Harnoncourt dies at age 86 – Pope of Baroque

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VIENNA, March 7, (Agencies): Celebrated Austrian conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt, considered to be the “pope” of the Baroque music revival, died Saturday aged 86, three months after announcing his retirement, his family announced.

“Nikolaus Harnoncourt took his last breath peacefully surrounded by family,” said the short announcement carried by the Austrian news agency APA.

In December Harnoncourt had announced his retirement, citing health reasons, in a farewell letter to the audience of the Wiener Musikverein, home to the Vienna Philharmonic orchestra.

“My physical capacities mean that I have to cancel all my upcoming projects,” he wrote in an open letter to disappointed fans with tickets to a concert by the baroque ensemble he founded, the Concentus Musicus Wien, the weekend of his 86th birthday at the start of December.

Heritage

“An era is over,” the Musikverein’s director Thomas Angyan told APA. “I didn’t think so little time would pass between his retirement and his death. We must continue with the musical heritage which he left us.”

Count Nikolaus de la Fontaine und d’Harnoncourt-Unverzagt was born in Berlin on Dec 6, 1929 to a granddaughter of a Habsburg Archduke and an Austrian count.

Growing up in Graz, southern Austria, he was already a contrarian thinker.

“Even when I was small, I always took the opposite point of view. I’m not someone who agrees,” he said, suggesting that his rebellious intellect stemmed from being called up just two weeks before World War II ended.

Harnoncourt showed a keen interest in the arts early on, and studied the cello at Vienna’s Academy of Music, joining the Vienna Symphony Orchestra as cellist in 1952.

But the authoritarianism of conductors enraged him.

“I used to ask them the ‘why’ behind their instructions. But the only reply I ever got was ‘Because I say so’,” Harnoncourt complains.

Best

“Even the best musicians simply had to play. They were all part of an instrument called an ‘orchestra’, and the conductor was its player.”

His intensive research into historical instruments and period performance practice led him to set up his own ensemble, Concentus Musicus, in 1953 and it began giving concerts in 1957.

Organised by the musicians themselves, with help from their wives and partners, they specialised in renaissance, baroque and early classical music by the likes of Bach, Beethoven or Haydn.

In 1969, Harnoncourt quit the Vienna Symphony and the decision — and the ensuing financial and professional insecurity that entailed (he and his wife had had four children by then) — was one of the best he ever took, he says.

In musically conservative Vienna, his insistent questioning raised hackles as it ran contrary to the norms of the established classical music scene.

But over the years, Harnoncourt’s ideas have gained wider currency, and now even the world’s greatest modern-instrument orchestras like the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonics use key elements of period practice, such as articulation, tempi, phrasing and the absence of vibrato.

Also:

LOS ANGELES: Pat Conroy, the South Carolina author of bestsellers including “The Prince of Tides,” “The Great Santini” and “The Lords of Discipline,” died Friday in Beaufort, South Carolina. He was 70 and had been battling pancreatic cancer.

Conroy shared an Oscar nomination for the adaptation of his novel “The Prince of Tides” into the 1991 film starring Nick Nolte and Barbra Streisand.

He was known for his family novels and memoirs that were often based on his life and featured a lush, florid writing style.

Conroy’s wife, novelist Cassandra Conroy, said in a statement, “The water is wide and he has now passed over.”

“The Great Santini,” which was made into a 1979 film starring Robert Duvall, was drawn from Conroy’s experiences as the oldest of seven children of an abusive Marine Corps colonel.

The 1980 adaptation of “The Lords of Discipline” was also inspired by his life, as a cadet at the Citadel military academy.

His other books included “My Losing Season”, “Beach Music” and “South of Broad.”

Born in Atlanta, Conroy taught school on an island off the South Carolina coast, and based one of his first books, “The Water Is Wide”, on his experiences teaching students who spoke the Gullah dialect. It was adapted as the 1974 Jon Voight film “Conrack”. His 2013 memoir “The Death of Santini” delved further into the story of his father.

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