Barbara Harbach | |
---|---|
Born | 14 February 1946 Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
Occupation(s) | Composer, Harpsichordist, Organist and teacher |
Instrument(s) | Harpsichord, Organ (music) |
Years active | 1964 – Present |
Barbara Harbach (born February 14, 1946) [1] is an American composer, harpsichordist, organist, and teacher. [2] Since 2004, she taught music at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. She founded Women in the Arts-St. Louis to highlight women's work and gain more performances for musicians and composers. [3]
In 1989, Harbach founded the small Vivace Press, to publish music by underrepresented composers. In 1993 she was a co-founder of the journal, Women of Note Quarterly, and continues as its editor.
Born in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, Harbach studied music, and harpsichord and organ performance at Penn State University, where she earned a BA. She earned an MMA at Yale and doctorate in composition from the Eastman School of Music. [4]
She also studied at the Musikhochschule in Frankfurt, Germany with Helmut Walcha. [4]
Harbach was Professor of Music at Washington State University from 1991 to 1997, Visiting Professor of Music at University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh from 1997 to 2000, and Visiting Professor of Fine Arts at the University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point from 2000 to 2003. In 2004, she was named Professor of Music at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.
Harbach has made numerous recordings of organ and harpsichord music and is a nationally recognized keyboard performer. When reviewing one of her Bach recordings in its May/June 1988 issue, the American Record Guide said, "She deserves to be recognized as one of the eminent Bach players among organists of the present day, in both the United States and in Europe." In 1992, Keyboard Magazine ranked Harbach as second to Keith Jarrett as “Top Keyboard Artist” in the classical division. [4]
Her first published composition was Praise Him with the Trumpet (1977) for choir and organ. Her compositions have included works for symphony orchestra, string orchestra, organ, harpsichord, choir and chamber ensemble. She has also arranged Baroque pieces for brass and organ.
She has written three symphonies: Veneration for Orchestra (first performed in 2004 at Wilmington College, Ohio), One of Ours – a Cather Symphony (commissioned by and first performed by the Central Wisconsin Symphony Orchestra) and Sinfonietta for string orchestra. Seven more symphonies were written. She didn't number her symphonies. A State Divided - A Missouri Symphony, Gateway Festival Symphony, Jubilee Symphony, Night Soundings (6th), Celestial Symphony (9th) and Symphony for Ferguson (10th)
A recording of her music, The Music of Barbara Harbach, Vol. 1, received the following honors: [5]
In October 2009, Harbach's opera O Pioneers! , based upon the Willa Cather novel of the same name, received its world premiere at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.
In 1989, Harbach founded Vivace Press, a music publishing company specializing in works by women and other traditionally under-represented composers. She produces performing editions of 18th-century keyboard music.
In 1993, Harbach and Jonathan Yordy founded the journal, Women of Note Quarterly, and shared editing responsibilities. [4] She continues as editor.
In 2004, Harbach founded Women in the Arts-St. Louis, devoted to creating more opportunities for audiences to see and hear women composers and other artists, as well as encouraging education and recognition of women artists.
Trevor David Pinnock is a British harpsichordist and conductor.
Joan Tower is a Grammy-winning contemporary American composer, concert pianist and conductor. Lauded by The New Yorker as "one of the most successful woman composers of all time", her bold and energetic compositions have been performed in concert halls around the world. After gaining recognition for her first orchestral composition, Sequoia (1981), a tone poem which structurally depicts a giant tree from trunk to needles, she has gone on to compose a variety of instrumental works including Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman, which is something of a response to Aaron Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man, the Island Prelude, five string quartets, and an assortment of other tone poems. Tower was pianist and founding member of the Naumburg Award-winning Da Capo Chamber Players, which commissioned and premiered many of her early works, including her widely performed Petroushskates.
Christopher Jarvis Haley Hogwood was an English conductor, harpsichordist, writer, and musicologist. Founder of the early music ensemble the Academy of Ancient Music, he was an authority on historically informed performance and a leading figure in the early music revival of the late 20th century.
Gustav Maria Leonhardt was a Dutch keyboardist, conductor, musicologist, teacher and editor. He was a leading figure in the historically informed performance movement to perform music on period instruments.
Barbara Kolb was an American composer and educator, the first woman to win the Rome Prize in musical composition. Her music features sound masses of colorful textures, impressionistic sounds and atonal vocabulary, with influences from literary and visual arts. She taught at the Third Street Music School Settlement, Rhode Island College and Eastman School of Music.
