Safford Cape

Last updated

Safford Cape (28 June 1906 - 26 March 1973) was an American conductor, composer and musicologist. [1]

Born and educated in Denver, Colorado, Cape moved to Belgium in 1925 to further his studies in composition and musicology. [1] From 1933, after a few years of chamber music composition, Cape began focusing on the performance of medieval and Renaissance music. [1] To this end, he founded and conducted the Pro Musica Antiqua of Brussels, an ensemble specialising on music from the medieval and Renaissance periods. [1] This group toured throughout Europe and the Americas and produced many recordings. [1] Cape's work inspired Noah Greenberg to form a similar ensemble in America, the New York Pro Musica which was recorded first by EMS Recordings. [2]

For health reasons, Cape retired in 1967 and died in Brussels six years later. [1]

Related Research Articles

Renaissance music Western musical period between the 15th and 17th centuries

Renaissance music is vocal and instrumental music written and performed in Europe during the Renaissance era. Consensus among music historians has been to start the era around 1400, with the end of the medieval era, and to close it around 1600, with the beginning of the Baroque period, therefore commencing the musical Renaissance about a hundred years after the beginning of the Renaissance as it is understood in other disciplines.

Guillaume de Machaut Medieval French poet and composer

Guillaume de Machaut was a French poet and composer of late Medieval music who was the central figure of the ars nova style. Immensely influential, Machaut is regarded as the most important composer and poet of the 14th century and is the first significant composer whose name is known. Daniel Leech-Wilkinson called him "the last great poet who was also a composer", and well into the 15th century Machaut's poetry was greatly admired and imitated by other poets, including Geoffrey Chaucer.

Guillaume Du Fay Franco-Flemish Renaissance composer

Guillaume Du Fay was a Franco-Flemish composer and music theorist of the early Renaissance. Regarded as the leading European composer by his contemporaries, his music was widely performed and copied. Du Fay held various music positions during his lifetime, and was associated with the Burgundian School as well as among the first composers, or at least a predecessor to the Franco-Flemish School.

Joel Cohen is an American musician specializing in early music repertoires. Cohen graduated from Classical High School in Providence, Rhode Island. in 1959, and Brown University in 1963. He continued graduate education at Harvard University. From 1968 to 2008 he was the director of the Boston Camerata, a prominent American early music ensemble. He remains connected to the Boston Camerata as Music Director Emeritus. Cohen founded the Camerata Mediterranea in 1990 and incorporated it as a nonprofit research institute in France in 2007. He performs on lute and guitar and sings, but is best known as an organizer and creator of concert programs and sound recordings. He has also written extensively on musical topices. In recent years Cohen's research and performance activities have centered on early American repertoires, as well as southern European repertoires of the Middle Ages. Many of his projects in this latter category involve collaboration with Middle Eastern musicians.

New York Pro Musica was a vocal and instrumental ensemble that 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.

<i>Messe de Nostre Dame</i>

Messe de Nostre Dame is a polyphonic mass composed before 1365 by French poet and composer Guillaume de Machaut. Widely regarded as one of the masterpieces of medieval music and of all religious music, it is historically notable as the earliest complete setting of the Ordinary of the Mass attributable to a single composer.

The general discussion of how to perform music from ancient or earlier times did not become an important subject of interest until the 19th century, when Europeans began looking to ancient culture generally, and musicians began to discover the musical riches from earlier centuries. The idea of performing early music more "authentically", with a sense of incorporating performance practice, was more completely established in the 20th century, creating a modern early music revival that continues today.

Karen P. Thomas, composer and conductor, is the Artistic Director and Conductor of Seattle Pro Musica and Director of Music at University Unitarian Church. With Seattle Pro Musica she has produced six CD recordings, and has received the Margaret Hillis Award for Choral Excellence and the ASCAP-Chorus America Award for Adventuresome Programming of Contemporary Music. Ms. Thomas has guest conducted at international festivals in Europe and North America, and has served on the boards of the American Choral Director's Association for Washington State, the Conductor's Guild, the League-ISCM and the International Alliance for Women in Music. Ms. Thomas is a recipient of grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and ASCAP, among others. Her compositions have been awarded prizes in various competitions, and her commissions include works for the Grand Jubilee 2000 in Rome, the American Guild of Organists, and the Goodwill Arts Festival. Her compositions are regularly performed internationally, by groups such as The Hilliard Ensemble, and have been praised as "superb work of the utmost sensitivity and beauty." Her conducting has received critical praise for its "integrity and high purpose...delivered with taste and impeccable musicianship."

Pro Cantione Antiqua of London (PCA) is a British choral group which was founded in 1968 by tenor James Griffett, counter-tenor Paul Esswood, and conductor and producer Mark Brown. Their first concert was at St Bartholomew's, Smithfield with Brian Brockless conducting but, from an early stage, they were closely associated with conductor and musicologist Bruno Turner. Arguably, they were the leading British performers of a cappella music, especially early music, prior to the founding of the Tallis Scholars.

Peter Burlingham Child is an American composer, teacher, and musical analyst. He is Professor of Music at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and was a composer in residence with the New England Philharmonic.

Ars Nova Singers

The Ars Nova Singers is a choral ensemble based in Boulder, Colorado, USA. Founded in 1986, Ars Nova Singers is composed of about 40 selectively auditioned singers from the Boulder / Denver metropolitan area. Ars Nova has achieved significant national recognition, recording ten critically acclaimed solo recordings as well as performing on seven recordings with Boulder composer and instrumentalist Bill Douglas (musician).

EMS Recordings was founded in 1949 by Jack Skurnick in New York City. The company won first prize at the Audio Fair of 1950 for the high quality and interest of its recordings. It issued the first recording of works of Edgard Varese.

Pro Musica Antiqua may refer to:

Bruno Turner is a British musicologist, choral conductor, broadcaster, publisher and businessman. His scholarship and recordings have focused on early music, especially of Spanish polyphony.

Gabriel Garrido is an Argentinian conductor specialising in Italian baroque and the recovery of the baroque musical heritage of Latin America.

Donald Harris was an American composer who taught music at The Ohio State University for 22 years. He was Dean of the College of the Arts from 1988 to 1997.

John Griffiths (musician)

John Griffiths is a musician and musicologist specialised in music for guitar and early plucked instruments, especially the vihuela and lute. He has researched aspects of the sixteenth-century Spanish vihuela, its history and its music. He has also had an international career as a solo lutenist, vihuelist, and guitarist, and as a member of the pioneer Australian early music group La Romanesca. After a thirty-year career at the University of Melbourne (1980–2011), he now works as a freelance scholar and performer.

Martha Elizabeth Blackman is an American viola da gamba player and lutenist, and the first American to perform on and teach the viol.

Judith Davidoff is an American viol player, cellist, and performer on the medieval bowed instruments. 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.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Schott, Howard. "Cape, Safford". Grove Music Online . Oxford University Press.Missing or empty |url= (help)
  2. Randel, Don Michael (1996). The Harvard Biographical Dictionary of Music. Harvard University Press. p. 331.