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.
Born in London, he is the brother of the journalist Barbara Conway (1952–1991). 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.
Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, born and widely known as Felix Mendelssohn, was a German composer, pianist, organist and conductor of the early Romantic period. Mendelssohn's compositions include symphonies, concertos, piano music, organ music and chamber music. His best-known works include the overture and incidental music for A Midsummer Night's Dream, the Italian Symphony, the Scottish Symphony, the oratorio St. Paul, the oratorio Elijah, the overture The Hebrides, the mature Violin Concerto and the String Octet. The melody for the Christmas carol "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" is also his. Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words are his most famous solo piano compositions.
"Das Judenthum in der Musik" is an essay by Richard Wagner which attacks Jews in general and the composers Giacomo Meyerbeer and Felix Mendelssohn in particular. It was published under a pseudonym in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (NZM) of Leipzig in September 1850 and was reissued in a greatly expanded version under Wagner's name in 1869. It is regarded by some as an important landmark in the history of German antisemitism.
Giacomo Meyerbeer was a German opera composer of Jewish birth, "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 which 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.
Henikstein is an Austrian noble family that descended from a clan of Jewish merchants. One of the most notable members was Adam Adalbert Hönig (1740-1811), who later took the name Edler von Henikstein. There was also Joseph von Henikstein (1768-1838), who was a prominent patron of Austrian arts and was a convert to Catholicism. During the Austro-Prussian war of 1866, his son Alfred Freiherr von Henikstein was a general on the Austrian side and became the Chief of General Staff.
Isaac Nathan was an English composer, musicologist, journalist and self-publicist, who topped off an eventful career by becoming the "father of Australian music".
Benjamin Lumley was a Canadian-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 Russian-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. With the concurrent expansion of interest in music and information media over the past century, the term has come to acquire the conventional meaning of journalistic reporting on musical performances.
The Great Synagogue of London was, for centuries, the centre of Ashkenazi synagogue and Jewish life in London. Built north of Aldgate in the 17th century, it was destroyed during World War II, in the Blitz.
Giacobbe Basevi, known as Giacobbe Cervetto, was an Anglo-Italian Jewish musician, who was a leading cellist and composer for cello in 18th century England.
Ludwig Heinrich Christian Geyer was a German actor, playwright, and painter.
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 December 18, 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.
Melanie Lewy was an Austrian harpist of Jewish birth.
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.
James Cervetto was an English cellist, playing in aristocratic venues and in important concerts of the day.
Israel Lovy, also known as Israel Glogauer and Israel Fürth, was a ḥazzan and composer.
Betty von Rothschild, Baronne de Rothschild was a noted salonnière, patron of the arts and philanthropist.
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