The Alfred Mann Music Festival

Publick Musick and the Eastman School of Music join to celebrate of the life and work of teacher, author, scholar and conductor Dr. Alfred Mann.  The Alfred Mann Music Festival will take place from November 15 – 18, 2007 in Rochester, New York and will include performances of the two masterpieces most closely associated with Dr. Mann and his work:

Schedule of Events:    

Thursday November 15

3.30 - 6.30pm: Open rehearsal of Messiah - St. Michael’s Church, N. Clinton Avenue

Free and open to the public, no tickets required.

Friday November 16

6pm:  Tours of St. Michael’s Church

6.45pm: Pre-concert Lecture by Dr. William Weinert

7:30pm: Performance of Handel's Messiah by Publick Musick - St. Michael’s Church, N. Clinton Avenue

Tickets: $35 Premium Seating (1st 5 rows of sanctuary and balcony)
             $20 General Admission

             $10 Students and Seniors

Purchase Tickets

Saturday November 17

3 - 6pm: Symposium - Howard Hanson Hall, Eastman School of Music

Alfred Mann as Translator - Kerala J. Snyder, professor emerita, Eastman School of Music

The Credo of the B-Minor Mass and Bach's Choral Ideal - George B. Stauffer, Dean, Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University

Sunday November 18

2.15pm: Pre-concert Lecture by Dr. Thomas Folan

3pm: Performance of the Mass in B Minor by the Eastman Chorale and Chamber Orchestra - Kilbourn Hall, Eastman School of Music

Reception at Eastman

Tickets: $10 General Admission

             Free to University of Rochester ID holders, subject to availability.

Purchase Tickets

7pm: Mass at St. Michael’s Church with excerpts of Messiah performed by Publick Musick

Guest Lecturers - Dr. Kerala J. Snyder & Dr. George Stauffer

Lectures and performances will take place at St. Michael’s Roman Catholic Church and at the Eastman School of Music.  Invited guests, former students, and Mann family members and friends will join the celebration.  Please join us in honoring one of the 20th Century’s most accomplished musicologists.

Alfred Mann was born in Hamburg, Germany, on April 28, 1917. He studied in Milan and in Berlin, and then taught at the Berlin Hochschule (1937) and at Milan’s Scuola Musicale (1938). From 1939-1942 he studied and taught at the Curtis Institute; he later received the MA and PhD degrees from Columbia University (1950, 1955). In 1947 he joined the faculty of Rutgers University, where he taught until 1980, when he came to Eastman; he was appointed Professor Emeritus of Musicology in 1987, but remained active at Eastman until he moved to Indiana.

Alfred Mann was also a noted choral conductor; his recordings of Handel’s six Chandos Anthems, made with the Rutgers Collegium Musicium for Vanguard Records in the 1960s, were acclaimed by critics, and he conducted widely in America and in Germany. In 1961, he became director of publications of the American Choral Foundation, editing American Choral Review from 1962-1999.

Mann was widely respected for his research and writing on the history of music theory, particularly the teaching of counterpoint. His translation of a seminal work of contrapuntal theory, J. J. Fux’s Gradus ad Parnassum (1725), was published in 1943 as Steps to Parnassus, and in 1965 as The Study of Counterpoint. Mann’s other books include Theory and Practice: The Great Composers as Teachers and Students and Bach and Handel: Choral Performance Practice. Mann edited a critical edition of Handel’s Messiah, among many other choral works. In 1997 he was made an honorary member of the International Bach Society – only the third American to be so honored.

Further information on Alfred Mann is available from John David Mann's journal.

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