Marius Van Altena
Marius van Altena, born Marius Hendrikus Schweppe (10 October 1938) is a Dutch tenor. He was one of the pioneers of historically informed performance of Baroque and Renaissance music. He has also sung Baroque opera, worked as conductor and as an academic teacher. Career Born in Amsterdam, Marius van Altena graduated from the Conservatorium van Amsterdam. In 1973, he was the Evangelist in the first historically informed performance in the Netherlands of Bach's ''St Matthew Passion''. Johan van der Meer conducted the Groningse Bachvereniging, the Vox Christi was Max van Egmond, the other soloists were three boys of the Tölzer Knabenchor, René Jacobs, Harry Geraerts, Michiel ten Houte de Lange, Frits van Erven Dorens and Harry van der Kamp. Ton Koopman and Bob van Asperen played the organs. The performance was recorded live. With van der Meer he performed and recorded Bach's ''Mass in B minor'' in 1975 at the Holland Festival, the orchestra was La Petite Bande with conce ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Amsterdam
Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the Capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population of 907,976 within the city proper, 1,558,755 in the City Region of Amsterdam, urban area and 2,480,394 in the Amsterdam metropolitan area, metropolitan area. Located in the Provinces of the Netherlands, Dutch province of North Holland, Amsterdam is colloquially referred to as the "Venice of the North", for its large number of canals, now designated a World Heritage Site, UNESCO World Heritage Site. Amsterdam was founded at the mouth of the Amstel River that was dammed to control flooding; the city's name derives from the Amstel dam. Originally a small fishing village in the late 12th century, Amsterdam became a major world port during the Dutch Golden Age of the 17th century, when the Netherlands was an economic powerhouse. Amsterdam is th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Mass In B Minor
The Mass in B minor (), BWV 232, is an extended setting of the Mass ordinary by Johann Sebastian Bach. The composition was completed in 1749, the year before the composer's death, and was to a large extent based on earlier work, such as a Sanctus Bach had composed in 1724. Sections that were specifically composed to complete the Mass in the late 1740s include the "Et incarnatus est" part of the Credo. As usual for its time, the composition is formatted as a Neapolitan mass, consisting of a succession of choral movements with a broad orchestral accompaniment, and sections in which a more limited group of instrumentalists accompanies one or more vocal soloists. Among the more unusual characteristics of the composition is its scale: a total performance time of around two hours, [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Heinz Hennig
Heinz Hennig (25 May 1927 – 29 January 2002) was a German choral conductor and an academic teacher, known for founding the Knabenchor Hannover in 1950 and leading it until 2001.Heinz Hennig on the bach-cantatas website, 2001 Career Born in , Heinz Hennig was educated at the boarding school Musisches Gymnasium Frankfurt, namely by Kurt Thomas. He studied in Hannover. In 1950 he founded the[...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Knabenchor Hannover
The Knabenchor Hannover (Hannover Boys' Choir) is a boys choir founded in 1950 by Heinz Hennig, who served as conductor until the end of 2001. Since 2002, the conductor has been Jörg Breiding. History and music The Knabenchor Hannover has traditionally performed music by 17th-century composers, namely Heinrich Schütz. The choir's five Schütz recordings, conducted by Hennig between 1982 and 1999, set standards for performances of this repertoire; four of them won prizes such as the Deutscher Schallplattenpreis. The choir turned to works of Andreas Hammerschmidt in 1998, recording his sacred choral music. The Knabenchor Hannover was among the first choirs to take an interest in historically informed performance and achieved international acclaim. Conductors such as Gustav Leonhardt, Ton Koopman, Alan Gilbert, Ingo Metzmacher and Christoph Eschenbach regularly work with the choir, as do ensembles such as the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, the Akademie für Alte Musik Be ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Gustav Leonhardt
Gustav Maria Leonhardt (30 May 1928 – 16 January 2012) 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. Leonhardt professionally played many instruments, including the harpsichord, pipe organ, claviorganum (a combination of harpsichord and organ), clavichord, fortepiano and piano. He also conducted orchestras and choruses. Biography Gustav Leonhardt was born in 's-Graveland, near Hilversum, and studied organ and harpsichord from 1947 to 1950 with Eduard Müller at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel. In 1950, he made his debut as a harpsichordist in Vienna, where he studied musicology. He was professor of harpsichord at the Academy of Music from 1952 to 1955 and at the Amsterdam Conservatory from 1954. He was also a church organist. Career Leonhardt performed and conducted a variety of solo, chamber, orchestral, operatic, and choral m ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Leonhardt-Consort
Leonhardt-Consort, also known as the Leonhardt Baroque Ensemble, was a group of instrumentalists which its director, the keyboard player Gustav Leonhardt founded in 1955 to play baroque music. The Consort was active until around 1990, although some members including Leonhardt himself continued to perform after that date. The ensemble was based in the Netherlands, although it included people whom Leonhardt knew from Vienna, where he taught at the Academy of Music at the beginning of the 1950s. When it was founded the ensemble consisted of Leonhardt, his wife Marie (a violinist) and other string players. It expanded to include wind players such as Frans Brüggen. From early in the ensemble's history they collaborated with singers such as the counter-tenor Alfred Deller. The music of Johann Sebastian Bach was central to the work of Leonhardt and his ensemble. In collaboration with the Concentus Musicus Wien, conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt, they recorded from 1971 to 1990 a compl ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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David Willcocks
