Hilliard Ensemble
Encyclopedia
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
male vocal quartet originally devoted to the performance of early music
Early music
Early music is generally understood as comprising all music from the earliest times up to the Renaissance. However, today this term has come to include "any music for which a historically appropriate style of performance must be reconstructed on the basis of surviving scores, treatises,...
. Founded in 1974, the group is named after the Elizabethan
Elizabethan era
The Elizabethan era was the epoch in English history of Queen Elizabeth I's reign . Historians often depict it as the golden age in English history...
miniaturist painter Nicholas Hilliard
Nicholas Hilliard
Nicholas Hilliard was an English goldsmith and limner best known for his portrait miniatures of members of the courts of Elizabeth I and James I of England. He mostly painted small oval miniatures, but also some larger cabinet miniatures, up to about ten inches tall, and at least two famous...
.
Although most of its work focuses on music of the Medieval
Medieval music
Medieval music is Western music written during the Middle Ages. This era begins with the fall of the Roman Empire and ends sometime in the early fifteenth century...
and Renaissance
Renaissance music
Renaissance music is European music written during the Renaissance. Defining the beginning of the musical era is difficult, given that its defining characteristics were adopted only gradually; musicologists have placed its beginnings from as early as 1300 to as late as the 1470s.Literally meaning...
periods, the Hilliard Ensemble also performs contemporary music, working frequently with the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt
Arvo Pärt
Arvo Pärt is an Estonian classical composer and one of the most prominent living composers of sacred music. Since the late 1970s, Pärt has worked in a minimalist style that employs his self-made compositional technique, tintinnabuli. His music also finds its inspiration and influence from...
and including in its concerts works by John Cage
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...
, Gavin Bryars
Gavin Bryars
Richard Gavin Bryars is an English composer and double bassist. He has been active in, or has produced works in, a variety of styles of music, including jazz, free improvisation, minimalism, historicism, experimental music, avant-garde and neoclassicism.-Early life and career:Born in Goole, East...
, Giya Kancheli
Giya Kancheli
Giya Kancheli , born 10 August 1935, in Tbilisi, is a Georgian composer resident in Belgium.Since 1991, Kancheli has lived in Western Europe: first in Berlin, and since 1995 in Antwerp, where he is composer-in-residence for the Royal Flemish Philharmonic....
, and Heinz Holliger
Heinz Holliger
Heinz Holliger Heinz Holliger Heinz Holliger (born 21 May 1939 is a Swiss oboist, composer and conductor.-Biography:He was born in Langenthal, Switzerland, and began his musical education at the conservatories of Bern and Basel. He studied composition with Sándor Veress and Pierre Boulez...
.
History and performances
The group was originally founded by Paul HillierPaul Hillier
Paul Douglas Hillier is a conductor, music director and baritone. He specializes in early music and contemporary art music, especially that by composers Steve Reich and Arvo Pärt. He studied at Magdalen College, Oxford and the Guildhall School of Music, beginning his professional career while a...
, Paul Elliott, and David James, although the membership was flexible until Hillier left in the late 1980s. Since 1990 the core members have been David James, Rogers Covey-Crump, John Potter
John Potter (musician)
-Life:John Potter's musical education began as a chorister at King's College Cambridge, after which he became a scholar at The King's School, Canterbury and exhibitioner at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge...
, and Gordon Jones, with one change: in 1998 John Potter was replaced by Steven Harrold.
The Hilliard Ensemble has recorded extensively for the ECM label. In 1994, when popular interest in Gregorian chant
Gregorian chant
Gregorian chant is the central tradition of Western plainchant, a form of monophonic liturgical music within Western Christianity that accompanied the celebration of Mass and other ritual services...
was at its height, the ensemble released the CD Officium
Officium (album)
Officium is an album by Norwegian saxophonist Jan Garbarek and early music vocal group, The Hilliard Ensemble, that was released in 1994....
, an unprecedented collaboration with the Norwegian
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
saxophonist Jan Garbarek
Jan Garbarek
Jan Garbarek is a Norwegian tenor and soprano saxophonist, active in the jazz, classical, and world music genres. Garbarek was born in Mysen, Norway, the only child of a former Polish prisoner of war Czesław Garbarek and a Norwegian farmer's daughter...
. The disc became one of ECM's biggest-selling releases of all time, reaching the pop charts in several European countries and receiving five gold discs in sales. Officium's sequel, the 2-CD set Mnemosyne, followed in 1999. The third album, Officium Novum, was released in 2010.
Their recordings have also been included in Craig Wright
Craig M. Wright
Craig M. Wright is the is the Henry L. and Lucy G. Moses Professor of Music at Yale University. He obtained a M.A. and a Ph.D. in musicology from Harvard University, which he completed in 1972. He moved to Yale in 1973, serving as the chair of the department of music from 1986 to 1992.Wright...
's Listening to Music textbook for music students and music appreciation
Music appreciation
Music appreciation is teaching people what to listen for and to appreciate different types of music. Usually music appreciation classes involve some history lessons to explain why people of a certain era liked the music that they did...
