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(b Dobitschen, Saxe-Altenburg, Jan 4, 1720; d Berlin, Dec 2, 1774). German musicographer, composer, organist, singing master and conductor. His father occupied an important post as government agent and jurist in Dobitschen. Burney, who visited the Agricolas in 1772, reported that Johann Friedrich’s mother, born Maria Magdalena Manke, ‘was a near relation of the late Mr Handel, and in correspondence with him till the time of his death’; but later Handel research has failed to substantiate this claim.

Agricola began his study of music as a young child. In 1738 he entered the University of Leipzig, where he studied law; during this time he was a pupil of J.S. Bach and visited Dresden, where he heard performances of Passion oratorios and Easter music by Hasse. In 1741 he moved to Berlin, became a pupil of Quantz, made the acquaintance of C.P.E. Bach, C.H. Graun and other musicians, and embarked on a career that touched many aspects of Berlin’s musical life. He became keenly interested in music criticism and theoretical speculation in Berlin, and his work as a musicographer has proved to be his most lasting accomplishment. In ...

(Eugene)

(b West Hempstead, NY, April 26, 1956). American music educator, choral arranger, editor, and conductor. He was a member of the American Boychoir (1969–71), and received degrees from St Olaf College (BM 1978), the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (MM 1980), and Michigan State University (DMA 1987). He was on the summer faculty of the American Boychoir School and now serves on the Board of Trustees. He taught at Calvin College (1980–90) before becoming the fourth conductor of the St Olaf Choir and the Harry R. and Thora H. Tosdal Endowed Professor of Music (1990–). Armstrong is the editor for Earthsongs publications and co-editor of the St. Olaf Choir Series. He chronicled the history of the St Olaf Choir in his doctoral dissertation. He is featured on an instructional video for adolescent singers, Body, Mind, Spirit, Voice (2002...

(Carlo Zanobi Salvadore Maria)

(b Florence, Sept 8/14, 1760; d Paris, March 15, 1842). Italian, composer, conductor, teacher, administrator, theorist, and music publisher, active in France. He took French citizenship, probably in 1794, and was a dominant figure in Parisian musical life for half a century. He was a successful opera composer during the Revolutionary period, and had comparable success with religious music from the beginning of the Restoration. He was made director of the Paris Conservatoire and consolidated its pre-eminent position in music education in Europe.

In the biographical preface to his work catalogue, compiled in 1831, Cherubini gave 8 and 14 September as his dates of birth, but the records of the baptistery of S Giovanni state that he was born on 14 September (and baptized the following day). He was the tenth of 12 children. It has been claimed that his mother died when he was four years old (Pougin, ...

(b Parsonfield, ME, Aug 3, 1820; d Hyde Park, MA, Sept 29, 1915). American composer, editor, music educator, and conductor. He attended Parsonfield Academy and Effingham Union Academy (NH) as a boy, then matriculated at Dracut Academy (MA), intending to become a physician. His father, a prosperous farmer, had taught him to play the cello, and that sparked an abiding interest in music. He moved to the Boston area in 1841, where he attended singing schools under Benjamin F. Baker and George F. Root. In 1844 he began more formal musical training with Isaac B. Woodbury in Boston, studying voice, piano, organ, and music theory. Emerson moved to Salem, Massachusetts, afterwards, where he taught music privately, was involved in local school matters, and directed a choir. He was later the organist and music director at Bullfinch Street Church, Boston, for four years, then at Second Congregational Church, Greenfield, MA for eight years, while teaching concurrently at Powers’ Institute in Bernardstown. By the 1870s he was devoting himself full time to editing, composing, compiling, and conducting (some 350 festivals and musical conventions); he also sang and was known widely as a lecturer....

(b Frauental, Styria, May 5, 1842; d Vöslau, nr Vienna, Oct 5, 1899). Austrian conductor, teacher, editor and composer, brother of Robert Fuchs. He studied theory with Simon Sechter in Vienna and was appointed Kapellmeister of the Bratislava Opera in 1864. He then worked as an opera conductor in Brno (where his only opera, Zingara, was first produced in 1872), Kassel, Cologne, Hamburg, Leipzig and finally, from 1880, at the Vienna Hofoper. In 1873 he married the singer Anthonie Exner in Kassel. Fuchs became a professor of composition at the Vienna Conservatory in 1888 and succeeded Hellmesberger as its director in 1893; the next year he received the title of assistant Hofkapellmeister for his work at the court opera. He played an important part in preparing the Schubert Gesamtausgabe, editing the dramatic works and some of the orchestral music. He also edited operas by Handel, Gluck and Mozart and wrote songs and piano pieces....

(b Paris, Mar 27, 1851; d Paris, Dec 2, 1931). French composer, teacher, conductor and editor of early music. His famed veneration for Beethoven and Franck has unfortunately obscured the individual character of his own compositions, particularly his fine orchestral pieces descriptive of southern France. As a teacher his influence was enormous and wideranging, with benefits for French music far outweighing the charges of dogmatism and political intolerance.

