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Benjamin Bagby (born February 20, 1950) is an American singer, composer, harpist, and performer of medieval music.
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Benjamin Bagby (born February 20, 1950) is an American singer, composer, harpist, and performer of medieval music.
Born in Evanston, Illinois, Bagby was educated at Oberlin College, Ohio, and the Schola Cantorum in Basel, Bagby founded the ensemble Sequentia with Barbara Thornton in 1977. This group takes an innovative approach to medieval repertoires, especially with respect to their treatment of mode: they rely on the harmonic qualities of their voices to guide them through the different modes. Sequentia has released many fine recordings, most of them on Deutsche Harmonia Mundi. During the 1980s and 1990s, the group specialized in the music of Hildegard of Bingen; many of their most famous recordings are from this period. The group has also performed music written in the 12th century from the musical centers Santiago de Compostela, Aquitaine, and Notre Dame.
Benjamin Bagby's work as a composer also contributes to his recreations of the ancient epics, such as Beowulf , the Icelandic Edda and German music from the 10th and 11th centuries on their recent recording Lost Songs of a Rhineland Harper. His version of Beowulf, which he has been touring around the world since the 1990s, is available on DVD (from a show in Copenhagen); his performance on May 9, 2003, at the International Congress on Medieval Studies is documented and discussed in, and was an impetus for, the 2012 anthology Beowulf at Kalamazoo. [1]
He gave presentations internationally including at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools.[ when? ] [2]
Bagby (widowed from his longtime collaborator Barbara Thornton) married Croatian chant scholar Katarina Livljanić. [3]
Hildegard of Bingen, also known as Saint Hildegard and the Sibyl of the Rhine, was a German Benedictine abbess and polymath active as a writer, composer, philosopher, mystic, visionary, and as a medical writer and practitioner during the High Middle Ages. She is one of the best-known composers of sacred monophony, as well as the most recorded in modern history. She has been considered by scholars to be the founder of scientific natural history in Germany.
The Gramophone Classical Music Awards, launched in 1977, are one of the most significant honours bestowed on recordings in the classical record industry. They are often viewed as equivalent to or surpassing the American Grammy award, and referred to as the Oscars for classical music. They are widely regarded as the most influential and prestigious classical music awards in the world. According to Matthew Owen, national sales manager for Harmonia Mundi USA, "ultimately it is the classical award, especially worldwide."
Heinrich Frauenlob, sometimes known as Henry of Meissen, was a Middle High German poet, a representative of both the Sangspruchdichtung and Minnesang genres. He was one of the most celebrated poets of the late medieval period, venerated and imitated well into the 15th century.
Sequentia is an early music ensemble, founded in 1977 by Benjamin Bagby and Barbara Thornton. The group specializes mainly in Medieval music. Sequentia focuses particularly on music with texts, specifically chants and other stories with music, such as the Icelandic Edda. They are interested in the interplay between drama and music, and sometimes do partially staged performances, such as that of Hildegard of Bingen's Ordo Virtutum. Bagby and Thornton have both been active in original research on the projects they perform.
Ordo Virtutum is an allegorical morality play, or sacred music drama, by Hildegard of Bingen, composed c. 1151, during the construction and relocation of her Abbey at Rupertsberg. It is the earliest morality play by more than a century, and the only medieval musical drama to survive with an attribution for both text and music.
Teldex Studio for sound recordings is in the borough of Lichterfelde in Berlin, Germany. It was named in 2002 as successor to the Teldec Studio, operated by Teldec Classics and, earlier, by Telefunken, on the same premises, and it underwent a major upgrade the following year. Its main live area, the "Hall", is 455 metres square, roughly 4,900 square feet. The upgrade replaced a 72-input Solid State Logic 9000 with a 48-input Studer 980 and an Avid 5-MC Controller. Teldex Studio came into existence after Warner Music wound down several operations of the labels Teldec Classics in Germany and Erato Disques in France and Teldec Studio members Friedemann Engelbrecht, Tobias Lehmann and Martin Sauer chose to continue their work by establishing a new company. In 2002 the team began a cooperation with French label Harmonia Mundi. This was soon supplemented by contracts with Warner, BMG, Deutsche Grammophon, EMI, Sony Classical and independent labels. Projects have included Jonas Kaufmann and Helmut Deutsch's 2005 acclaimed traversal of Strauss Lieder for Harmonia Mundi, the Nielsen Wind Quintet with members of the Berlin Philharmonic for EMI in 2006, and Arcadi Volodos' intimate 2012 survey of Mompou's piano music for Sony.
The Codex Las Huelgas is a music manuscript or codex from c. 1300 which originated in and has remained in the Cistercian convent of Santa María la Real de Las Huelgas in Burgos, in northern Spain. The convent was a wealthy one which had connections with the royal family of Castile.
Crawford Young is an American lutenist and musicologist residing in Basel, Switzerland. He is the director of the Ferrara Ensemble, Ensemble Project Ars Nova, Shield of Harmony, and is a long time accompanist of Andreas Scholl.
The Diapason d'Or is a recommendation of outstanding (mostly) classical music recordings given by reviewers of Diapason magazine in France, broadly equivalent to "Editor's Choice", "Disc of the Month" in the British Gramophone magazine.
Deutsche Harmonia Mundi is a German classical music record label. It was founded by Rudolf Ruby and based in Freiburg, Breisgau. The company was acquired by BMG Music in 1992 and is now part of Sony Music Entertainment. Ruby had Alfred Krings of WDR assemble their own house orchestra Collegium Aureum, founded 1964, to perform early music, selecting as leader Franzjosef Maier.
Barbara Thornton was an American singer, musicologist, and groundbreaking performer of medieval music.
This is a discography of Hildegard of Bingen's musical works.
Bernard Coutaz was a French musical publisher, founder of the Harmonia Mundi label.
Christian Gerhaher is a German baritone and bass singer in opera and concert, particularly known as a Lieder singer.
Alba are a Danish medieval music ensemble founded in 1992. The ensemble consists of the duo Agnethe Christensen and Poul Høxbro, or the trio with the harpist Helen Davis.
Hildegard von Bingen: Celestial Hierarchy is a studio album by German musical group Sequentia. It was released in May 2013 under Deutsche Harmonia Mundi.
Caitríona O'Leary is an Irish singer known for her performances of Irish traditional music and Early music. Described by Crescendo Magazine as "a fascinating, charismatic singer" and by Toccata-Alte Musik aktuell as a musician that "captivates and captures the listener immediately".
Canticles of Ecstasy is an album of sacred vocal music written in the 12th century by the German abbess Hildegard of Bingen and recorded by the early music ensemble Sequentia that was released by the Deutsche Harmonia Mundi recording label in 1993.
Barbara Stühlmeyer OblOSB is a German theologian, musicologist, author, especially a Hildegard scholar and a science journalism.
Jill Feldman is an American soprano who has acquired an international reputation for her interpretation of medieval, baroque and classical repertoires.
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