Davitt Moroney

Davitt Moroney ( born December 23, 1950) is a British harpsichordist, organist and music historian.

Life and work

Davitt Moroney studied musicology at King's College London, among others, Thurston Dart. Subsequently, he studied organ and harpsichord with Susi Jeans, Kenneth Gilbert and Gustav Leonhardt. He received in 1974 at the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal College of Music, his final diplomas. In 1980 he received his doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley with a thesis on the music of Thomas Tallis and William Byrd. He he settled in Paris as a freelance musician down before it a professorship at the University of California adopted in 2001.

Moroney played numerous modern premieres of forgotten works, such as the " Livre de tablature de Clavescin " by Marc -Roger Normand ( a cousin François Couperin ), 58 forgotten organ works of Louis Couperin from the 1957 discovered " Oldham manuscript " and harpsichord works by Henry Purcell, also from a recently discovered manuscript.

Recordings and publications

In addition to more than 50 recordings of Johann Sebastian Bach, Heinrich Biber, Louis Couperin and others, he received the 2000 Gramophone Early Music Award for the complete recording of the work for keyboard instruments by William Byrd.

As a music editor, he has published numerous critical editions of baroque works such as The Art of Fugue by Bach or the rediscovered by him 40 -voice " Missa sopra Ecco sì beato giorno " by Alessandro Striggio, which was performed at the BBC Proms 2007.