Robert Arthur Moog was an American engineer and electronic music pioneer. He was the founder of the synthesizer manufacturer Moog Music and the inventor of the first commercial synthesizer, the Moog synthesizer, which debuted in 1964. In 1970, Moog released a more portable model, the Minimoog, described as the most famous and influential synthesizer in history. Among Moog's honors are a Technical Grammy Award, received in 2002, and an induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti, also known as Domingo or Doménico Scarlatti, was an Italian composer. He is classified primarily as a Baroque composer chronologically, although his music was influential in the development of the Classical style. Like his renowned father Alessandro Scarlatti, he composed in a variety of musical forms, although today he is known mainly for his 555 keyboard sonatas. He spent much of his life in the service of the Portuguese and Spanish royal families.
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, also formerly spelled Karl Philipp Emmanuel Bach, and commonly abbreviated C. P. E. Bach, was a German Classical period composer and musician, the fifth child and second surviving son of Johann Sebastian Bach and Maria Barbara Bach.
Harry Partch was an American composer, music theorist, and creator of unique musical instruments. He composed using scales of unequal intervals in just intonation, and was one of the first 20th-century composers in the West to work systematically with microtonal scales, alongside Lou Harrison. He built his own instruments in these tunings on which to play his compositions, and described the method behind his theory and practice in his book Genesis of a Music (1947).
Recitative is a style of delivery in which a singer is allowed to adopt the rhythms and delivery of ordinary speech. Recitative does not repeat lines as formally composed songs do. It resembles sung ordinary speech more than a formal musical composition.
Trevor David Pinnock is a British harpsichordist and conductor.
Historically informed performance is an approach to the performance of classical music, which aims to be faithful to the approach, manner and style of the musical era in which a work was originally conceived.
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.
Russell Keys Oberlin was an American singer and founding member of the New York Pro Musica Antiqua ensemble who became the first, and for years the only, countertenor in the United States to attain general recognition—in The New Yorker's words, "America's first star countertenor." A pioneering figure in the early music revival in the 1950s and 1960s, Oberlin sang on both sides of the Atlantic, and brought a "full, warm, vibrato-rich tone" to his recitals, recordings, and his performances in works ranging from the thirteenth-century liturgical drama The Play of Daniel to the twentieth-century opera A Midsummer Night's Dream.
New York Pro Musica was a vocal and instrumental ensemble based in New York City, which specialized in Medieval and Renaissance music. It was co-founded in 1952, under the name Pro Musica Antiqua, by Noah Greenberg, a choral director, and Bernard Krainis, a recorder player who studied with Erich Katz. Other prominent musicians who joined included Russell Oberlin and Martha Blackman and Frederick Renz, who founded Early Music Foundation after Pro Musica disbanded.
Liang Tsai-Ping was a master of the guzheng, a Chinese traditional zither. He is considered one of the 20th century's most important players and scholars of the instrument. He also played and taught the guqin.
Stephen Stubbs is a lutenist and music director and has been a leading figure in the American early music scene for nearly thirty years.
Igor Kipnis was a German-born American harpsichordist, pianist and conductor.
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his orchestral music such as the Brandenburg Concertos; instrumental compositions such as the Cello Suites; 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 vocal music 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.
Peter Watchorn is an Australian-born harpsichordist who has combined a virtuosic keyboard technique, musical scholarship and practical experience in the construction of harpsichords copied from original instruments of the 17th and 18th centuries. As well as presenting many solo public performances and broadcasts of baroque keyboard music and participating in choral and orchestral performances, he has made numerous commercial CD recordings of solo harpsichord music from the 17th and 18th centuries.
Albert Fuller was an American harpsichordist, conductor, teacher, impresario, and prominent proponent of early music. He was the first artist to record the complete keyboard works of Jean-Philippe Rameau.
Johann Sebastian Bach's music has been performed by musicians of his own time, and in the second half of the eighteenth century by his sons and students, and by the next generations of musicians and composers such as the young Beethoven. Felix Mendelssohn renewed the attention for Bach's music by his performances in the 19th century. In the 20th century Bach's music was performed and recorded by artists specializing in the music of the composer, such as Albert Schweitzer, Helmut Walcha and Karl Richter. With the advent of the historically informed performance practice Bach's music was prominently featured by artists such as Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Gustav Leonhardt and Sigiswald Kuijken.
Early Music New York is a New York City-based early music group presented by the Early Music Foundation. The group's director and conductor is Frederick Renz.
Paul C. Echols was an American musicologist, music editor and publishing executive, music educator, and conductor.
