(b Westminster, London, Jan 1648; d Oxford, Dec 14, 1710). English scholar, composer and music collector. He matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford (after early training in mathematics at Westminster School), in 1662, receiving the BA, MA and DD degrees in 1666, 1669 and 1682 respectively. He took holy orders and was assigned the rectorate at Wem, Shropshire, but chose to remain at Christ Church, becoming a canon in 1681 and dean (a unique position in Oxford as head of both college and cathedral) in 1689, also serving as vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford, 1692–5. He was a leader of the Oxford resistance to James II's Catholic advances, and under William III he became one of the chief defenders of High Church practices, publicly opposing both the comprehension of non-Anglicans and revisions to the prayer book. He was an industrious and practically minded scholar, producing books on logic, heraldry and architecture, designing a number of Oxford buildings, serving as draftsman and engraver for the Oxford Almanacks, and producing a sizable body of compositions for the English cathedral service. His account of Greek music survives in manuscript (...
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Jocelyne Aubé
(b Barcelona, March 27, 1862; d Barcelona, March 31, 1908). Spanish composer, folklorist and music critic. He studied composition with Antonio Nicolau and Anselmo Barba and piano with C.G. Vidiella in Barcelona and was music critic for various journals there, including La renaixensa, L'avenç and, from 1905 to 1908, El poble català. He published his Collecció de 6 melodies per a cant i piano and five Cansons per cant i piano (both Barcelona, 1887), which are settings of poems by Angel Guimerá, Francisco Matheu y Fornells, Apeles Mestres and Jacinto Verdaguer. He illustrated the latter volume himself, and some of his work was displayed at an exhibition of the Sociedad de Acuarelistas in Barcelona. A distinguished folklorist as well as a sensitive composer and skilful melodist, he collected Catalan folksongs and published arrangements of 23 of these in Cansons populars catalanas (Barcelona, 1891). He used native rhythms and melodies in his songs and piano pieces (among them ...
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Gerard Béhague
(b Buenos Aires, April 13, 1913; d Buenos Aires, June 2005). Venezuelan-Argentine ethnomusicologist, folklorist and composer, wife of Luis Felipe Ramón y Rivera. She studied the piano under Rafael González (1923–31) and composition with Athos Palma (1928–33) at the Buenos Aires National Conservatory of Music, instrumentation with Villa-Lobos in Brazil (1937), anthropology (1938–40) and, with Carlos Vega, folklore and musicology (1938–44) at the Museo de Ciencias Naturales de Buenos Aires. She took the doctorate in musicology in 1967 at the Argentine Catholic University with a dissertation on Argentine folk music. She was an associate member of the Instituto Argentino de Musicología from 1938 to 1950. After working as the first professor of ethnomusicology at the Escuela Nacional de Danzas de Argentina (1950–52) she moved to Caracas, Venezuela, where she has held appointments as research fellow in folklore and ethnomusicology at the Instituto Nacional de Folklore de Venezuela (...
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Svetlana Sarkisyan
(b Tehran, Nov 7, 1915; d Los Angeles, March 5, 1994). Armenian musicologist, folklorist and composer. After moving to Yerevan in 1923 he studied composition at the Yerevan Conservatory. From 1944 he taught harmony at the conservatory and completed a second degree at the Institute of Art of the Armenian Academy of Sciences with Kushnaryov, 1945–8. In 1951 he began taking part in folklore expeditions around Armenia and in 1955 he completed his dissertation at the conservatory on Armenian neumatic (khazer) notation. He joined the staff of the Institute of Arts in 1956 and was appointed professor in 1962 at the conservatory, where he also served intermittently as head of the music theory department until 1991. He was made an Honoured Representative of the Arts of Armenia in 1961. He participated in many congresses both within and outside the former Soviet Union, and was highly regarded as a teacher....
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Sigurd Berg
(b Copenhagen, March 2, 1801; d Copenhagen, Nov 8, 1880). Danish folklorist, teacher and composer. He began composing and playing the flute while still in school. After his matriculation he studied law for a time, but influenced by the composer C.E.F. Weyse he soon dedicated himself to music and attracted attention in 1823 with a cantata for the 200th anniversary of Regensen, the students' college in Copenhagen. Over the next few years he composed several more cantatas as well as incidental music for the Royal Theatre. From 1838 he was organist at the Trinitatis Kirke, and from 1843 singing master at the metropolitan school. He held both posts until his death; they led him to an intensive occupation with church and school singing. He composed a notable set of hymn melodies, many of which are still used in the Danish Church, and edited many collections of partsongs for schools, containing several of his own compositions. He also made an important collection of Danish and foreign folksongs and melodies. In ...
