MUSIC RECITAL - Clavichord Francis Knights

EMMANUEL COLLEGE
QUEEN'S BUILDING CAMBRIDGE
SUNDAY 25 NOVEMBER 2007 9.00 pm
MUSIC RECITAL
FRANCIS KNIGHTS CLAVICHORD
Tickets £ 2.00 at the door

CLAVICHORD
The clavichord is a European stringed keyboard instrument known from the late Medieval, through the Renaissance, baroque and Classical eras. Historically, it was used as a practice instrument and as an aid to composition.
The clavichord produces sound by striking brass iron strings with metal blades called tangents. Vibrations are transmitted through the bridge(s) to the soundboard.
The name is derived from the Latin word clavis, meaning key and chorda (from Greek) meaning string, especially of a musical instrument. It flourished in German-speaking lands and the Iberian Peninsula.
Leading exponents of the instrument include Derek Adlam, Christopher Hogwood and the Hungarian Miklos Spanyi. J. S. Bach's son Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach was a great proponent of the clavichord.

PROGRAMME
BUXTEHUDE Preludes & Suites

Dieterich Buxtehude 1637 - 1707
German - Danish considered the most important German composer of the mid-Baroque period. He was organist in Helsingborg and then Marienkirche in Luebeck, where he took over from Franz Tunder. His preludes represent the highest evolution of the so called stylus phantasticus .

FRANCIS KNIGHTS
Was born in St. John's, Newfoundland, and educated at Royal Holloway College, University of London, graduating with a first-class degree in music. In his final year he founded and directed the college Bach Tercentenary Festival.
A year as a lay clerk at Portsmouth Cathedral was followed by postgraduate research into Elizabethan music manuscripts at Magdalen College , Oxford, where he was an academic clerk in the chapel choir. He was also director of music at Green College. After a year of teaching at Oxford University, he was appointed Research Fellow at the Royal Northern College of music, then worked in the BBC as a specialist early muisc dicographer.
During part of this period he was conductor of the Portsmouth-based ensemble The Renaissance Choir. He then spent three years in Oxford, teaching at the university and holding the position of Director of Chapel Music at Somerville College. He now lives in Cambridge, and took up an Edison Fellowship at the British Library and the editorship of Clavichord International journal in 2004. Since 2004 he has worked at the Centre for History and Analysis of Recorded Music at King's College, London, and was appointed Recording Reviews Editor of Early Music . His writings include articles on cathedral music, manuscript sources and performance practice. His compositions, including choral, chamber and keyborad works, have been performed in St. Paul's, Portsmouth, Lichfield, Oxford and Dublin cathedrals.
He is very active as a performer, directing the Cambridge-based choir Voces Angelicae, the chamber group Le Rossignol and the professional period-instrument ensemble Bach Collegium Oxford.
He teaches harpsichord, clavichord and organ, has led early keyboard workshops for the Southbank Publishing Bate Collection, Oxford, and Churchill College, Cambridge, and sings in numerous choirs. Long-term recital projects include a complete performance of the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book in Cambridge, Oxford and London, on harpsichord, virginals, clavichord and organ, to be completed 2012.

EMMANUEL COLLEGE
The college was founded 1584 by Sir Walter Mildway, on the site of a Dominican friary. Emma, as it's known throughout the University attracts a large number of undergraduate applicants owing its reputation as a friendly college.
The Emmanuel Chapel was designed by Christopher Wren and the stained windows were completed for its tercentenary. In the grounds there is a fish pond and a colony of ducks of a variety of different species. There is a fine oriental plane tree in the Fellow's Garden which also contains a swimming pool, one of the oldest bathing pools in Europe.
Emmanuel graduates had a large involvement in the settling of North America. Of the first 100 university graduates in New England, one-third were graduates of Emmanuel College. Harvard University, the first college in North America, was named after John Harvard, who was an Emmanuel graduate.
Famous alumni include: Hugh Walpole, Fred Hoyle, Cecil Parkinson, Michael Frayn, Sebastian Faulks, Graeme Garden.

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