Laurence Dreyfus | |
---|---|
Born | 1952 (age 71–72) |
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | Yeshiva University Juilliard School Columbia University Brussels Conservatoire |
Occupation(s) | Musicologist, lecturer |
Years active | 1980–present |
Musical career | |
Origin | Cherry Hill, New Jersey, United States |
Instrument(s) | Viola da gamba |
Years active | 1995–present |
Laurence Dreyfus, FBA (born 1952) is an American musicologist and player of the viola da gamba who was University Lecturer and Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford.
Dreyfus was born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts, and lived in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, [1] where he attended Cherry Hill High School West. [2] He earned a B.A. at Yeshiva University, studied cello under Leonard Rose at the Juilliard School, and earned his Ph.D. in musicology at Columbia University, where he studied with the distinguished Bach scholar Christoph Wolff. Commuting from New York, he studied viola da gamba with Wieland Kuijken, earning two diplomas from the Brussels Conservatoire, including its Diplome supérieur with Highest Distinction.
Dreyfus taught at Yale University between 1982 and 1989, initially as an assistant professor and then as an associate professor from 1988. He was then an associate professor at The University of Chicago (1989–90) and Stanford University (1990–93), before he moved in 1992 to London to become Professor of Performance Studies in Music at King's College London and hold a chair at the Royal Academy of Music. He was appointed Thurston Dart Professor of Performance Studies in Music in 1996. In 2002, he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy for his musicological work and in 2005 left King's to be a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, where he remained until retiring in 2015. He was also Professor of Music at the University of Oxford from 2006 until retirement. [3]
Dreyfus is a noted scholar of both J. S. Bach and Richard Wagner. He has published three books with Harvard University Press: Bach's Continuo Group (1986), Bach and the Patterns of Invention (1996) (which won the Otto Kinkeldey Award for best book of the year from the American Musicological Society) and Wagner and the Erotic Impulse (2010).
As a performer, Dreyfus has made a number of solo and ensemble recordings, some of which have won major awards. As a soloist, he has recorded the viola da gamba sonatas of J.S. Bach, the Pièces de violes of Marin Marais, and Pièces de clavecin en concert of Jean-Philippe Rameau, all with harpsichordist Ketil Haugsand on the Simax label. He founded the viol consort Phantasm, which won one Gramophone Award in 1997 for their recording of Purcell's Fantasies and another in 2004 for its recording of Consorts by Orlando Gibbons; this disc was also a finalist for Gramophone's Record of the Year. Their 2005 CD Four Temperaments, with Elizabethan music by William Byrd, Alfonso Ferrabosco the younger, Robert Parsons (composer) and Thomas Tallis was nominated for awards by Gramphone and the BBC Music Magazine. The group has also recorded works by William Byrd, John Jenkins (composer), William Lawes, Richard Mico, Matthew Locke, and other composers, as well as Bach's Art of Fugue .
In August 2015, Dreyfus was a signatory to a letter criticising The Jewish Chronicle 's reporting of Corbyn's association with alleged antisemites. [4]
The viol, viola da gamba, or informally gamba, is any one of a family of bowed, fretted, and stringed instruments with hollow wooden bodies and pegboxes where the tension on the strings can be increased or decreased to adjust the pitch of each of the strings. Frets on the viol are usually made of gut, tied on the fingerboard around the instrument's neck, to enable the performer to stop the strings more cleanly. Frets improve consistency of intonation and lend the stopped notes a tone that better matches the open strings. Viols first appeared in Spain and Italy in the mid-to-late 15th century, and were most popular in the Renaissance and Baroque (1600–1750) periods. Early ancestors include the Arabic rebab and the medieval European vielle, but later, more direct possible ancestors include the Venetian viole and the 15th- and 16th-century Spanish vihuela, a six-course plucked instrument tuned like a lute that looked like but was quite distinct from the four-course guitar.
John Jenkins (1592–1678), was an English composer who was born in Maidstone, Kent and who died at Kimberley, Norfolk.
