Performances

Publick Musick is currently planning performances for 2009. The Alfred Mann Music Festival, which we presented in 2007, is described below as an illustration of the scope and breadth of the projects of which this ensemble is capable.

The festival was well-described by the program booklet, available here as a download in PDF format (300 kB).

The Alfred Mann Music Festival

Publick Musick and the Eastman School of Music joined to celebrate the life and work of teacher, author, scholar and conductor Dr. Alfred Mann. Dr. Mann passed away in September 2006 and the inaugural Alfred Mann Music Festival took take place from November 15 - 18, 2007 in Rochester, New York. The schedule of events included performances of Handel's Messiah and Bach's Mass in B Minor as well as guest lectures by Eastman Professor Emerita Dr. Kerala Snyder and Professor of Musicology at Rutgers University, Dr. George Stauffer.

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.