It has been announced that the conductor Christopher Hogwood has died at the age of 73. The official announcement on Hogwood's website reads,'Following an illness lasting several months, Christopher died peacefully on Wednesday 24 September, a fortnight after his 73rd birthday. He was at home in Cambridge, with family present. The funeral will be private, with a memorial service to be held at a later date.
Hogwood's Mozart symphony-cycle with the Academy of Ancient Music, which began in the late 1970s, won a Gramophone Award and changed the perception of period-instrument performance. Hogwood founded the Early Music Consort in 1967 with David Munrow, and the Academy of Ancient Music in 1973. He was awarded a CBE in 1989.
When Hogwood was interviewed by Gramophone in 2002 he looked back to the roots of Historically Informed Performance: 'I'm a Handel and Haydn man. But that's not where it all began. I'd come from playing medieval music with David Munrow. It was completely speculative, a sort of inspired circus, putting on a host of colourful works to entertain, very well run on the concert platform. But there were a number of worrying things about it; one was the impression it gave the world that most medieval music consisted of instrumental, secular music when 98 per cent was religious, sacred vocal music. And the other one was that there is so little surviving evidence of what really went on, what it actually sounded like.' So began an unforgettable musical journey.
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