Safford Cape
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.
Life and work
After his first musical studies in Denver, Safford Cape came in 1925 to the Royal Conservatory of Brussels, where he studied with Raymond Moulaert ( 1875-1962 ) and composition with Charles Van den Borren music history. Between 1928 and 1932 he worked mainly as a composer and created in this period, several piano pieces, chamber music and songs.
Under the influence of Charles Van den Borren, who was his father-in now to Safford Cape devoted exclusively from 1933 researching and period style interpretation of the music of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. To this end, he founded the Ensemble Pro Musica Antiqua, which initially consisted of five singers and five instrumentalists. Until the end of 1939 worked with the Cape emigrated to Paris German musicologist Curt Sachs on a project " Sounding music history to record" under the title anthology sonorous. In the postwar period he undertook with his ensemble numerous concert tours throughout Europe, North and South America and Japan.
For the label His Master's Voice, EMS Recordings and the archive of the history of music production studios Deutsche Grammophon he played from 1930 to 1965 approximately 100 works on more than 80 recordings in. Here, he focused primarily on works by French or Franco- Flemish composers, Guillaume de Machaut, for example, Guillaume du Fay, Clément Janequin, Johannes Ockeghem, Josquin Desprez, Cipriano de Rore, Orlando di Lasso and Nicholas Gombert.
In 1957 he founded in Bruges, Séminaire Européen de Musique Ancienne and 1961, thanks to funding from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, a similar device in Lisbon.
Safford Cape is now regarded as an important pioneer of research and a pioneer in the performance practice of the then -forgotten music of the 12th to the 16th century, who had on the subsequent generation of musicians lasting impact.