Gustav Leonhardt

Gustav Maria Leonhardt (30 May 1928 – 16 January 2012)

Leonhardt professionally played many instruments, including the

Central to Leonhardt's career was Johann Sebastian Bach. Leonhardt first recorded music of the composer in the early 1950s, with recordings in 1953 of the Goldberg Variations and The Art of Fugue. The latter embodies the thesis he had published the previous year arguing that the work was intended for the keyboard, a conclusion now widely accepted. The recordings helped establish his reputation as a distinguished harpsichordist and Bach interpreter. In 1954 he led the Leonhardt Baroque Ensemble with the English countertenor Alfred Deller in a pioneering recording of two Bach cantatas. The Ensemble included his wife Marie Leonhardt [de], Eduard Melkus (violins), Alice Harnoncourt-Hoffelner (violin, viola), Nikolaus Harnoncourt (cello) and Michel Piguet (oboe).

In 1971, Leonhardt and Harnoncourt undertook the project of recording the

Between 1974 and 1990, Leonhardt served as editor of the primary scholarly collection of the works of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, which is noted as SwWV or L.

Influence and awards

The keyboardist, conductor and scholar

Butt argues that Leonhardt's influence is not necessarily a simple, direct matter, but that some of his students consciously or unconsciously tried to play differently than he did. In comparing recordings of Bach's Goldberg Variations, Butt asserts that a "classic case" of the anxiety of influence is at work in the Goldberg recording by Ton Koopman, in which "what is immediately evident is the incessant ornamentation added to virtually every measure, often regardless of whether there is already obvious ornamentation in the notation.... my immediate reaction is often that this performance's principal message is 'Not Leonhardt'."^[7] Similarly, he says that "Bob van Asperen takes [Leonhardt's] rhythmic subtlety to a new extreme and perhaps presents the most rhythmically nuanced account of the work [The Goldberg Variations], one that will be ideal to some and mannered to others."^[7] By contrast, Butt argues, the younger Christophe Rousset plays the Goldberg Variations in a "meat-and-potatoes" manner with "a steady rhythm, even articulation, and a matter-of-fact presentation with little extra ornamentation," demonstrating that "certainly Rousset does not seem to count among the 'radical reactivists' [to Leonhardt] such as Koopman and van Asperen."^[7]

Leonhardt served as a member of the jury for the triennial International Harpsichord Concours of the

Among the awards given to him were the Medal of Honour for the Arts and Sciences from the Netherlands, presented to him by

Leonhardt gave his last public performance on 12 December 2011 at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris. Thereafter he announced his retirement due to illness and cancelled all of his 2012 engagements.^[10] He died of cancer in Amsterdam on Monday, 16 January 2012, aged 83.

Two

Collection

Leonhardt lived in a canal house on the Herengracht dating from about 1617, the Huis Bartolotti, and was a collector of decorative arts, paintings, and engravings. In 2014, his collection was auctioned by Sotheby's.^[11] His instruments were sold to a few former students, including Skip Sempé and Pierre Hantaï.

Bibliography

• The art of fugue: Bach's last harpsichord work (Nijhoff, 1952)
• In Praise of Flemish Virginals (in Keyboard instruments, by Edwin Ripin et al., Edinburgh University Press, 1971)
• Amsterdams Onvoltooid Verleden [Amsterdam's unachieved past], Architectura & Natura, Amsterdam, November 1996
• "Glanz des alten Klavierklanges" (sleeve text for "Gustav Leonhardt an historischen Cembali", BMG)
• About The art of fugue (sleeve text for recording Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, 1969)
• "Introduction", in Early Music, vol. 7, No. 4, Keyboard Issue 1 (October 1979)
• "Points d’interrogation dans Froberger", in Hommage à F.L. Tagliavini (Patrone Editore, Bologna, 1995
• Het huis Bartolotti en zijn bewoners [Bartolotti's house and its inhabitants], (Amsterdam, Meulenhoff, 1979)

Further reading

• Menno van Delft, "Memories of Leonhardt and the Keyboard", in The Galpin Society Journal, March 2013, vol. 66, pp. 267–270.
• Jacques Drillon, Sur Leonhardt (Gallimard, Paris, 2009).
• Jed Wentz, 'On the Protestant Roots of Gustav Leonhardt's Performance Stye', in The Journal of the Riemenschneider Bach Institute, Vol. 48, No. 2 and Vol. 49, No. 1, 2018, 48–92.

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Gustav Leonhardt.

• Obituary in The Economist
• Obituary in The Guardian
• Obituary in the
  Daily Telegraph
• Obituary in the
  New York Times
• Gustav Leonhardt at
  IMDb
• Rayfield Allied profile
• Short biography at www.bach-cantatas.com
• Complete Discography
• Discography
• Perrforming Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier: modern harpsichordists, Gustav Leonhardt, and the "48" Archived 9 February 2010 at the Wayback Machine
• Recollections of My Lessons with Gustav Leonhardt Archived 23 June 2018 at the Wayback Machine
• Tribute by Davitt Moroney (accessed 27 September 2012)