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Viorel Cosma
(b Lugoj, 20 March/April 2, 1877; d Bucharest, Dec 19, 1968). Romanian composer, folklorist and administrator. He studied privately in Lugoj with Josif Czegka and Sofia Vlad-Rădulescu, in Blaj with Iacob Mureşianu, in Sibiu with Hermann Kirchner and in Braşov with Paul Richter. Extremely active in the musical life of Romania, he participated in the foundation of the Romanian Opera, the Romanian National Theatre (1919), the Dima Conservatory, Cluj (1920), the Society of Romanian Composers (1920) and the Astra Conservatory, Braşov (1928); during this period he directed the opera houses in Cluj and Bucharest. He collected more than 2000 folksongs, recorded on 214 cylinders, and made use of them in his ten books of Doine şi cântece poporale (‘Doinas and Other Folksongs’) and in eight books of instrumental pieces published as Jocuri populare româneşti (‘Romanian Folkdances’); he also published a scholarly collection, ...
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Viorel Cosma and Owen Wright
[Demetrius]
(b Silişteni-Fălciu, Moldavia, Oct 26, 1673; dDmitrievka, Russia, Aug 21, 1723). Prince of Moldavia (1683, 1710–11), Romanian scholar, encyclopedist, composer, folklorist and theorist. He started his musical studies under Jeremia Cacavelas in Iaşi and continued them in Istanbul with Kemani Ahmed and Angeli. In the Ottoman capital he compiled a treatise on the theory of Turkish music which used an innovative system of musical notation based on the Arabic alphabet. At the end of this treatise, Edvar-i musiki (‘Textbook of music’), he added notations of some 350 instrumental pieces in the peşrev and semai forms, a few of them his own compositions. These notations provide an important comprehensive record of the late 17th-century Ottoman instrumental repertory.
Back in his country, as Prince of Moldavia (1710–11), he continued his ethnographic and folk music studies, recorded in Descriptio Moldaviae (1716). Appointed councillor to the Tsar of Russia, Peter I, Cantemir settled in Moscow. But he continued his musical activities, compiling (in Romanian) ...
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(von Ahn)
(b Newcastle upon Tyne, May 19, 1878; d Great Missenden, Nov 2, 1958). English collector and historian of instruments and composer. He was educated in Hanover (1892) and as a Macfarren scholar at the Royal Academy of Music (1893–1902, ARAM 1902), where he studied composition with Corder. After serving as assistant music master at Winchester College (1909–22), he returned to the RAM in 1922 as professor of harmony and counterpoint, becoming a Fellow of the RAM in the same year; he held the professorship until 1940.
Carse’s early compositions include an orchestral prelude to Byron’s Manfred, a dramatic cantata, The Lay of the Brown Rosary and two symphonies; his later works, for student orchestras and beginners, are light, tuneful and individual, and ideally suited to their purpose as teaching material. His reputation, however, rests on his study of the history of instruments and the orchestra, and on his collection of some 350 old wind instruments, which he gave to the Horniman Museum, London, in ...
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Taisiya Shcherbakova
(b Dzhalal-Oglï, nr Tbilisi, Georgia, 9/May 21, 1869; d Minsk, Dec 27, 1964). Belarusian folklorist and composer. He completed his studies in composition with Ippolitov-Ivanov at the Tbilisi Music College (1892), and then worked as a music teacher in Baku and from 1903 in the north-west region of Russia (in the towns of Kovno, Vil′no and Mstislavl′). He headed amateur societies and choirs, and began his work as a folklorist. His first volume of 53 Belarusian songs was published in Vil′no in 1910. His opera Osvobozhdyonnïy trud (‘Emancipated Labour’) was written in Mstislavl′ in 1922 and was staged there by amateurs in the same year.
After 1935 Churkin lived permanently in Minsk and devoted himself to folklore. He recorded around 3000 Belarusian, Lithuanian, Polish, Georgian, Armenian and Azerbaidjani folksongs. These served as sources for many of his instrumental works – three sinfoniettas (1925, 1949...
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[Yuly Dmitrevich]
(b Berdyansk, Crimea, 4/April 16, 1868; d Tel-Aviv, Feb 11, 1927). Russian composer, critic, lexicographer and folklorist. He studied law at Kharkov University but soon turned to music, studying theory and composition with Taneyev and Ippolitov-Ivanov at the Moscow Conservatory (1893–7). From 1897 to 1919 he worked as a music critic for the newspaper Russkiye vedomosti. In 1901 his translation of Riemann’s Lexikon into Russian with newly written sections on Russian music was published in Moscow. Although an early opera, Esther, was performed in 1894, his work as a critic overshadowed that as a composer. Under the influence of the Russian nationalist music critic Vladimir Stasov, however, he turned his attention to Jewish folklore, collecting, arranging, performing and publishing the songs of eastern European Jews. In 1909 his first album of ten Jewish folksongs appeared in Moscow; a second volume followed later in the same year. Engel continued to promote his new interest with public lectures and a series of articles in ...
