Peter Williams (musicologist)

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Peter Williams (born May 14, 1937 in Wolverhampton ; † March 20, 2016 ) was a British musicologist , harpsichordist , organist and professor at the University of Edinburgh . Williams is considered one of the leading Bach and organ researchers .

Live and act

Peter Fredric Williams grew up in a Methodist family and joined the Church of England when he was a choirboy at St Leonard's, Bilston. At St John's College (Cambridge) he made his Bachelor of Arts in 1958 , a year later the Bachelor of Music and 1962 the Master of Arts . He deepened himself with Gustav Leonhardt . In 1963 he received his doctorate from Cambridge on a thesis on the English church organ of the 18th century. As early as 1962 he was a faculty member at Edinburgh University, where he became a reader in 1972 and was given the first chair in performance practice in 1982. From 1968 he directed the Russell Collection of Early Keyboard Instruments . From 1985 to 1997 he was visiting professor at Duke University in North Carolina.

Williams has emerged from numerous publications on the organ and on the life and work of Johann Sebastian Bach. As an independent researcher, he often deviated from the majority opinion. His thesis became known that the famous Toccata and Fugue in D minor BWV 565 was an organ arrangement of a violin composition, did not come from Bach and was not originally composed in D minor. Williams provided historical performance practice with a scientific foundation. At the same time he was a practicing organist and harpsichordist as well as the editor of Handel and Bach's piano works.

Williams had been married to Rosemary Seymour since 1982 and had two sons and a daughter and a son from their first marriage with her. He succumbed to myeloid leukemia on the eve of Bach's birthday after spending hours proofreading the proofs of his last Bach book.

Fonts

  • The European Organ, 1450-1850. Indiana University Press, Bloomington 1978, ISBN 0-253-32083-6 .
  • A New History of the Organ from the Greeks to the Present Day. Indiana University Press, Bloomington 1979, ISBN 0-253-15704-8 .
  • BWV565: A Toccata in D minor for Organ by JS Bach? In: Early Music . Vol. 9, No. 3, 1981, pp. 330-337.
  • Organ. Macmillan, London 1988, ISBN 0-333-44446-9 .
  • The Organ in Western Culture, 750-1250. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1993, ISBN 0-521-41843-7 .
  • The Chromatic Fourth During Four Centuries of Music. Clarendon Press, Oxford; Oxford University Press, New York 1997, ISBN 0-19-816563-3 .
  • Johann Sebastian Bach's organ works. Part 1: Preludes, toccatas, fantasies, fugues, sonatas, concertos and individual works. Schott, Mainz / London a. a., 1996, ISBN 3-7957-1853-8 .
  • Johann Sebastian Bach's organ works. Part 2: Choral arrangements. Schott, Mainz / London a. a., 1998, ISBN 3-7957-1854-6 .
  • Johann Sebastian Bach's organ works. Part 3: Liturgy, composition technique, instruments and performance practice. Schott, Mainz / London a. a., 2000, ISBN 3-7957-1855-4 .
  • Bach, The Goldberg variations. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2001, ISBN 0-521-00193-5 .
  • The Life of Bach. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2004, ISBN 0-521-53374-0 .
  • JS Bach. A life in music. Osburg, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-940731-08-1 .
  • The King of Instruments. How the Organ Became Part of Western Culture. 2nd Edition. Richmond / VA 2012, ISBN 0-91439944-6 .
  • Brook. A Musical Biography. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2016, ISBN 978-1-107-13925-1 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Biography on bach-cantatas.com , accessed on May 21, 2016.
  2. ↑ Peter Williams: BWV565: A Toccata in D minor for Organ by JS Bach? In: Early Music . Vol. 9, No. 3, 1981, pp. 330-337.
  3. ↑ Obituary by David Ponsford ( Memento of the original from May 21, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed on May 21, 2016. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.cardiff.ac.uk
  4. ^ Obituary in The Telegraph , accessed May 21, 2016.
personal data
SURNAME Williams, Peter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Williams, Peter Fredric
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British musicologist and author
DATE OF BIRTH May 14, 1937
PLACE OF BIRTH Wolverhampton
DATE OF DEATH March 20, 2016