New York Pro Musica was a vocal and instrumental ensemble that specialized in Medieval and Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

 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,...

. It was co-founded in 1952, under the name Pro Musica Antiqua, by Noah Greenberg

Noah Greenberg

Noah Greenberg was an American choral conductor.In 1937, aged 18, Greenberg joined the Socialist Workers Party of Max Schachtman, and worked as a lathe operator and party activist. He lost work-related draft deferment in 1944 and joined the U.S. Merchant Marine till 1949. By this time he had lost...

, a choral director, and Bernard Krainis

Bernard Krainis

Bernard Krainis is a musician and co-founder of New York Pro Musica. He plays recorder and studied with Erich Katz.- References :...

, a recorder

Recorder

The recorder is a woodwind musical instrument of the family known as fipple flutes or internal duct flutes—whistle-like instruments which include the tin whistle. The recorder is end-blown and the mouth of the instrument is constricted by a wooden plug, known as a block or fipple...

 player who studied with Erich Katz

Erich Katz

Erich Katz was a German-born musicologist, composer, music critic, musician and professor. He fled the Nazis in 1939, arriving first in England, emigrating to the United States in 1943, where he became a citizen. He was a driving force behind the early music and recorder movements in the United...

.

The ensemble is perhaps best known for reviving the medieval Play of Daniel

Play of Daniel

The Play of Daniel, or Ludus Danielis, is either of two medieval Latin liturgical dramas based on the biblical Book of Daniel, one of which is accompanied by monophonic music....

in the 1950s, which has since become a popular liturgical drama

Liturgical drama

Liturgical drama or religious drama, in its various Christian contexts, originates from the mass itself, and usually presents a relatively complex ritual that includes theatrical elements...

 among early music groups. The group gave its first concert at the New School for Social Research in New York City on April 26, 1953. The ensemble performed in 1960 for the Peabody Mason Concert series in Boston. The group continued after Greenberg's death in 1966 and disbanded in 1974. Greenberg's successor, musicologist John Reeves White, took over the direction of the ensemble in 1966; the last director was George Houle, who was to teach musicology at Stanford University

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

.

External links

• The New York Pro Musica records are housed in the Music Division of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.