Remembering Baroque Music Master Gustav Leonhardt
Gustav Leonhardt (Photo: Wikifalcon/Wikipedia)
Dutch master harpsichordist Gustav Leonhardt died at his home in Amsterdam on Monday. He was 83 years old.
Leonhardt was a pioneer of the Baroque music revival. He was a scholar, teacher and conductor.
In the 1950s and 60s, at a time when musicians and classical music lovers paid scant attention to the Baroque repertoire, Leonhardt made it his mission to bring it to life. He became a leader in the field of historical performance practice.
He produced hundreds of albums as a conductor, organist and harpsichordist, recording numerous pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach, from the Goldberg Variations, to The Art of Fugue, and the Well-Tempered Clavier.
Leonhardt was a devoted teacher, and many of his students became prominent performers and conductors of Baroque music themselves. Martin Pearlman is one example. He is the music director of the Boston Baroque orchestra.
Pearlman studied with Leonhardt in Amsterdam in the year 1967-1968. “He was an extraordinary teacher,” he said. “He was in some ways more of a coach than what you might think of as a normal teacher, in that he didn’t teach technique, he left that to for you to figure out or get somewhere else.” Pearlman said he brought as much music as he could to his lessons in order to hear as many of Leonhardt’s stylistic ideas as possible.
One of Leonhardt’s achievements was to unearth the music of then little-known composers from the Baroque period. He researched historical ways of playing this music, in an effort to make it sound authentic and vibrant. “His recordings as a harpsichordist brought out music that had been dormant for so long,” Pearlman said, “and was so exciting to those of us who were young and getting into this field.” Leonhardt’s recordings of works by the French composer Louis Couperin were particularly revelatory, and changed the way people thought about this style of music. “This was music that was new to people,” Pearlman said, “a different style of music, a very graceful kind of playing. It made the harpsichord sing, it made it beautiful in a way people didn’t realize the instrument could be.”
Leonhardt’s efforts popularized a lighter sound, using small ensembles and period instruments. That was especially evident on the recordings he made of Bach’s sacred cantatas, about 200 in all. Leonhardt’s Consort was joined for this project by small choirs, and by conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt, and his ensemble, Concentus Musicus from Vienna.
Martin Pearlman said this recording was a very ambitious task. “Undoubtedly, the biggest project of all was the groundbreaking, enormous project of recording all of the Bach cantatas,” he said. “It’s a project that took twenty years and {required} a tremendous commitment from the musicians and the recording company.”
Several orchestras have recorded Bach cantatas since, but Pearlman said Leonhardt’s recording created a new sound no one had heard before. It was a sound with “real transparency and lightness, and rhythmic sense,” and, he said, “it was an enormous influence on the world of music.”
Students came from all over the world to study with Leonhardt in Amsterdam and Pearlman said his influence has had a global impact on Baroque and Classical music.
“When I started ‘Boston Baroque’ in the 1973-1974 season,” said Pearlman, “it was really his influence that made me interested in starting a Baroque orchestra, and that ended up being the first Baroque orchestra in the United States, and it’s a field that has grown tremendously since then.”
Pearlman said Leonhardt has left an indelible mark, not only on his own orchestra but on many others throughout the U.S. and Europe.
Click here to see all parts of the movie
Excerpts heard in the audio piece:
Johann Sebastian Bach
- “Sarabande” from English Suite for Keyboard No. 2 in A minor, BWV 807, (SONY)
- Coro, from Cantata BWV 106, “Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit.” (TELDEC)
- Coro, from Cantata BWV 107 “Was Willst du dich betrüben.” (TELDEC)
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