.
In 2005 the ensemble took part in the Rheingau Musik Festival
Rheingau Musik Festival
The Rheingau Musik Festival is an international summer music festival in Germany, founded in 1987. It is mostly for classical music, but includes other genres...
's composer's portrait of Arvo Pärt
Arvo Pärt
Arvo Pärt is an Estonian classical composer and one of the most prominent living composers of sacred music. Since the late 1970s, Pärt has worked in a minimalist style that employs his self-made compositional technique, tintinnabuli. His music also finds its inspiration and influence from...
, together with the Rostocker Motettenchor.
In 2008, The Hilliard Ensemble premiered Heiner Goebbels
Heiner Goebbels
Heiner Goebbels is a German composer, music director and professor at Justus-Liebig-University in Gießen and at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland....
' avant-garde staged concert I went to the house but did not enter at the 2008 Edinburgh International Festival
Edinburgh International Festival
The Edinburgh International Festival is a festival of performing arts that takes place in the city of Edinburgh, Scotland, over three weeks from around the middle of August. By invitation from the Festival Director, the International Festival brings top class performers of music , theatre, opera...
, repeated at the Berliner Festspiele.
In 2009 the ensemble premiered five new works: Guido Morini
Guido Morini
Guido Morini is an Italian pianist, organist, harpsichordist, musicologist and composer.In the ensemble Accordone he performs early baroque works with singer Marco Beasley.Morini was born in Milan....
's Una Iliade, Fabio Vacchi
Fabio Vacchi
Fabio Vacchi is an Italian composer born in 1949 in Bologna.-Training and debut:Fabio Vacchi studied at the G.B. Martini Conservatory of Bologna with Giacomo Manzoni and Tito Gotti. In 1974 he participated in the courses of the Tanglewood Festival in the USA, where he was awarded the Koussevitzky...
's Memoria Italiana, Steffen Schleiermacher
Steffen Schleiermacher
Steffen Schleiermacher is a German composer, pianist, and conductor.After studying at the Leipzig Music School with Siegfried Thiele, he continued working there as a music theory and ear training assistant...
's Die Beschwörung der Trunkenen Oase, Simon Bainbridge
Simon Bainbridge
Simon Bainbridge is a British composer, and a professor and former head of composition at the Royal Academy of Music, London, and visiting professor at the University of Louisville, Kentucky in the United States.-Biography:...
's Tenebrae and Wolfgang Rihm
Wolfgang Rihm
Wolfgang Rihm is a German composer.Rihm is Head of the Institute of Modern Music at the Karlsruhe Conservatory of Music and has been composer in residence at the Lucerne Festival and the Salzburg Festival...
's Et Lux.
In September 2010, The Hilliard Ensemble joined the London Philharmonic Orchestra
London Philharmonic Orchestra
The London Philharmonic Orchestra , based in London, is one of the major orchestras of the United Kingdom, and is based in the Royal Festival Hall. In addition, the LPO is the main resident orchestra of the Glyndebourne Festival Opera...
and Choir
London Philharmonic Choir
The London Philharmonic Choir is one of the leading independent British choirs in the United Kingdom based in London. The Patron is Princess Alexandra, The Hon Lady Ogilvy and Sir Roger Norrington is President. The choir, comprising over 200 members, holds charitable status and is governed by a...
for the world premiere of Matteo D'Amico's Flight from Byzantium at the Royal Festival Hall
Royal Festival Hall
The Royal Festival Hall is a 2,900-seat concert, dance and talks venue within Southbank Centre in London. It is situated on the South Bank of the River Thames, not far from Hungerford Bridge. It is a Grade I listed building - the first post-war building to become so protected...
, London. They also performed three pieces by Guillaume Dufay
Guillaume Dufay
Guillaume Dufay was a Franco-Flemish composer of the early Renaissance. As the central figure in the Burgundian School, he was the most famous and influential composer in Europe in the mid-15th century.-Early life:From the evidence of his will, he was probably born in Beersel, in the vicinity of...
: Moribus et genere, Vergene bella and Lamentatio sanctae matris ecclesiae Constantinopolitanae.
On 15 November 2010 the group appeared at Church of St. Paul the Apostle
Church of St. Paul the Apostle (New York City)
The Church of St. Paul the Apostle is a substantial Roman Catholic church on Columbus Avenue between 59th and 60th streets, in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, New York...
in New York to perform Kjartan Sveinsson
Kjartan Sveinsson
Kjartan "Kjarri" Sveinsson is a keyboardist of the Icelandic post-rock band Sigur Rós. He joined the band in 1998. Being something of a multi-instrumentalist, he has also played such instruments as the flute, tin whistle, oboe and even the banjo, as well as many of the unorthodox instruments that...
's Cage a Swallow Can’t You but You Can’t Swallow a Cage.
External links
- The Hilliard Ensemble official website
- The Hilliard Ensemble ECM
- The Hilliard Ensemble agent Hazard Chase Ltd
- The Hilliard Ensemble bach-cantatas.com
- The Hilliard Ensemble discography, medieval.org