Christopher Jarvis Haley Hogwood CBE (10 September 1941 – 24 September 2014) was an English conductor, harpsichordist, and musicologist. He started the early music group called the Academy of Ancient Music. He was an expert in historically informed performance and played a key role in the early music revival during the late 20th century.

Early life and education

Hogwood was born in Nottingham. He attended The Skinners' School in Royal Tunbridge Wells and later studied Music and Classics at Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1964. His classmates at Cambridge included David Munrow and John Turner. After graduating, he studied performance and conducting with teachers such as Raymond Leppard, Mary Potts, and Thurston Dart. He later trained with Rafael Puyana and Gustav Leonhardt. Additionally, he spent a year studying in Prague with Zuzana Ruzickova, supported by a scholarship from the British Council.

Career

In 1967, Hogwood helped start the Early Music Consort with David Munrow. In 1973, he created the Academy of Ancient Music, which focuses on performing Baroque and Classical music using instruments from that time. The Early Music Consort ended after Munrow died in 1976, but Hogwood kept working with the Academy of Ancient Music.

Starting in 1979, Hogwood and the Academy recorded the first complete set of Mozart's symphonies using period instruments, with Hogwood playing the continuist role. In 1985, Hogwood's recording of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons on L'Oiseau-Lyre appeared alongside Prince's Purple Rain on the pop charts. Purple Rain won best film soundtrack at the Brit Awards, while Hogwood's recording was named best classical recording.

From 1981, Hogwood conducted concerts in the United States. He was Artistic Director of Boston's Handel and Haydn Society from 1986 to 2001 and later held the title of Conductor Laureate. From 1983 to 1985, he was artistic director of the Mostly Mozart Festival in London. From 1988 to 1992, he was musical director of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra in Minnesota.

In 1994, Hogwood conducted the Handel and Haydn Society in a performance that recreated the concert where Beethoven's Fifth and Sixth symphonies premiered for the Historic Keyboard Society of Milwaukee.

Hogwood conducted many operas. He made his operatic debut in 1983, leading Mozart's Don Giovanni in St. Louis, Missouri. He worked with opera companies such as the Berlin State Opera, La Scala in Milan, the Royal Swedish Opera, the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, Chorégies d'Orange, and Houston Grand Opera. With Opera Australia, he performed Mozart's Idomeneo in 1994 and La clemenza di Tito in 1997. In 2009, he conducted the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in Dido and Aeneas and Acis and Galatea at the Royal Opera House. That same year, he conducted Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress at the Teatro Real in Madrid. In late 2010 and early 2011, he led performances of Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro at the Zurich Opera House.

On September 1, 2006, Richard Egarr became the new Music Director of the Academy of Ancient Music, and Hogwood took the title of Emeritus Director. Hogwood planned to conduct at least one major project with the academy each year. He led performances of Handel operas, beginning with Amadigi di Gaula in 2007, followed by Flavio in 2008, and ending with Arianna in Creta in 2009, which marked Handel's anniversary. In 2013, he conducted Imeneo.

Although Hogwood was most famous for Baroque and Classical music, he also performed Romantic and Contemporary works, especially those from the Neobaroque and Neoclassical schools, including pieces by Stravinsky, Martinů, and Hindemith.

Hogwood recorded many solo harpsichord pieces, such as works by Louis Couperin, J.S. Bach, Thomas Arne, and William Byrd's My Ladye Nevells Booke. He helped promote the clavichord through the Secret Bach/Handel/Mozart series, which placed historical context on the most common domestic instrument of that time. He owned a collection of historical keyboard instruments.

In July 2010, Hogwood became a Professor of Music at Gresham College in London, a position once held by John Bull. In this role, he gave public lectures on topics like Aspects of Authenticity, The Making of a Masterpiece, European Capitals of Music, and Music in Context. He was unable to complete all his lectures during his final year due to illness and died seven months after his last lecture.

In 2011, Hogwood was a juror for the Westfield International Fortepiano Competition at Cornell University, the first of its kind in the United States and only the second globally. In 2012, he was named Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University for six years. He was also a member of Lowell House Senior Common Room at Harvard University.

Hogwood edited music by composers such as John Dowland and Felix Mendelssohn. After a collection of Purcell's works was rediscovered in New Zealand in 1977, Hogwood edited a reissue of the collection by Oxford University Press in 1980. He also chaired the publication of a complete edition of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach's works in 2014.

He was involved in The Wranitzky Project, which studied and published the music of Moravian composer Paul Wranitzky. His final editing project was a complete critical edition of piano sonatas by Czech composer Leopold Koželuch.

In 2012, Hogwood's work in musicology gained public attention when the BBC and The Guardian announced his discovery of a "previously unknown" piano piece by Johannes Brahms. However, it was later found that the piece, Albumblatt, was already known. The manuscript had been sold at auction in 2011 and described as "unpublished" and "of great importance." The piece was first performed by Craig Sheppard in 2011. Hogwood edited the piece for Bärenreiter, and it was published in February 2012 alongside another work, the Horn Trio in E-flat major, Op. 40.

Death

Hogwood passed away in Cambridge on September 24, 2014, two weeks after his 73rd birthday, due to a brain tumor. Before his death, he ended his relationship with his civil partner, Anthony Fabian, a film director.

Honours

In 1989, Hogwood was given the title of Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE).

He was given the Halle Handel Prize in 2008. In 2011, he received the IRC Harrison Medal from the Society for Musicology in Ireland.

At the time of his death, Hogwood held the title of Honorary Professor of Music at the University of Cambridge. He also served as Consultant Visiting Professor of Historical Performance at the Royal Academy of Music and as Visiting Professor of Music at King's College London. He was an Honorary Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, and Pembroke College, Cambridge.

Awards

• Member of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA) 1982
• Walter Willson Cobbett Medal from the Worshipful Company of Musicians 1986
• Honorary Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge 1989
• Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Musicians 1989
• Commander of the British Empire (CBE) 1989
• Honorary Doctor of Music, Keele University 1991
• Honorary Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge 1992
• Finalist for the Giovanni Comisso Prize for Biographies 1992
• Honorary RAM, Royal Academy of Music 1995
• Scotland on Sunday Music Prize, Edinburgh International Festival 1996
• Award for Artistic Excellence, University of California 1996
• Distinguished Musician Award, Incorporated Society of Musicians 1997
• Martinů Medal, Bohuslav Martinů Foundation, Prague 1999
• Honorary Doctorate, University of Zurich 2007
• Honorary Doctor of Music, University of Cambridge 2008
• Handel Prize, Halle 2008
• Harrison Medal, Society for Musicology in Ireland 2011
• Honorary Doctor of Music, Royal College of Music 2013

Hogwood’s recordings of Mozart’s music were highly praised. His performances of Mozart’s symphonies, Requiem, and La clemenza di Tito were nominated for Grammy Awards between 1982 and 1996.