Joshua Rifkin

Joshua Rifkin (born April 22, 1944 in New York) is an American conductor, keyboard player, and musicologist. He is best known by the general public for having played a central role in the ragtime revival in the 1970s with the three albums he recorded of Scott Joplin's works for Nonesuch Records, and to classical musicians for his theory that most of Bach's choral works were sung with only one singer per choral line.

Rifkin and Joplin

1901 edition of Joplin's work.

Rifkin's Joplin albums (the first of which was Scott Joplin: Piano Rags in November 1970 on the classical label Nonesuch) - which were presented as classical music recordings - were critically acclaimed, commercially successful and led to other artists exploring the ragtime genre. It sold 100,000 copies in its first year and eventually became Nonesuch's first million-selling record. The Billboard "Best-Selling Classical LPs" chart for 28 September 1974 has the record at #5, with the follow-up "Volume 2" at #4, and a combined set of both volumes at #3. Separately both volumes had been on the chart for 64 weeks. The album was nominated in 1971 for two Grammy Award categories: Best Album Notes and Best Instrumental Soloist Performance (without orchestra), but at the ceremony on March 14, 1972, Rifkin did not win in any category. Rifkin's work as a revivalist of Joplin's work immediately preceded the adaptation of Joplin's music by Marvin Hamlisch for the film The Sting (1973). In 1979 Alan Rich in the New York Magazine wrote that by giving artists like Rifkin the opportunity to put Joplin's music on record Nonesuch Records "created, almost alone, the Scott Joplin revival."

In August, 1990, Rifkin recorded a CD for the Decca label (catalog number 425 225) featuring rags by the two other major composers of ragtime, ( "The big three") Joseph Lamb and James Scott, and also tango compositions by the Brazilian composer Ernesto Nazareth.

Rifkin and Bach

Rifkin is best known to classical musicians for his thesis that much of Johann Sebastian Bach's vocal music, including the St Matthew Passion, was performed with only one singer per voice part, an idea generally rejected by his peers when he first proposed it in 1981. But in the twenty-first century the idea has become widely influential. The conductor Andrew Parrott has written a book arguing for the position (The Essential Bach Choir; Boydell Press, 2000; as an appendix the book includes the original paper that Rifkin began to present to the American Musicological Society in 1981, a presentation he was unable to complete because of a strong audience reaction). Such respected Bach scholars as Daniel Melamed and John A Butt have argued in its favor. Furthermore, Rifkin and Parrott are no longer the only notable conductors to adopt the approach in performance. Among the conductors to record and perform music of Bach using some form of the vocal scoring argued for by Rifkin are Konrad Junghänel (Mass in B Minor, several cantatas, and the motets), Sigiswald Kuijken (Mass in B Minor, St Matthew Passion, and the beginning of a cycle of the complete Bach cantatas), Paul McCreesh (St Matthew Passion, Magnificat, Easter Oratorio, and several cantatas), Eric Milnes, who has begun recording the complete cantatas cycle with one singer per part, Marc Minkowski (Mass in B Minor), Philippe Pierlot (masses and cantatas), Masaaki Suzuki (motets), Jeffrey Thomas, Jos van Veldhoven (Mass in B minor) and Matteo Messori (Christmas Oratorio, cantatas, motets).

Rifkin himself has recorded Bach's Mass in B minor, Magnificat, and cantatas nos. 8, 12, 51, 56, 78, 80, 82, 99, 106, 131, 140, 147, 158, 172, 182, 202, 209, 216, and others, for the Nonesuch, Mainach, L'Oiseau-lyre, and Dorian labels, all with his Bach Ensemble and various singers. He recently published a book-form monograph, Bach's Choral Ideal (Dortmund: Klangfarben Musikverlag, 2002). His scholarly critical edition of Bach's Mass in B Minor was published by Breitkopf and Härtel in November, 2006, and was recorded by the Dunedin Consort led by John Butt for release in 2010. It is the first edition to follow strictly Bach's final version from 1748–50, not intermixing readings from the 1733 Missa (the first version of the Kyrie and Gloria), or certain revisions made posthumously by Bach's son C.P.E. Bach.