Andrew Thomson

D’Indy came from a military aristocratic family from the Ardèche region, a fact of the greatest importance in understanding his lifelong nationalist and right-wing political position. His mother died in childbirth, and he was brought up by his paternal grandmother, Thérèse (née de Chorier). Her strict regime, however, was mitigated by deep affection: she was not the tyrannical ogress of received opinion. D’Indy took lessons in piano from Louis Diémer and theory from Albert Lavignac; while showing definite promise, he showed more interest as a boy in military matters and the life of his hero Napoleon. At 18, having passed his ...

(Walter)

(b Port Colborne, ON, Oct 14, 1927; d Caledon East, ON, April 3, 1998). Canadian choral conductor, arranger, editor, and teacher. After graduating from the University of Toronto (BM 1950), he conducted the University of Toronto Symphony Orchestra and All-Varsity Mixed Chorus, was a choir member at St. Mary Magdelene Church under Healey Willan, and apprenticed with Sir Ernest MacMillan as assistant conductor of the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir. In 1964 he was appointed conductor of the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, a position he held until 1997. He taught choral music at the University of Toronto from 1965 to 1968, and was Adjunct Professor from 1997 until his death in 1998. After his death, the University of Toronto’s Elmer Iseler Chair in Conducting was established in his honor.

Iseler’s work with his professional choirs established his reputation in Canada and internationally. In 1954 he helped found Canada’s first professional choir, the Toronto Festival Singers. He founded the Elmer Iseler Singers in ...

(b Yaroslavl’, Nov 18/30, 1859; d Paris, Nov 8, 1924). Russian composer, pianist, conductor, ethnomusicologist, editor, and pedagogue. His father, a mathematician and astronomer, was head of the observatory near Yaroslavl′, but died when Sergey was about eight. In 1870 he and his mother moved to Balakirev’s home town, Nizhniy Novgorod, where he attended the gimnaziya (grammar school) and, from its foundation in 1873, the classes of the local branch of the Russian Musical Society, whose first director was V.Yu. Villoing (nephew of A.I. Villoing, who had taught the Rubinstein brothers). Lyapunov’s mother was an excellent pianist, and his early piano lessons from her were of far more use to him than those with Vasily Villoing, who (unlike his uncle) was primarily a violinist and allowed Lyapunov to develop bad technical habits that had to be eradicated when, on the advice of Nikolay Rubinstein, he enrolled in the Moscow Conservatory in ...

(b Brussels, May 28, 1777; d Paris, Dec 18, 1858). Flemish composer, conductor, publisher and teacher. He was the son of Henri Mees (b Brussels, 1757; d Warsaw, 31 Jan 1820), principal baritone of the Théâtre de la Monnaie, Brussels, and of Anne-Marie Vitzthumb, a singer. He showed precocious musical talent: at the age of five he sang in a church choir, at seven he began to study the violin and at ten he played in the orchestra of the Monnaie. He had further violin studies with J.-E. Pauwels and lessons in harmony and counterpoint with his grandfather Ignaz Vitzthumb. In 1794, during the second French occupation, the family emigrated to Hamburg, where Henri Mees and other Brussels artists established a theatre for the Comédie-Française; Joseph-Henri occasionally sang secondary roles and conducted the orchestra there. He also opened a music shop, from which he published works from the Parisian repertory....

(b 1793; d Philadelphia, June 4, 1873). American conductor, composer, publisher and teacher of French birth . He was a bandmaster in Napoleon’s army before emigrating to the USA, where he settled in Philadelphia (1828). In 1833 he was elected a member of the Musical Fund Society; that same year he founded the Philharmonic Society, an amateur orchestra in Philadelphia. His transcriptions of operatic excerpts and popular songs for the guitar date from as early as 1832. In 1835 he joined the music publisher Augustus Fiot in establishing the firm of Fiot and Meignen. After their partnership was dissolved in 1839, Meignen continued in the music publishing business until 1842. He succeeded Charles Hupfeld as conductor of the Musical Fund Society Orchestra during the 1844–5 season and held the post until 1857; his Grand Military Symphony was first performed under his direction on 17 April 1845. He also conducted the première of William Henry Fry’s ...

Member of Novello family

(b London, Sept 6, 1781; d Nice, Aug 9, 1861). English organist, choirmaster, conductor, teacher, editor, publisher, composer, collector, and antiquarian. Born at 240 Oxford Street he was the second surviving son of a Piedmontese pastry cook, Giuseppe Novello (1744–1808), who settled in London in 1771 and married the Norfolk-born Joan Wins a year later. Vincent and his brother Francis (1779–1843) studied in Huitmille near Boulogne in the early 1790s. From about 1793 Vincent was a choirboy at London’s Sardinian Embassy chapel under Samuel Webbe’s direction and took organ lessons from him. In c 1797, on Webbe’s recommendation he was appointed organist to the Portuguese Embassy chapel in South Street, Grosvenor Square, where his brother Francis was already principal bass. He held this office until 1824 and made the chapel famous and fashionable partly through regular performances of Haydn’s and Mozart’s masses, with which he had become acquainted through the friendship and fine musical library of the Rev. C.I. Latrobe. These works had not previously been heard in England, and non-Catholics and Catholics alike flocked to hear them; a writer of the 1830s even ranked ‘the introduction of the German masses to the Roman Catholic chapels’ with the foundation of the Philharmonic Society as a major influence in what he called ‘the improvement of our national taste’. Novello was a member of the Philharmonic Society from its foundation in ...