David Allen Conway (born 17 February 1950) is a British music historian, academic and writer.
David Allen Conway (born 17 February 1950) is a British music historian, academic and writer.
Conway was born in London. His sister was Barbara Conway who became a journalist. He was educated at Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School, and studied economics and psychology as an undergraduate at King's College, Cambridge. [1] He obtained a PhD degree under the supervision of John Klier at University College London, [2] where he has been an Honorary Research Fellow since 2008. [3]
In the 1980s, Conway and his Czechoslovak-born wife Nadia were elected councillors of the London Borough of Enfield. [4] From 1991 to 2016, he acted as a Senior Expert for the European Commission in development aid projects in the countries of the former Soviet Union. [3] His 2012 book Jewry in Music was published by Cambridge University Press. It "analyses why and how Jews, virtually absent from western art music until the end of the eighteenth century, came to be represented in all branches of the profession as leading figures – not only as composers and performers, but as publishers, impresarios and critics." [5] The book was positively reviewed by musicologist Tina Frühauf and on the BBC Radio programme Music Matters. [6] [7]
Conway is a founder and director of the music festival Levočské babie leto in Levoča, Slovakia. [8] Since 2018 he has been Chair of the opera company HGO (formerly Hampstead Garden Opera). [9]
In the academic year 2019–20 Conway was a Polonsky Visiting Fellow at Oxford University. [10] [11] He contributes to journals including Slavonic and East European Review , The Wagner Journal and Jewish Renaissance . [12]
Conway's publications include:
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas. Unlike most opera composers, Wagner wrote both the libretto and the music for each of his stage works. Initially establishing his reputation as a composer of works in the romantic vein of Carl Maria von Weber and Giacomo Meyerbeer, Wagner revolutionised opera through his concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk, by which he sought to synthesise the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts, with music subsidiary to drama. He described this vision in a series of essays published between 1849 and 1852. Wagner realised these ideas most fully in the first half of the four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen.
"Das Judenthum in der Musik", is an antisemitic essay by composer Richard Wagner which criticizes the influence of Jews and their "essence" on European art music, arguing that they have not contributed to its development but have rather commodified and degraded it.
Giacomo Meyerbeer was a German opera composer, "the most frequently performed opera composer during the nineteenth century, linking Mozart and Wagner". With his 1831 opera Robert le diable and its successors, he gave the genre of grand opera 'decisive character'. Meyerbeer's grand opera style was achieved by his merging of German orchestra style with Italian vocal tradition. These were employed in the context of sensational and melodramatic libretti created by Eugène Scribe and were enhanced by the up-to-date theatre technology of the Paris Opéra. They set a standard that helped to maintain Paris as the opera capital of the nineteenth century.
Jacques-François-Fromental-Élie Halévy, usually known as Fromental Halévy, was a French composer. He is known today largely for his opera La Juive.
Márk Rózsavölgyi was a Hungarian composer and violinist. He has been called "the father of csárdás".
Isaac Nathan was an English composer, musicologist, journalist and self-publicist, who has been called the "father of Australian music". "Known as the Father of Australian Music, Nathan also assisted the careers of numerous colonial musicians during his twenty year residence in Australia" "Nathan's best known for the success of his Hebrew Melodies (1815-1840) in London. However, he made significant contributions as a singing teacher and music historian during his time at St James Palace and as a composer of opera in the Royal Theatres (1823-1833). After emigrating to Australia in 1840, Nathan wrote Australia's first opera's and Australia's first contemporary song cycle which entangled fragments of Aboriginal songlines with european musical traditions. Nathan tailored compositions to the unique individual singing needs of his students and community choirs while using the Neapolitan bel canto pedagogical tradition that he inherited in London. Nathan's best students were Mary Anne Lucy Chambers (1834-1894) "The Australian Nightingale" and Dame Marie Carandini, both of whom became the first teachers of Dame Nellie Melba.
Benjamin Lumley was a British North America-born British opera manager and solicitor. Born Benjamin Levy, he was the son of a Jewish merchant, Louis Levy.
Elias Parish Alvars, was an English harpist and composer. He was born as Eli Parish in Teignmouth, Devon; his father was a local organist. His baptismal record at St James’s Church, West Teignmouth, reads: "Eli, son of Joseph and Mary Ann Parish".
Michal Josef Gusikov was a Belarusian-Jewish klezmer who gave the first performances of klezmer music to West European concert audiences on his 'wood and straw instrument'.
The Oxford Companion to Music defines music criticism as "the intellectual activity of formulating judgments on the value and degree of excellence of individual works of music, or whole groups or genres". In this sense, it is a branch of musical aesthetics.
The Great Synagogue of London was a former Orthodox Jewish congregation and synagogue, located in the City of London, England, in the United Kingdom. The synagogue was, for centuries, the centre of Ashkenazi life in London. Built north of Aldgate in the 17th century, it was destroyed during World War II, in the Blitz.
Ludwig Heinrich Christian Geyer was a German actor, playwright, and painter.
Michael Beer was a German Jewish poet, author and playwright.
Family Quarrels is a comic opera in three acts with a libretto by Thomas Dibdin, and music principally by William Reeve. It was premiered in London at Covent Garden Theatre on 18 December 1802. The singers John Braham and Charles Incledon had leading roles in the opera, in which the comedian John Fawcett took the part of the pedlar Proteus.
Hannah Norsa was an English Jewish actress and singer, who achieved fame appearing in John Gay's The Beggar's Opera in 1732 and became the mistress of Robert Walpole, 2nd Earl of Orford.
Die beiden Kalifen is an 1813 opera in two acts by Giacomo Meyerbeer, to a libretto by Johann Gottfried Wöhlbruch, based on a tale from the Arabian Nights.
James Cervetto was an English cellist, playing in aristocratic venues and in important concerts of the day. He was the soloist for the premiere of Haydn’s second cello concerto.
Israel Lovy, also known as Israel Glogauer and Israel Fürth, was a ḥazzan and composer.
Charles Sloman was an English comic entertainer, singer and songwriter, as well as a composer of ballads and sacred music. He was billed as "the only English Improvisatore".
Charles-Valentin Alkan composed his Cello Sonata in Paris in 1856, titled Sonate de concert pour piano et violoncelle, Op. 47. The work in E major is structured in four movements.
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