A harpsichordist is a person who plays the harpsichord. Harpsichordists may play as soloists, as accompanists, as chamber musicians, or as members of an orchestra, or some combination of these roles. Solo harpsichordists may play unaccompanied sonatas for harpsichord or concertos accompanied by orchestra. Accompanist harpsichordists might accompany singers or instrumentalists, either playing works written for a voice and harpsichord or an orchestral reduction of the orchestra parts. Chamber musician harpsichordists could play in small groups of instrumentalists, such as a quartet or quintet. Baroque-style orchestras and opera pit orchestras typically have a harpsichordist to play the chords in the basso continuo part.
Masaaki Suzuki is a Japanese organist, harpsichordist, conductor, and the founder and music director of the Bach Collegium Japan. With this ensemble he is recording the complete choral works of Johann Sebastian Bach for the Swedish label BIS Records, for which he is also recording Bach's concertos, orchestral suites, and solo works for harpsichord and organ. He is also an artist-in-residence at Yale University and the principal guest conductor of its Schola Cantorum, and has conducted orchestras and choruses around the world.
Antonius Gerhardus Michael "Ton" Koopman is a Dutch conductor, organist, harpsichordist, and musicologist, primarily known for being the founder and director of the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir.
Igor Kipnis was a German-born American harpsichordist, pianist and conductor.
Elisabetta de Gambarini was an English composer, singer, organist, harpsichordist, pianist, orchestral conductor and painter of the 18th century. Elisabetta's music is considered late Baroque and Classical music. She achieved distinction as an all-around musician, performing on, and composing for a variety of instruments as well as voice. Her compositions were known to reflect that of vocal work instead of instrumental patterns. She was the first female composer in Britain to publish a collection of keyboard music. Some sources describe her voice type as a singer as a soprano, and others as a mezzo-soprano.
Maria Hester Park was a British composer, pianist, and singer. She was also a noted piano teacher who taught many students in the nobility, including the Duchess of Devonshire and her daughters.
Emma Lou Diemer was an American composer.
The Danish national baroque orchestra Concerto Copenhagen is one of the leading baroque orchestras in the world.
Martin Pearlman is an American conductor, harpsichordist, composer, and early music specialist. He founded the first permanent Baroque orchestra in North America with Boston Baroque in 1973–74. Many of its original players went on to play in or direct other ensembles in what became a growing field in the American music scene. He later founded the chorus of that ensemble and has been the music director of Boston Baroque from its inception up to the present day.
O Pioneers! is an American opera in two acts by composer Barbara Harbach, set to a libretto by Jonathan Yordy. It is based on the 1913 novel by Willa Cather. Harbach became enamored with Willa Cather's works when commissioned by the Central Wisconsin Symphony Orchestra to write a symphony based on Cather's 1922 novel One of Ours. When given the opportunity to compose an opera, she chose O Pioneers! because she has "always been drawn to stories about strong women." Harbach adds that Cather's story "has all the elements that an opera needs: long-term loving relationships, sibling rivalry and murder."
Joel Spiegelman was an American composer, conductor, concert pianist, harpsichordist, recording artist, arranger, author and professor.
Jeannette Sorrell is an American conductor and harpsichordist. A GRAMMY Award winner, she is the founder and music director of Apollo's Fire Baroque Orchestra. She is the subject of the 2019 documentary by Oscar-winning director Allan Miller, PLAYING WITH FIRE: Jeannette Sorrell and the Mysteries of Conducting.
Anthony Newman is an American classical musician. While mostly known as an organist, Newman is also a harpsichordist, pianist, composer, conductor, writer, and teacher. He is a specialist in music of the Baroque period, particularly the works of Johann Sebastian Bach, and has collaborated with such noted musicians as Kathleen Battle, Julius Baker, Itzhak Perlman, Eugenia Zukerman, Jean-Pierre Rampal, Leonard Bernstein, Michala Petri, and Wynton Marsalis, for whom he arranged and conducted In Gabriel’s Garden, the most popular classical record of 1996.
Elizabeth Farr is an American classical harpsichordist.
Aimée Van de Wiele was a Belgian keyboardist and composer, born in Brussels. She began her music studies at the Brussels Conservatory, where she studied with E. Bosquet and won the Laure van Cutsem prize for piano, as well as prizes for harmony, counterpoint, composition, and music theory. Wiele then moved to France to study harpsichord at the Paris Conservatory with Wanda Landowska and musicology with Andre Pirro. After Landowska's death in 1959, Wiele began teaching at the Paris Conservatory, where she had several notable students, including Elisabeth Chojnacka and Marketta Valve.