Christoph Wolff | |
|---|---|
 Wolff in 2015 in the Gewandhaus in Leipzig | |
| Born | 24 May 1940 |
| Education | |
| Occupation | Musicologist |
| Organizations | |
| Awards | Royal Academy of Music Bach Prize |
Christoph Wolff (born 24 May 1940) is a German musicologist. He is best known for his works on the music, life, and period of Johann Sebastian Bach. Christoph Wolff is an emeritus professor of Harvard University, and was part of the faculty since 1976, and former director of the Bach Archive in Leipzig from 2001 to 2014.
Wolff was born in Solingen, the son of theologian Hans Walter Wolff. He studied organ and historical keyboard instruments, musicology, and art history at the Universities of Berlin, Erlangen, and the Music Academy of Freiburg, receiving a performance diploma in 1963 and a PhD in 1966. Wolff taught music history at Erlangen, Toronto, Princeton, and Columbia Universities before joining the Harvard faculty in 1976 as Professor of Music and retiring in 2014. He was also on the graduate faculty of the Juilliard School from 2010 to 2018. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, [1] the American Philosophical Society, the Saxon Academy of Sciences, the Akademie für Mozart-Forschung (he chaired it from 1996 to 2006) and since 2015 a member of the Order Pour le Mérite for Sciences and the Arts, he also holds an honorary professorship at the University of Freiburg, Germany.
Wolff's books include Bach: Essays on His Life and Music (Cambridge, 1991), Mozart's Requiem (Berkeley, 1994), The New Bach Reader (New York, 1998), Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2001 (New York, 2000), and Bach's Musical Universe: The Composer and His Work (W.W. Norton, 2020). In 2013, his Mozart at the Gateway to His Fortune won an ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award. Wolff was interviewed about Bach's The Art of Fugue in the documentary film Desert Fugue .
Wolff was awarded the IRC Harrison Medal of the Society for Musicology in Ireland in 2004 [2] and the Royal Academy of Music/Kohn Foundation Bach Prize in 2006. [3] Also he was awarded the Dent Medal of the International Musicological Society in 1978, the Humboldt Research Prize in 1996, the Otto Kinkeldey Award of the American Musicological Society in 2000 for Johann Sebastian Bach; the Learned Musician [4] .
Wilhelm Friedemann Bach was a German composer, organist and harpsichordist. He was the second child and eldest son of Johann Sebastian Bach and Maria Barbara Bach. Despite his acknowledged genius as an improviser and composer, his income and employment were unstable, and he died in poverty.
Robert David Levin is an American classical pianist, musicologist, and composer. He was a professor of music at Harvard University from 1994 to 2014 and the artistic director of the Sarasota Music Festival from 2007 to 2017.
The German Bach-Gesellschaft was a society formed in 1850 for the express purpose of publishing the complete works of Johann Sebastian Bach without editorial additions. The collected works are known as the Bach-Gesellschaft-Ausgabe. On completion of the project, the Society dissolved itself.
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his prolific authorship of music across a variety of instruments and forms, including orchestral music such as the Brandenburg Concertos; solo instrumental works such as the cello suites and sonatas and partitas for solo violin; keyboard works such as the Goldberg Variations and The Well-Tempered Clavier; organ works such as the Schubler Chorales and the Toccata and Fugue in D minor; and choral works such as the St Matthew Passion and the Mass in B minor. Since the 19th century Bach Revival, he has been generally regarded as one of the greatest composers in the history of Western music.
Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied, BWV 225, is a motet by Johann Sebastian Bach. It was first performed in Leipzig around (probably) 1727. The text of the three-movement motet is in German: after Psalm 149 for its first movement, the third stanza of "Nun lob, mein Seel, den Herren" for the second movement, and after Psalm 150:2 and 6 for its third movement Psalms 150:2,6.
Lorenz Christoph Mizler von Kolof was a German physician, historian, printer, mathematician, Baroque music composer, and precursor of the Enlightenment in Poland.
Laurence Dreyfus, FBA is an American musicologist and player of the viola da gamba who was University Lecturer and Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford.
Jesus nahm zu sich die Zwölfe, BWV 22, is a church cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach composed for Quinquagesima, the last Sunday before Lent. Bach composed it as an audition piece for the position of Thomaskantor in Leipzig and first performed it there on 7 February 1723.
Otto Kinkeldey was an American music librarian and musicologist. He was the first president of the American Musicological Society and held the first chair in musicology at any American university.
Karol Berger is a Polish-American musicologist.
Thomas Forrest Kelly is an American musicologist, musician, and scholar. He is the Morton B. Knafel Professor of Music at Harvard University. His most recent books include: The Role of the Scroll (2019), Capturing Music: The Story of Notation (2014), and Music Then and Now (2012).
The organ sonatas, BWV 525–530 by Johann Sebastian Bach are a collection of six sonatas in trio sonata form. Each of the sonatas has three movements, with three independent parts in the two manuals and obbligato pedal. The collection was put together in Leipzig in the late 1720s and contained reworkings of prior compositions by Bach from earlier cantatas, organ works and chamber music as well as some newly composed movements. The sixth sonata, BWV 530, is the only one for which all three movements were specially composed for the collection. When played on an organ, the second manual part is often played an octave lower on the keyboard with appropriate registration. Commentators have suggested that the collection might partly have been intended for private study to perfect organ technique, some pointing out that its compass allows it to be played on a pedal clavichord. The collection of sonatas is generally regarded as one of Bach's masterpieces for organ. The sonatas are also considered to be amongst his most difficult compositions for the instrument.
Günter Jena is a German choral conductor and musicologist. He was the director of church music at St. Michaelis in Hamburg from 1973 to 1997. He founded the festival Bach-Tage Hamburg, and provided music for ballet performances of choreographer John Neumeier at the Hamburg State Opera, including Bach's St Matthew Passion.
Hans-Joachim Schulze is a German musicologist, a Bach scholar who served as the director of the Bach Archive in Leipzig from 1992 to 2000. With Christoph Wolff, he was editor of the Bach-Jahrbuch from 1975 to 2000. He published an introduction to all cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach in 2006.
Ulrich Aloysius Konrad is a German musicologist and professor at the Institute for Music Research of the University of Würzburg. He is considered an expert on European music of the 17th to 20th centuries, especially the works of Mozart, Robert Schumann, Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss. He wrote a biography, Wolfgang Amadé Mozart, and studied the composer's sketches.
Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht was a German musicologist and professor of historical musicology at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität in Freiburg.
Werner Breig is a German musicologist and music publisher.
Walther Hermann Vetter was a German musicologist. From 1946 to 1958, he was professor at the Humboldt University of Berlin.
Rudolf Steglich was a German musicologist, music editor and academic teacher, who was professor at the University of Erlangen from 1930 to 1956. His focus was life and music of George Frideric Handel. He was instrumental in the composer's revival from the 1920s, and was from 1955 co-editor of the Hallische Händel-Ausgabe, the critical edition of the composer's complete works.
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