Ralph Kirkpatrick

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Ralph Kirkpatrick (born June 10, 1911 in Leominster , Massachusetts , † April 13, 1984 in Guilford , Connecticut ) was an American harpsichordist .

Life

Kirkpatrick studied piano and notation at Harvard until 1931. As a scholarship holder, he studied at Harvard University, then with Nadia Boulanger and Wanda Landowska in Paris, with Arnold Dolmetsch in Haslemere , with Heinz Tiessen (Berlin) and with Günther Ramin in Leipzig.

In 1933 and 1934 he taught himself at the Mozarteum in Salzburg . In 1937, a scholarship enabled him to undertake an extensive, musicological, ambitious journey through the whole of Europe, during which he also researched manuscripts and old musical instruments.

From 1940, Kirkpatrick taught at Yale University , where he published a basic biography of Domenico Scarlatti in 1953 , which contains a catalog raisonné in the appendix that replaced the outdated one by Alessandro Longo . Analogous to the Köchel index (KV) of Mozart's works, Scarlatti's works have since been counted according to the Kirkpatrick index (K).

Kirkpatrick often played chamber music, and he also occupied himself with modern music such as Quincy Porter's Concerto for Harpsichord and Orchestra (1960), Darius Milhaud's Sonata for Violin and Harpsichord (1960) and Elliott Carter's Double Concerto for Harpsichord, Piano and Chamber Orchestra (1961) dedicated to him.

He became known for his harpsichord recordings of the works of Johann Sebastian Bach and Domenico Scarlatti . For recordings he also used the clavichord (for example for Bach's two- and three-part inventions ) and the fortepiano (especially for works by Mozart ).

In 1963 Kirkpatrick was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 1964 to the American Philosophical Society . On April 2, 1999, an asteroid was named after him: (9902) Kirkpatrick .

Fonts

  • Domenico Scarlatti , Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953, ISBN 0-691-02708-0
  • Domenico Scarlatti. Life and Work , from the American by Horst Leuchtmann, 2 volumes, Munich: Kellermann 1972 (with documents and catalog raisonné), ISBN 3-7707-7652-6
  • Interpreting Bach's "Well-tempered piano": a performer's discourse of method ; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984

literature

  • Ralph Kirkpatrick: letters of the American harpsichordist and scholar , ed. by Meredith Kirkpatrick, Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2014, ISBN 978-1-58046-501-4

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Member History: Ralph Kirkpatrick. American Philosophical Society, accessed October 24, 2018 .