User:MarthaCo/sandbox

= Martha Cook, harpsichordist and writer =

Studies
Martha Cook, born in 1946 in the American middle west, entered The New England Conservatory of Music with a full scholarship  in 1964. In Boston she studied the harpsichord and musicology with Louis Bagger and encountered  Frank Hubbard and William Dowd, whose pioneering work was then redefining harpsichord construction along historical guidelines.

After obtaining a Bachelor of Arts in history from the State University of New York at Buffalo, she studied with Alan Curtis and participated in a masterclass with Gustav Leonhardt before being accepted in the harpsichord class of the latter  at the  Conservatorium van Amsterdam during the academic year 1977-78. Cook earned a Master of Arts in musicology  from the University of California at Berkeley in 1980, but her career has been principally as a performer  and performance pedagogue.

Career
A resident of France since 1980 and a French citizen since 1989, she was awarded the national music teaching diploma (Certificat d'Aptitude en musique ancienne) in 1992 and taught at  the  Conservatories  of  Strasbourg,  Evry,  Limoges and Metz. She founded, then directed the early music department in this last institution, and in 1994 initiated and organized an international colloquium there, Le Mouvement en musique à l'époque baroque, in collaboration with the Conservatoire national de région and the Centre de recherche Etudes musicologiques of the Université de Metz.

Collaborating with Philippe Beaussant as principal accompanist and  vocal coach from 1982 to1985  at the Institut de Musique et Danse Ancienne de l'Ile-de-France, an organisation that prefigured the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles,Cook  continued these functions as assistant to  Madame Rachel Yakar at the CMBV's Studio Opéra from 1989 to 2002. She has participated in productions at the Opéra de Lyon, the festivals of Aix-en-Provence, Innsbrück, Utrecht,  Alte Oper-Frankfurt, and the Centre de la Voix de la Fondation Royaumont.

As a soloist, she has recorded English virginal music and JS Bach's  The Art of Fugue. Her essay, L'Art de la fugue, une méditation en musique, in its third printing,  defends an original hypothesis concerning the origin of Bach's last keyboard cycle.

Discography :
JS Bach : Die Kunst der Fuge (Passacaille 1014)

Francis Tregian’s Collection : selections from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book (Vanguard Classics 08 9157 71)

JS Bach : Das Musikalisches Opfer  with Davitt Moroney (harmonia mundi  HMC901260)

Pierfrancesco Cavalli : il Giasone  direction René Jacobs ( harmonia mundi  HMC 901282.84)

Publications :
"A l 'image de François Couperin, les Idées heureuses, in Cahiers de psychologie de l'art et de la culture'' no.16, ed. Christian Gaillard, École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts, Paris, 1990

  Signes de mesure, termes de mouvement et caractères dans l'oeuvre pour clavecin de François Couperin   , in Le Mouvement en musique à l'Époque baroque, ed. Hervé Lacombe, collection La Lyre moderne, dir. Paul Prévost, Éditions Serpenoise, Metz, 1996

L'Art de la fugue, une méditation en musique, Éditions Arthème Fayard, Paris, 2015