Christopher Hogwood

Christopher Jarvis Haley Hogwood (10 September 194124 September 2014) was an English conductor, harpsichordist, and musicologist. Founder of the early music ensemble the Academy of Ancient Music, he was an authority on historically informed performance and a leading figure in the early music revival of the late 20th century.

Early life and education Born in Nottingham, Hogwood went to The Skinners' School, Royal Tunbridge Wells, and then studied Music and Classics at Pembroke College, Cambridge, graduating in 1964. Contemporaries at Cambridge included David Munrow and John Turner. He went on to study performance and conducting under Raymond Leppard, Mary Potts and Thurston Dart, and later with Rafael Puyana and Gustav Leonhardt. He also studied in Prague with Zuzana Ruzickova for a year, under a British Council scholarship.

Career In 1967, Hogwood co-founded the Early Music Consort with David Munrow. In 1973 he founded the Academy of Ancient Music, which specializes in performances of Baroque and Classical music using period instruments.

Hogwood conducted a considerable amount of opera. He made his operatic debut in 1983, conducting Mozart's Don Giovanni in St. Louis, Missouri.

Although Hogwood was best known for the baroque and classical repertoire, he also performed romantic and contemporary music, with a particular affinity for the neobaroque and neoclassical schools including many works by Stravinsky, Martinů and Hindemith.

In July 2010, he was appointed Professor of Music at Gresham College, London, a position originally held by John Bull. In this role he delivered four series of free public lectures on Aspects of Authenticity (2010–11), The Making of a Masterpiece (2011–12), European Capitals of Music (2012–13) and Music in Context (2013–14). He was unable to deliver all of his lectures during his final year of appointment due to illness and it was only seven months after his final lecture at the college that he died.

In 2011 Hogwood was a juror for the Westfield International Fortepiano Competition hosted at Cornell University. This was the first fortepiano competition in the United States and only the second competition of its kind in the world. In 2012 he was appointed Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University, for a six-year term of office. He was a member of Lowell House Senior Common Room in Harvard University.

Editing Hogwood's editing work included music by composers as diverse as John Dowland and Felix Mendelssohn. After John Walsh's collection The Harpsichord Master Book I was rediscovered in New Zealand in 1977 (containing two otherwise new/unknown works by Purcell), Hogwood edited the re-issue on Oxford University Press reissue in 1980. He was the chairman of the new edition Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: The Complete Works, which aimed to publish a complete edition of C.P.E. Bach's music in 2014.

He was involved with The Wranitzky Project, dedicated to the study and publishing of the music of Moravian composer Paul Wranitzky (1756–1808). His last editing project was a complete critical edition of piano sonatas by the Czech composer Leopold Koželuch.

Brahms "discovery" In 2012 Hogwood's musicological activities came to the attention of a wider public when the BBC and the Guardian newspaper announced his discovery of a "previously unknown" piano piece by Johannes Brahms. However, it emerged that the work in question, entitled Albumblatt, was already known. The manuscript had been sold at public auction in April 2011, where it was described as "unpublished" and "of great importance," and the manuscript was reproduced in full in the catalogue. The work had been given its premiere by Craig Sheppard on 28 April 2011. Sheppard reportedly described the claim that Hogwood discovered the work as "fatuous". However, Hogwood was involved in the publication of the piece by editing it for Bärenreiter. The Albumblatt was published in February 2012 along with a more substantial work, the Horn Trio in E-flat major, Op. 40, to which it is thematically related.

Death Hogwood died in Cambridge on 24 September 2014, fourteen days after his 73rd birthday, from a brain tumour. Shortly before his death, he had separated from his civil partner, the film director Anthony Fabian.

Honours In 1989 Hogwood was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE).

He was a recipient of the Halle Handel Prize in 2008. In 2011 he was awarded the IRC Harrison Medal of the Society for Musicology in Ireland.

At the time of his death, Hogwood was Honorary Professor of Music in the University of Cambridge, Consultant Visiting professor of Historical Performance in the Royal Academy of Music and visiting professor of music at King's College London. He was honorary fellow of both Jesus College, Cambridge and Pembroke College, Cambridge.

Awards

Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA) 1982 Walter Willson Cobbett Medal from the Worshipful Company of Musicians 1986 Honorary Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge 1989 Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Musicians 1989 Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) 1989 Honorary Doctor of Music Keele University 1991 Honorary Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge 1992 Finalist Giovanni Comisso Prize for Biographies 1992 Hon RAM Royal Academy of Music 1995 Scotland on Sunday Music Prize Edinburgh International Festival 1996 Award for Artistic Excellence University of California 1996 Distinguished Musician Award Incorporated Society of Musicians 1997 Martinů Medal Bohuslav Martinů Foundation, Prague 1999 Honorary Doctorate University of Zurich 2007 Honorary Doctor of Music University of Cambridge 2008 Handel Prize, Halle 2008 Irish Research Council Harrison Medal of the Society for Musicology in Ireland 2011 Honorary Doctor of Music Royal College of Music 2013 Hogwood's Mozart recordings were widely acclaimed, and his interpretations of Mozart's symphonies, Requiem and La clemenza di Tito were all nominated for Grammy Awards, from 1982 to 1996.