Safford Cape

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Safford Cape (born June 28, 1906 in Denver , † March 26, 1973 in Uccle (Brussels)) was an American composer , musicologist and conductor who worked in Belgium from 1925 .

Live and act

After his first music lessons in Denver, which he received from Belgian Anne Menig, Safford Cape came to the Royal Conservatory in Brussels in 1925 , where he studied composition with Raymond Moulaert (1875–1962) and music history with Charles Van den Borren . Between 1928 and 1932 he was mainly active as a composer and during this time he successfully created piano pieces, chamber music and songs that were influenced by the music of Arnold Schönberg .

Under the influence of Charles Van den Borren, who had been his father-in-law since 1927, Safford Cape devoted himself exclusively to the research and interpretation of medieval and Renaissance music from 1932 onwards . To this end, he founded the Pro Musica Antiqua ensemble at the end of 1932 , which initially consisted of five singers and five instrumental soloists. In between he and his ensemble played numerous concerts in many Belgian cities, but also in Luxembourg, the Netherlands and France. Until the end of 1939 Cape worked with the German musicologist Curt Sachs, who had emigrated to Paris, on a project entitled “Sounding Music History on Record” under the title Anthologie sonore . During the war, Cape lived under a false name and joined circles of the resistance. In the immediate post-war period he gave concerts in Portugal, Paris and London. Later he went on numerous concert tours with his ensemble through Europe, North and South America and Japan.

For the labels His Master's Voice , EMS Recordings and, from the 1950s, increasingly also for the archive production under the direction of Fred Hamel , the music history studio of the Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft , he recorded around 100 works on more than 80 recordings by 1965. He mainly concentrated on works by French or Franco-Flemish composers, such as Guillaume de Machaut , Guillaume du Fay , Clément Janequin , Johannes Ockeghem , Josquin Desprez , Cipriano de Rore , Orlando di Lasso or Nicholas Gombert .

In 1957 he founded the Séminaire Européen de Musique Anciènne in Bruges and in 1961, thanks to the support of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation , a similar institution in Lisbon .

Safford Cape was a lecturer in musicology at the Liège and Brussels Conservatories and one of the librarians at the Brussels Conservatory.

Today, Safford Cape is regarded as an important trailblazer in research and as a pioneer of the performance practice of the then forgotten music of the 12th to 16th centuries, which had a lasting influence on the following generation of musicians. From 1962 Sigiswald Kuijken was one of the musicians in his ensemble .

literature

  • Bernard Gagnepain: "Safford Cape et le" miracle "Pro Musica Antiqua" in Revue Belge de musicologie , pp. 204-219, 1980.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Henri Vanhulst: Nouvelle biography National Vol 7, p 46, and the 47th (in French; PDF; 20.6 MB)
personal data
SURNAME Cape, Safford
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Belgian musicologist of American origin
DATE OF BIRTH June 28, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Denver , Colorado
DATE OF DEATH March 26, 1973
Place of death Uccle , Brussels