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Israel J. Katz
(b Santo Domingo de la Calzada, Logroño, May 14, 1898; d Madrid, Dec 22, 1964). Spanish folklorist and composer. He received his early musical education in Burgos, where, influenced by the musicologist Nemesio Otaño, he became deeply interested in traditional folk music. He qualified as a military bandmaster in 1923 and served as bandmaster for the Spanish army until 1960. In 1926 he founded the Conservatory of Music at Badajoz, where he was the director and an instructor for 20 years. As an active collaborator with the Centro de Estudios Extremeños (1926–46) and the Spanish Institute of Musicology (from 1944) he participated in many field trips throughout the provinces of Extremadura (1924–31), La Rioja (1944–5), Granada (1946, 1960), Ciudad Real (1947), Toledo (1949), Cádiz (1957), Badajoz (1958) and Ávila (1959...
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Bo Marschner
(b Wilster, Holstein, Oct 15, 1761; d Copenhagen, Dec 30, 1825). Danish folklorist, teacher and composer of German birth. After studying in Kiel (1782–5), where he came to know C.F. Cramer, Grønland took up a post as an official of the German chancellery in Copenhagen. Though he remained a civil servant all his life, his musical activities covered a wide field: he was the teacher of C.E.F. Weyse and acted as correspondent for a number of German and Danish music periodicals. His most important work, however, was concerned with the preservation of Scandinavian folksongs. In about 1810 work on a wide scale had begun in Denmark to rescue extant traditions from the oblivion threatened by the development of communications, especially roads. A valuable outcome of this work was the recording of folksongs, both texts and tunes, and particularly their publication in five volumes (1812–14) by Abrahamson, Nyerup and Rahbek. This newly aroused interest in folksong further resulted in a number of piano arrangements of folktunes. Grønland’s contributions include two manuscript collections, in the Royal Library of Copenhagen, and his publication (...
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Sarah Fuller
(b 1163; d Jan 27, 1225). French chronicler of St Martial of Limoges and monk. Received as a boy scholar at St Martial in 1177, Itier held a succession of important offices, culminating in appointments as librarian (1204) and precentor (by 1211), posts he evidently held concurrently. Annotations in Itier's hand, scattered through surviving remnants of the St Martial library, testify to his interest in preserving the monastery books. One manuscript that he had bound includes a collection of early polyphonic music. Other musical manuscripts from the St Martial collection very probably owe their survival to his care.
Although not himself a professional scribe, Itier had charge of the monastery scriptorium and knew how to notate music. One composition in his hand, a Parisian motet based on the duplum of Perotinus's four-voice organum Sederunt ( F-Pn lat.2208, f.1), shows a musical connection between Paris and St Martial in Itier’s lifetime. The chronicle written by Itier is a central source of information on the monastery....
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Jēkabs Vītoliņš
(b Ērgļi, Vidzeme, Sept 30, 1856; d Riga, Sept 28, 1922). Latvian composer and folklorist. He was one of the founders of Latvian classical music, graduating at the St Petersburg Conservatory from Lui Homilius’s organ class (1880), Rimsky-Korsakov’s composition class (1881) and F. Homilius’s horn class (1882). He then taught theory at the Russian Imperial Music Society’s music school at Kharkiv (1882–1916) and from 1920 lived in Riga. Even when not resident there, he always maintained a close association with the musical life of his native land, giving many concerts as a horn player (sometimes in the Jurjāns brothers' horn quartet) and organist; he was one of the leading conductors in the third, fourth and fifth big Latvian song festivals (1888, 1895 and 1910). He also worked assiduously in studying Latvian folksong melodies, of which he and his colleagues collected about ...
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Svetlana Zvereva
(b Moscow, 16/Nov 28, 1856; d Moscow, Dec 17, 1926). Russian composer and folklorist. The son of a priest, he acquired his musical education at the Moscow Conservatory (1876–78), where he studied music theory, composition and the piano. In 1887 he joined the Moscow Synodal School of Church Singing as a piano teacher on the recommendation of his teacher, Tchaikovsky. In later years he taught musical and theoretical disciplines and folklore at the schools of the Synod and the Philharmonia, as well as at the People's Conservatory. He was also active as a conductor (from 1891 he was assistant to the precentor, and from 1903 precentor of the Synodal Choir), and in studying folksongs and Russian music of the Middle Ages. From 1910 to 1918 Kastal′sky was the director of the Synodal School of Church Singing and did much work in transforming it into a higher educational establishment for choral training....
