April 22 - Joshua Rifkin (The Musical Birthday Series, 7th Annual Cycle)

Previous posts for April 22rd may be found here: Alfred Burt (2019), Ethel Smyth (2021), Joshua Rifkin, and Glen Campbell (2021), Giuseppe Torelli (2022), Alfred Burt (2023), and Paul II Anton Esterházy de Galánth; Yehudi Menuhin; Kathleen Ferrier (2024)

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Joshua Rifkin (b. 22 April 1944) is an American musicologist, conductor, and keyboard player.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One and Only

"Musicologists don't often come to blows. But it happened at the 1981 meeting of the American Musicological Society, when Joshua Rifkin announced that Bach's 'chorus' was really a quartet."  -- Eric van Tassel, New York Times, April 26, 199

Joshua Rifkin caused a row

By claiming that Herr Bach, somehow,

Performed without a Sunday choir,

Which set the learned world on fire.

Cantatas with one voice per part

Seems rather skimpy for his art.

But think before you rashly judge it,

Perhaps the Thomaskirche budget

Mirrored other congregations

And faced financial limitations,

So hiring choruses for the Lord

Was more than Leipzig could afford.

 

 

 

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