Hille Perl is a German virtuoso performer of the viola da gamba and lirone.
Phantasm is a viol consort currently based in Germany. It was founded in 1994 by Laurence Dreyfus. It catapulted into international prominence when its debut CD won a Gramophone Award for the Best Baroque Instrumental Recording of 1997. Since then, they have released seventeen further recordings, won several awards, and in the words of their website, "have become recognised as the most exciting viol consort active on the world scene today".
Vittorio Ghielmi is an Italian musician, conductor, composer. Compared by critics to Jasha Heifetz ("Diapason") for his virtuosity, and described as "An Alchemist of sound" for the intensity and versatility of his musical interpretations, Vittorio Ghielmi attracted notice while still very young for his new approach to the viola da gamba and to the sound of early music repertoire. His multifaceted training has made him an appreciated and creative musician as well as a sought-after conductor and coach for modern orchestras or orchestras with original instruments. He is Professor for viola da gamba and Head of the Department für Alte Musik at the Mozarteum Universität Salzburg and visiting professor at the Royal College of London. He is graduate at the Università Cattolica di Milano. He was born in Milan, Italy, where as a child he began his study of music with the violin, the double bass and later the viola da gamba and composition. In 1995 he was the winner of the "Concorso Internazionale Romano Romanini per strumenti ad arco" (Brescia). His fieldwork within old musical traditions surviving in forgotten parts of the world and bringing new perspectives to the interpretation of European "early music" led to him being presented the "Erwin Bodky Award" . He studied the viol with Roberto Gini, Wieland Kuijken and Christophe Coin (Paris). Associations with instrument maker, engineer and humanist Luc Breton (CH) as well as with many musicians of non-European traditions have been fundamental to his musical career, creating a deeper reflexion on the nature of sound used in early and modern European tradition . As viola da gamba soloist or conductor, he has appeared with many of the world's most famous orchestras in the fields of both classical and ancient music. He performs since youth recitals in duos with his brother Lorenzo Ghielmi and with the lutenist Luca Pianca, in the most important halls. As soloist or chamber musician, he has shared the stage with artists such as Gustav Leonhardt (duo), Cecilia Bartoli, Andràs Schiff, Thomas Quasthoff, Mario Brunello, Viktoria Mullova, Giuliano Carmignola, Christophe Coin, Reinhard Goebel, Giovanni Antonini, Ottavio Dantone, Enrico Bronzi etc. He is one of the few viola da gamba players regularly invited to appear as a soloist-conductor with orchestra. He has been invited to play in the world première of many new compositions, many of which have been dedicated to him . From 2007 to 2011 he was assistant to Riccardo Muti at the Salzburg festival. In 2007 he conceived with the Argentinian singer Graciela Gibelli and conducted a show, based on Buxtehude's "Membra Jesu Nostri", with the American film maker Marc Reshovsky (Hollywood) and the Swedish choir "Rilke Ensemble" (G.Eriksson); the project was produced by the Semana de musica religiosa de Cuenca (Madrid) and brought later to the Musikfest Stuttgart in 2010. Over three nights in 2009, he gave a performance of Forqueray's complete works for viola da gamba at De Bijloke, Ghent (B). He has been artist in residence at Musikfest Stuttgart 2010, the Segovia festival 2011, and the Bozar Bruxelles 2011. In 2012 he conducted Handel's Water music at the Portogruaro Festival (Venice) with a spectacle on the river Lemene conceived by Monique Arnaud. In 2018 he conducted the Opera Pygmalion by Rameau at the Drottningholms Slottsteater (Stockholm), with the régie of Saburo Teshigawara.; the new conception of this spectacle was so described in the Financial Times : "In their new production for Drottningholm Slottsteater, the Japanese dancer and choreographer Saburo Teshigawaraand Italian conductor and viola da gamba player Vittorio Ghielmi create a genuine masterpiece which combines exquisite music-making with experimental dance and modern lighting effects with the theatre’s unique 18th-century stage technology. Indeed, it is some time since the theatre has been so marvellously and innovatively put to use.“
Jonathan Manson is a Scottish cellist and viol player. Born in Edinburgh, he studied cello with Jane Cowan and later went on to the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY, where he studied with Steven Doane and Christel Thielmann. He studied viola da gamba with Wieland Kuijken in The Hague.
