical period and modern works.
In 1933 he became the director of the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, a
teaching and research institute for early music which he founded in Basle.
En este campo, Sacher fue un precursor de los criterios historicistas hoy
dominantes en la interpretación de la música de esa época, al propugnar "una
nueva simplicidad, una vuelta a los orígenes", rechazando frontalmente las
formas interpretativas consagradas en su tiempo y que acomodaban la música
antigua a fórmulas propias del s.XIX.
Sacher was an efficient if slightly reserved conductor, whose readings
were nonetheless always stylish. His discography was not large and reflected
his antipathy to nineteenth-century music, concentrating instead on the
music of eighteenth- and twentieth-century composers. |
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Michel Sanvoisin
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Jordi
Savall i Bernadet (born 1941 in Catalonia, Spain) is a viol player,
conductor, and composer. He has been one of the major figures in the field
of early music since the 1970s, largely responsible for bringing the viol
(viola da gamba) back to life on the stage. His repertory ranges from
Medieval to Renaissance and Baroque music.
Alia-vox.com,
Jordi Savall's official website. |
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Albert Schweitzer
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Martin Skowroneck
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Otto Steinkopf
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Otto
Steinkopf (Stolberg, 28 June 1904 - Celle, 17 Feb 1980) is considered the
pioneer of the revival of historical woodwind instruments in Germany.
Originally a bassoonist and a saxophonist (Gewandhausorchester Leipzig,
Berlin Chamber Orchestra, Philharmonic and Radio Symphony Orchestras; later
particularly Cappella Coloniensis), he restored in 1950 the woodwind
instruments of the Berlin collection of musical instruments and then started
his own workshop in Berlin in which he also reproduced many woodwind
instruments of the Renaissance and Baroque periods (crumhorns, cornamuses,
kortholtes, ranketts, dulcianes, shawms, cornetts, baroque oboes and
bassoons, transverse flutes, chalumeaux and others).
In 1964 Otto Steinkopf sold to Moeck Verlag und Musikinstrumentenwerk the
designs and rights to produce the entire range of historical woodwind
instruments. Otto Steinkopf remained on as a part-time advisor to the Moeck
workshop throughout the rest of the decade, but gradually withdrew from day
to day management into retirement in the early 1970s. |
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Christopher Stembridge studied languages at Cambridge University and
musicology at Oxford University. He was awarded the Turpin Prize on
obtaining Fellowship of the Royal College of Organists. After 20 years as
a lecturer in music at University College Cork (National University of
Ireland), he moved to Northern Italy where he now lives. He gives regular
master-classes on Renaissance organs and travels widely giving lectures,
recitals and seminars in European, Russian and North American universities
and conservatoires. For ten years he was Professor of Organ and Harpsichord
at the Scuola di Musica Santa Cecilia, Brescia
Christopher Stembridge's official site |
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Melvyn Tan
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Charles Toet
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Charles
Toet was born in 1951 in the Hague. He received his musical training at the
Royal Conservatory of the Hague, where he studied modern trombone and where
he began to specialize in early music and baroque trombone, which he now
teaches at the same institution as well as at the Schola Cantorum Basliensis
(Basel) and the Musikhochschule in Trossingen (Germany). He currently
divides his energies between the seventeenth century (mostly with Concerto
Palatino of which he is the co-founder) and the Classical and early Romantic
repertoires, played on original instruments with such period orchestras as
La Petite Bande (Sigiswald Kuijken), The Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra (Ton
Koopman), and the Orchestra des Champs-Elysées (Philippe Herreweghe).
He has performed and recorded extensively with Bruce Dickey and Concerto
Palatino and with numerous other ensembles of particular importance to the
history of early music, including, in addition to the ones mentioned above,
Syntagma Musicum of Amsterdam, The Taverner Players of London, the Hilliard
Ensemble, Hespérion XX, and the vocal ensemble Currende. |
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Auguste Tolbecque
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Auguste
Tolbecque (March 30, 1830 – March 8, 1919) was a French cellist who composed
a number of etudes for his instrument. In addition to his career as a
professional cellist, Tolbecque built and constructed a number of historical
instruments, and would often perform works on viola da gamba during his
recitals. Many of his instruments were acquired for the collection of the
Brussels Conservatoire (now the Musical Instrument Museum) in 1879. |
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James Tyler
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Guillaume de Van
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Rainer Weber
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German
restorer and maker of historical wind instruments. He for instance restored
the dulcians of the Maximilianmuseum in Augsburg, Germany. |
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August Wenzinger
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August
Wenzinger (1905–1996) was a prominent cellist, viol player, conductor,
teacher, and music scholar from Basel, Switzerland. He was a pioneer of
historically informed performance, both as a master of the viola da gamba
and as a conductor of Baroque orchestral music and operas. By 1925
Wenzinger had mastered the viola da gamba, an instrument then usually
considered obsolete. He joined the Kabeler Kammermusik (Kabel Chamber
Music), a circle of musicians interested in authentic Baroque performance,
sponsored by paper manufacturer Hans Eberhard Hoesch in Hagen, Germany. In
1930 he and flautist Gustav Scheck also founded the Kammermusikkreis Scheck-Wenziger
(Scheck-Wenzinger Chamber Music Circle), considered the leading early music
ensemble until the 1950s. |
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Jeremy West
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Jeremy
West is an evangelist for the cornett, the often-overlooked wind instrument
which was held in the highest possible regard during the 16th and 17th
centuries. He continues to play a lead role in re-establishing this
instrument as a recognised and accepted virtuoso and ensemble instrument.
Jeremy has on several occasions been acclaimed a “pioneer” of his
instrument. In addition to a playing career, since 1991 Jeremy has
directed the instrument-making workshops of the late Christopher Monk. The
workshops are devoted to the research, development, reproduction and
distribution of all instruments in the cornett and serpent families. |
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