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Lada Brashovanova
(b Ruse, Sept 23, 1925). Bulgarian folklorist and composer. He graduated in 1952 in both theory and performance at the State Academy of Music in Sofia and worked at the Music Institute of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, as junior research fellow (1953–66) and senior research fellow (1966–89). He received the doctorate at the institute in 1973 with a dissertation on Bulgarian polyphonic folksong; in 1979 he was appointed professor of ethnomusicology at the State Academy of Music and in 1989, senior research fellow at the Institute for Folklore of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. His areas of research include various aspects of Bulgarian and Jewish folk music and he has been a member of the Union of Bulgarian Composers' executive committee since 1965. Much of his work in the 1960s on the folksong from particular regions in Bulgaria was published in Izvestiya na Instituta z muzika...
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Ludwik Bielawski
( b Przysucha, Opoczno district, Feb 22, 1814; d Kraków, June 3, 1890). Polish folklorist and composer . He was educated at the Warsaw Lyceum (1823–30) and studied the piano with Franciszek Vetter. He then worked in a bank, continuing his musical studies with Józef Elsner and I.F. Dobrzyński and later in Berlin (1835–6) with Girschner and Karol Rungenhagen. After returning from Berlin he taught the piano in Warsaw, Mitau (now Jelgava, Latvia) and Homel (Belarus). He was also active as a composer, chiefly of songs and dances whose inspiration he drew from folk music; most of these were published. His cycles of kujawiak proved the most popular of his works. Kolberg also composed the music for three one-act stage entertainments on rural themes, J.K. Gregorowicz's Janek spod Ojcowa (‘Johnny from Ojców’; Warsaw, 1853), Teofil Lenartowicz's Król pasterzy (‘The Shepherd King’; Warsaw, 1859) and Seweryna Pruszakowa’s ...
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Israel J. Katz
(b Ciudad Rodrigo, Feb 3, 1868; d Salamanca, June 13, 1928). Spanish folklorist, organist and composer. His talent as a musician was nurtured during his early childhood. After serving as an organist at a local church, Ledesma became organist at the cathedral in Ciudad Rodrigo (1889–98) and at Salamanca Cathedral (1898), a post he held until his death. He was ordained a priest in Salamanca. He was a famous improviser and a prolific composer of organ and liturgical music, but he is best remembered for his Folk-lore ó Cancionero salmantino (Madrid, 1907/R), which contains 404 melodies collected from the rich oral tradition of his native province. This was awarded a prize in an open competition by the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de S Fernando (Madrid), and was later published by the Diputación Provincial de Salamanca; the collection remains one of the most outstanding in Spanish folklore. An unpublished second volume containing 903 items was left to his disciple Bernardo García-Bernalt Huertos in ...
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Walter Blankenburg
(b Schneeberg, Saxony, April 4, 1515; d Königsberg, Nov 27, 1585). German jurist and humanist. He was one of the children of a Saxon mine inspector. In 1527 he went to school and later to university in Leipzig; in 1535 he took the Master of Arts degree and remained as a teacher at the university until 1550, when he became Hofmeister (private tutor) to two noble students at Leuven University and, from 1551, at the University of Paris. On returning to Leipzig in 1556, he was appointed councillor and chancellor to the Prince of Meissen (Saxony). In 1562 he went to Bologna to study at the university, taking the degree of Doctor of Laws, and in 1563 he was called by Duke Albrecht of Prussia to the chair of law at Königsberg University, where he stayed until his retirement in 1580.
Lobwasser's great achievement was the translation of the Genevan (or Huguenot) Psalter into German, following the original verse forms exactly, in the years immediately after its completion in ...
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Israel J. Katz
( b Cartagena, Oct 24, 1863; d St Blasien, Baden, Feb 27, 1929). Spanish composer, folklorist and music critic . His father was a captain of a marine infantry battalion, and he began his musical training under a military bandsman in his father's regiment. In the early 1880s, while stationed in Madrid as a second lieutenant, he began to study harmony, counterpoint, fugue and composition with Ruperto Chapí, remaining his sole disciple until Chapí's death in 1909. During these years he devoted most of his spare time to composition. He was a member of the Sociedad Filarmónica Madrileña (1901–11) and a founder-member of La Asociación Wagneriana Madrileña (inaugurated 4 May 1911). He was music critic for the periodical El mundo (1907–15) and also contributed articles to ABC. He also conducted numerous concerts of the Sociedad de Conciertos, Madrid, and the S Cecilia choral society. In ...