Nigel North is an English lutenist, musicologist, and pedagogue.
Bass violin is the modern term for various 16th- and 17th-century bass instruments of the violin family. They were the direct ancestor of the modern cello. Bass violins were usually somewhat larger than the modern cello, but tuned to the same nominal pitches or sometimes one step lower. Contemporaneous names for these instruments include "basso de viola da braccio," "basso da braccio," or the generic term "violone," which simply meant "large fiddle." The instrument differed from the violone of the viol, or "viola da gamba" family in that like the other violins it had at first three, and later usually four strings, as opposed to five, six, or seven strings, it was tuned in fifths, and it had no frets. With its F-holes and stylized C-bouts it also more closely resembled the viola da braccio.
Desmond John Dupré was an English lutenist, guitarist, gambist and a prominent figure in the 20th century revival of early music. He was known particularly for his recordings on lute and viola da gamba, notably with counter-tenor Alfred Deller.
August Wenzinger (1905–1996) was a prominent cellist, viol player, conductor, teacher, and music scholar from Basel, Switzerland. He was a pioneer of historically informed performance, both as a master of the viola da gamba and as a conductor of Baroque orchestral music and operas.
John Tseng-Hsin Hsu was a viol player, barytonist, cellist, and conductor. He was a leading specialist in French baroque viol music and a professor of music at Cornell University.
Markku Luolajan-Mikkola is a Finnish baroque cellist and viol player. Born in Helsinki, he studied cello with Arto Noras at the Sibelius Academy, where he received his diploma in 1983. Later, an interest in baroque music led him to summer courses with Laurence Dreyfus, and afterwards he went on to Royal Conservatory of The Hague where he studied viola da gamba with Wieland Kuijken and baroque cello with Jaap ter Linden, receiving postgraduate diplomas in viola da gamba and baroque cello in 1992.
Amy Domingues is an American viola da gamba player and cellist.
Alison Crum, is an English viol player.
The Sonata in G major for two flutes and basso continuo, BWV 1039, is a trio sonata by Johann Sebastian Bach. It is a version, for a different instrumentation, of the Gamba Sonata, BWV 1027. The first, second and fourth movement of these sonatas also exist as a trio sonata for organ.
The sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsichord, BWV 1027–1029, are three sonatas composed by Johann Sebastian Bach for viola da gamba and harpsichord. They probably date from the late 1730s and early 1740s.
Peggie Sampson (1912–2004) was a cellist, viola da gambist and educator.
Judith Davidoff was an American viol player, cellist, and performer on the medieval bowed instruments. She was considered the “Grande Dame of the viol”, "a master of the viola da gamba and other stringed instruments" and "a central part of the early-music scene." Her recorded performances reflect her wide range of repertoire and styles, including such works as Schoenberg's Verklaerte Nacht and 13th-century monody. She is responsible for the catalog of 20th- and 21st-century viol music.
Siegfried Pank is a German cellist and viol player. He was a member of the Gewandhausorchester in Leipzig from 1962 to 1980, and toured with the Neues Bachisches Collegium Musicum. He turned to playing the viol in historically informed performance, and lectured cello and viol at the Musikhochschule Leipzig from 1984, as professor from 1988 to 2001. He was a co-founder of the International Telemann Association in 1991, serving as its president from 2012.
Thomas Fritzsch is a German viol player and musicologist who has appeared internationally. He has been instrumental in reviving rediscovered music, such as Telemann's 12 Fantasias for Viola da Gamba and works by Carl Friedrich Abel, playing them in concerts and first recordings, and publishing them by Edition Güntersberg. He initiated a music festival in Köthen, Abel's hometown, on the occasion of the composer's tercentenary in 2023.