Sir David Valentine Willcocks, (30 December 1919 – 17 September 2015) was a British choral conductor, organist, composer and music administrator. He was particularly well known for his association with the Choir of King's College, Cambridge, which he directed from 1957 to 1974, making frequent broadcasts and recordings. Several of the descants and carol arrangements he wrote for the annual service of Nine Lessons and Carols were published in the series of books ''Carols for Choirs'' which he edited along with Reginald Jacques and John Rutter. He was also director of the Royal College of Music in London. During the Second World War (1939–1945) he served as an officer in the British Army, and was decorated with the Military Cross for his actions on Hill 112 during the Battle of Normandy in July 1944. His elder son, Jonathan Willcocks, is also a composer. Biography Born in Newquay in Cornwall, Willcocks began his musical training as a chorister at Westminster Abbey from ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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King's College Choir
The Choir of King's College, Cambridge is an English Anglican choir. It is considered one of today's most accomplished and renowned representatives of the great English choral tradition. It was created by King Henry VI, who founded King's College, Cambridge, in 1441, to provide daily singing in his Chapel, which remains the main task of the choir to this day. Today the choir is directed by Daniel Hyde and derives much of its fame from the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, broadcast worldwide to millions on Christmas Eve every year, and the TV service Carols from King's which accompanies it. The choir commissions a carol from a contemporary composer for each year's festival. History Early history The original statutes specified that the choir should consist of ten chaplains, six clerks (lay singers) and sixteen choristers who were to be "poor and needy boys, of sound condition and honest conversation ... knowing competently how to read and sing". Perhaps recognising the wor ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Gerhard Schmidt-Gaden
Gerhard Schmidt-Gaden (born 19 June 1937) is a German conductor, especially a choral conductor, and an academic teacher. He founded and conducted the Tölzer Knabenchor. Life Born in Karlovy Vary, Czechoslovakia, Schmidt-Gaden studied conducting with Kurt Eichhorn in Munich, choral conducting with Kurt Thomas in Leipzig, and singing with Helge Rosvaenge, Otto Iro and Mario Tonelli. In 1956 he founded the Tölzer Knabenchor, a boys' choir which achieved international fame within a few years. He conducted the choir until 2016. He was influenced by Carl Orff, Hans Werner Henze, Herbert von Karajan, August Everding and Claudio Abbado. His musical development was particularly influenced by his longstanding collaboration with Nikolaus Harnoncourt, with the Tölzer Knabenchor performing in Harnoncourt's first recordings of Bach's works in historically informed performance. In 1978, Schmidt-Gaden founded the "Florilegium Musicum", a chamber orchestra for early music with original i ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Bach Cantatas (Teldec)
J. S. Bach - Das Kantatenwerk is a classical music recording project initiated by the record label of Telefunken in 1971 (first recordings had been made in December 1970) to record all 193 sacred Bach cantatas. The project was entrusted to Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Gustav Leonhardt. Each conductor had his own instrumental ensemble, based in Austria and the Netherlands respectively. The project was the first attempt at a complete recording of the sacred cantatas, but Harnoncourt and Leonhardt were still working on the cantatas when a project which started later, led by Helmuth Rilling, Gächinger Kantorei and Bach-Collegium Stuttgart completed a recording of the sacred cantatas and oratorios on Bach's 300th birthday, 21 March 1985. Since Rilling recorded on modern instruments the Telefunken (then Teldec) project could at least claim, when the project completed in 1990, to be the first recording using historical instruments, with boys' choirs and boy soloists for most soprano an ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Bach Cantata
The cantatas composed by Johann Sebastian Bach, known as Bach cantatas ( German: ), are a body of work consisting of over 200 surviving independent works, and at least several dozen that are considered lost. As far as known, Bach's earliest cantatas date from 1707, the year he moved to Mühlhausen, although he may have begun composing them at his previous post in Arnstadt. Most of Bach's church cantatas date from his first years as and director of church music in Leipzig, a position which he took up in 1723. Working for Leipzig's and , it was part of Bach's job to perform a church cantata every Sunday and holiday, conducting soloists, the Thomanerchor and orchestra as part of the church service. In his first years in Leipzig, starting after Trinity of 1723, Bach regularly composed a new cantata every week, although some of these cantatas were adapted (at least in part) from work he had composed before his Leipzig era. Works from three annual cycles of cantatas for the l ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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St John Passion
The ''Passio secundum Joannem'' or ''St John Passion'' (german: Johannes-Passion, link=no), BWV 245, is a Passion or oratorio by Johann Sebastian Bach, the older of the surviving Passions by Bach. It was written during his first year as director of church music in Leipzig and was first performed on April 7, 1724, at Good Friday Vespers at the St. Nicholas Church. The structure of the work falls in two halves, intended to flank a sermon. The anonymous libretto draws on existing works (notably by Barthold Heinrich Brockes) and is compiled from recitatives and choruses narrating the Passion of Christ as told in the Gospel of John, ariosos and arias reflecting on the action, and chorales using hymn tunes and texts familiar to a congregation of Bach's contemporaries. Compared with the '' St Matthew Passion'', the ''St John Passion'' has been described as more extravagant, with an expressive immediacy, at times more unbridled and less "finished". The work is most often hear ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |