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(Joyce)

(b Wichita, KS, May 1941). American concert organist. At age five she started piano lessons and at age eleven, after hearing Alexander Schreiner play the Mormon Tabernacle organ, she began organ studies. Bish studied organ with Dorothy Addy, Era Wilder Peniston, Mildred Andrews, and Marie-Claire Alain, studied harpsichord with Gustav Leonhardt, and attended classes with Nadia Boulanger. In 1982 she began her own television series The Joy of Music, which continues to reach a vast worldwide audience every week. She also served as organist at the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, Florida for 20 years.

Bish has won several performance competitions and has been the recipient of prestigious awards. In 1963, while a student at the University of Oklahoma, she won the Mu Phi Epsilon student performance competition and later went on to be a national Mu Phi composition winner. In 1989 she was awarded the National Citation by the National Federation of Music Clubs of America. In ...

(b London, Oct 11, 1853; d London, Nov 28, 1909). English organist and writer on music. While a student at the RAM he was organist of the Surrey Chapel, migrating in 1876 with the pastor and congregation to the newly built Christ Church, Westminster Bridge Road. In 1881 he transferred to St John’s Wood Presbyterian Church, where he remained as organist until 1905; during this period he produced several editions of Nonconformist church music and wrote programme notes for oratorios. Edwards’s most lasting contribution, however, was as a music historian. Besides books on hymn tune origins, London musical places and Mendelssohn’s Elijah, he wrote important articles on cathedrals and on the English Bach revival for the Musical Times, some 21 entries on 19th-century musical figures for the Dictionary of National Biography, and further articles for the second edition of Grove’s Dictionary. In all his work, but especially as contributor to the ...

(b Egham, April 3, 1838; d London, Jan 29, 1901). English clergyman, lecturer and writer. Haweis showed great aptitude for music and studied the violin with Antonio James Oury. At Cambridge University he formed a quartet society and became solo violinist of the Cambridge University Musical Society. Graduating in 1859, two years later he passed the Cambridge examination in theology and was ordained deacon, then priest in 1862. After some short-term curateships, he was appointed perpetual curate of St James's, Marylebone, in 1866, a position he held until his death.

Haweis was a Broad Churchman with powers of dynamic extempore preaching that drew packed congregations to St James's, where his Sunday evening services unconventionally included orchestral music and oratorio performances. In 1867 he married Mary Eliza Joy (1848–98), who gained prominence through her writings on household decoration. In 1884 Haweis supplanted J.A. Fuller Maitland as music critic of the ...

(d Glaucha, nr Halle, 1744). German organist and writer on music. His only known position was as Kantor at St Georg, Glaucha, from 1732 (he should not be confused with the organist of the same name at the Johanniskirche in Leipzig, 1747–66). Hille was acquainted with J.S. Bach, whom he visited in Leipzig some time about 1739; Bach returned the visit to Hille in Glaucha early in 1740. Both trips are confirmed by a letter to Hille from Bach’s cousin Johann Elias (see David and Mendel, eds.), who asked Hille to sell him as a gift for Anna Magdalena Bach a linnet which had been trained to sing beautifully and which Bach had admired during his stay with Hille. As a composer Hille has been credited with the chorales in Einige neue und zur Zeit noch nicht durchgängig bekante Melodeyen zu dem neuen Cöthenischen Gesangbüchlein, dieselbe mit und ohne Generalbass gebrauchen zu können...

(b Arnstadt, Aug 24, 1740; d Kahla, nr Jena, June 25, 1823). German writer on music and organist. On the title-page of his first published treatise, Versuch eines Lehrbuchs der praktischen Musik (Gera, 1783), he is referred to as a registered attorney to the dukes of Saxony and church organist in Eisenberg, and in 1801 he had been promoted to Hofadvokat and still held the post of organist. His Versuch is a practical treatise on basic musicianship, which discusses musical signs, melody and harmony (both separately and together), tuning, temperament, enharmonicism and continuo. In the foreword he draws attention to the integral relationships of rhetoric and poetry to music, as well as the necessity for composers to know how to arouse and calm passions. Probably the most useful section of the work (pp.232–58) is that on continuo performance in ensemble genres current in the last decades of the 18th century. He prefers the harpsichord for this purpose as it can be more distinctly heard than the fortepiano. Finally, for a more comprehensive treatment of the matter, he refers the reader to the continuo performance section in the second part of C.P.E. Bach's ...

(b ?Kiel, 1643; d Hamburg, May 20, 1721). German organist and writer, son of Jakob Kortkamp. He studied under Weckmann from 1655 until about 1661, and later in the 1660s he served for a short time as organist at the Jakobikirche, Hamburg, under Christoph Bernhard. His main posts – though they were not important ones – were as organist at two other Hamburg churches, the Maria-Magdalena Kloster (1669–1721) and St Gertrud (1676–1721). His only known composition is a jigg. He also arranged for organ a Magnificat secundi toni by Weckmann and wrote the alto and tenor parts of a cantata by Bernhard. His importance lies in his manuscript chronicle of north German music from 1291 to about 1718, written between 1702 and 1718 (it is now in D-Ha ). This gives invaluable accounts of north German organs and their sounds, as well as information about the lives and works of organists, clergy and Kantors, notably in the 16th and 17th centuries. The information he gave on the men whom he and his father knew personally, such as Hieronymus and Jacob Praetorius, Weckmann and Bernhard, is particularly important....

( b Schwäbisch Hall, Oct 16, 1689; d Schwäbisch Hall, May 22, 1768). German organist and writer on music . He began organ lessons at the age of nine with Baur, organist of St Katharina; after completing the curriculum of the local Gymnasium, he was a municipal clerk in neighbouring towns, returning later to his native city first as district clerk and then as city clerk, also becoming in 1724 Kantor and organist of St Katharina. Majer wrote two musical instruction manuals, Hodegus musicus (Schwäbisch Hall, 1718; lost) and the important Museum musicum theoretico practicum (Schwäbisch Hall, 1732/R, 2/1741; Majer’s annotated copy is in D-Sl ). It is the latter which establishes him among the significant writers on music in the late Baroque. The Museum musicum aims to give students self-instruction in the elementary concepts of musical notation (musica signatoria) and in the techniques of playing most instruments, including the recorder, chalumeau, flute, oboe, bassoon, cornett, flageolet, clarinet, clarino, horn, trombone, various keyboard instruments, lute, harp, timpani, violin and the viols. His explicit fingering and position charts for each of these instruments provides an unusually clear picture of German Baroque instrumental practice. A succinct introduction to the thoroughbass practice is also informative. Very little of Majer’s short work seems to be original. He said the thoroughbass material was taken from an anonymous work of ...

(b Exeter, Oct 28, 1823; d Leeds, June 16, 1897). English organist and writer. His father William Spark (1797–1865) was a lay vicar of Exeter Cathedral; two brothers were also musicians. He was a chorister at Exeter Cathedral and was articled to S.S. Wesley for five years in 1840. When Wesley moved to Leeds parish church in 1842, Spark went with him, and was soon appointed organist successively at Chapeltown and St Paul’s, Leeds. Appointments at Tiverton, Daventry, and St George’s, Leeds (1850), followed. From his return to Leeds he was extremely active in local music, founding the Leeds Madrigal and Motet Society, the People’s Concerts, and other organizations. With Henry Smart he designed the large organ for the new town hall, opened in 1858, and was elected borough organist, a post which he held until his death. His views on organ building, tending to promote the French school, were influential. He played an organ sonata at the first Leeds Festival (...

[Nikolaus]

(b Erfurt, Aug 31, 1609; d Erfurt, April 5, 1680). German writer on music and organist. He spent his whole life at Erfurt. He attended the St Michael Lateinschule until 1621, when he transferred to the Protestant Ratsgymnasium, which was at that time noted for its fostering of music. One of his teachers there was Liborius Capsius, director of the collegium musicum and an important Erfurt University professor. He matriculated at the university in 1626, took his bachelor’s degree in 1628 and became a Master of Philosophy in 1629. He then became organist at the Protestant Thomaskirche and at the Catholic church of the Neuwerk monastery. From 1632 to 1635 he was Kantor and teacher at the Protestant school of preaching and also studied theology. In 1635 he was ordained and became deacon (in 1638 pastor) of the Kaufmannskirche in succession to Joseph Bötticher, who had won a good reputation as a musician. In ...

(fl 1833–56). English organist and pioneer of school music. Music in schools, virtually dead in England since the abolition of the song and monastic schools at the Reformation, began its long period of recovery during the decade immediately following the passing of the first Reform Act (1832). Turner's Manual of Instruction in Vocal Music (1833) was the earliest music textbook published for use in English schools. Ostensibly designed to bring about the improvement of congregational psalmody, it was also meant to exert a wider civilizing effect on the industrial population.

Little is known of Turner’s life; but he wrote as an experienced teacher whose book was presented to the public ‘not as an experiment for the first time tried, but as the result of long experience’. Music master at the Westminster Day Training College for Teachers, Turner was also organist and choirmaster at St Stephen’s Church, Avenue Road, St John’s Wood (since demolished), where one of his choristers, L.C. Venables (...

(b London, March 20, 1804; d Bexley, Kent, March 8, 1881). English organist and writer on music. In 1834 he became organist of St Mary’s (Roman Catholic) Chapel, Chelsea, and composed some masses for its service. Between 1840 and 1860 he published many instruction books for organ, reed organ, concertina and church singing.

Warren was a careful and thorough editor of earlier English music: his edition of Boyce’s Cathedral Music, for example, included new biographies of the composers with exhaustive lists of their works. Such scholarship was facilitated by the large and valuable library he collected during his life, including the partbooks from which he edited Hilton’s Ayres or Fa Las, many unique sale catalogues, and autograph manuscripts of Purcell, A. Scarlatti, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. The fruits of his research appeared often in the early Musical World.