Rifkin has also made a reconstruction of J.S. Bach's posited Oboe Concerti: for oboe, strings and continuo in D minor, from BWV 35, 156, 1056 and 1050; in A major for oboe d'amore, strings and continuo from BWV 1055; in E-flat major for oboe, strings and continuo from BWV 49, 169 and 1053. All the original movements are keyboard settings. They reflect the Baroque oboe idiom convincingly. In this form, they evince the influence of the Venetian school, notably Marcello, Corelli and Vivaldi.

Studies and career

Rifkin studied with Vincent Persichetti in the Music Division at the Juilliard School and received his Bachelor of Science degree in 1964. He also studied with Gustave Reese at New York University (1964–1966), at the University of Göttingen (1966–1967), and later with Arthur Mendel, Lewis Lockwood, Milton Babbitt, and Ernst Oster at Princeton University where he received his M.F.A. in 1969. He also worked with Karlheinz Stockhausen at Darmstadt in 1961 and 1965.

Rifkin has taught at several universities, including Brandeis University (1970–1982), Harvard, Yale, and is currently Professor of Music and Fellow of the University Professors at Boston University. He is noted for his research in the field of Renaissance and Baroque music. One of his widely accepted findings (1975) is that Bach's St Matthew Passion was first performed on Good Friday, 1727, not 1729 as was previously thought. In a paper published in the Bach-Jahrbuch in 2000, Rifkin argued that the cantata Nun ist das Heil und die Kraft, BWV 50 was not written by Bach.

As a conductor and keyboard soloist, he has appeared with the English Chamber Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Victorian State Symphony, and Israel Camerata Jerusalem. He has led operatic productions at Theater Basel in Switzerland and the Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich. He has recorded music of Handel, Mozart, and Haydn with the Concertgebouw Chamber Orchestra and Capella Coloniensis. As a choral conductor he has recorded motets of Adrian Willaert with the Boston Camerata Chamber Singers, and music of the Medici Codex with the Dutch ensemble Capella Pratensis.

Other work

In the 1960s, Rifkin created arrangements for Judy Collins on her albums In My Life and Wildflowers. He performed with the Even Dozen Jug Band (along with Dave Grisman, Maria Muldaur and John Sebastian, among others) and made a recording of his humorous re-imaginings of music by Lennon and McCartney in the style of the 18th century, notably Bach, known as The Baroque Beatles Book and recently reissued on CD. In a related vein, Rifkin sang the countertenor solo in the premiere performance of the spoof cantata Iphigenia in Brooklyn by P. D. Q. Bach (Peter Schickele).

Further reading

• Rifkin, Joshua (2002). Bach's Choral Ideal. Dortmunder Bach-Forschungen 5. Dortmund: Klangfarben Musikverlag. ISBN 3-932676-10-6.
• Parrott, Andrew (2000). The Essential Bach Choir. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press. ISBN 0-85115-786-6.
• Rifkin, Joshua (1982). "Bach's Chorus: A Preliminary Report". The Musical Times. 123 (1677). Musical Times Publications Ltd.: 747–54. doi:10.2307/961592. JSTOR 961592. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
• Rifkin, Joshua (1975). "The Chronology of Bach's Saint Matthew Passion". The Musical Quarterly. 61 (3): 360–87. doi:10.1093/mq/LXI.3.360. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
• Rifkin, Joshua (2000). "Siegesjubel und Satzfehler. Zum Problem von "Nun ist das Heil und die Kraft" (BWV 50)". Bach-Jahrbuch. 86: 67–86.

Sources

• LA Times. "Entertainment Awards Database". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2009-03-17. {{cite news}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Billboard magazine (1974). "Best Selling Classical LPs". Billboard magazine (28th September 1974): 61. Retrieved 29 July 2011. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Rich, Alan (1979). "Music". New York Magazine (24th December 1979). New York Media LLC: 81. Retrieved 5 August 2011. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

External links

• Joshua Rifkin bio
• "Joshua Rifkin: Authentic at Heart" (interview from Ha'aretz)
• "Re-inventing Wheels: Joshua Rifkin on Interpretation and Rhetoric" (interview with Rifkin from Bernard Sherman's Inside Early Music)
• "Rifkin's Pesky Idea" (article by Bernard Sherman on the one-per-part controversy, originally published in Early Music America, Summer 1999, p. 48)
• "Schering's Wacky Theory" (Joshua Rifkin's response to Sherman's article, originally published in Early Music America, Fall 1999, p. 48)
• "Interview with Joshua Rifkin" by Uri Golomb, first published in Goldberg Early Music Magazine 51 (June 2008): 56-67