Christopher Holman

Events

  • Vox Humana Journal: Roundtable Discussion about Online Organ Resources
    808 Howell St
    July 5, 2022 @ 8:00 am
    UPDATE 7/5: THIS WORKSHOP IS CANCELLED. The Editorial Board of the online journal Vox Humana, an AGO affiliate, discusses the ways that current ideas, trends, and research about organ performance practice, sacred music, instrument building, pedagogy, and more are shared on the internet and social media. The roundtable will focus especially on some simple ways chapters can better engage not only with prospective members but those currently involved locally, based on what we've learned over the past five years since Vox Humana's founding.
  • Bach Performance Practice in the French Romantic Organ School: A Study of Two Welte Organ Roll Recordings
    808 Howell St
    July 7, 2022 @ 8:00 am
    Beginning in 1912 the Welte Company in Germany commissioned organists to make recordings — not on records or wax cylinders — but rolls of paper, which contain detailed evidence about performance practice, including tempo, registration, and ornamentation. Unlike other early audio recordings which deteriorate over time, these rolls can reproduce performances that sound nearly identical to what the recording artists heard over a century ago. This workshop will analyze two recordings of J.S. Bach's music in the collection of the Museum of Music Automatons in Seewen, Switzerland: Eugène Gigout performing O Mensch bewein and portions of the Toccata in F Major. Rolls such as O Mensch bewein give insight into the ornamentation practice of the day, while the Toccata in F Major shows Gigout's use of dynamics and suggest what portions he likely found difficult. Together, these recordings provide the strongest evidence of the French Romantic School's understanding of Bach performance.

Christopher Holman
About

Christopher Holman is completing a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Music at the University of Oxford, where he is Lecturer of organ history, literature, and design, directs the Choir of Exeter College, and is a Graduate Teaching Assistant in Bach keyboard music and techniques of composition. In the wider community, he is Organist of the ancient Glyme Churches in north Oxfordshire, and is the Organ Teacher at the Dragon School. Since winning the Albert Schweitzer Competition, he has performed at major international festivals, including the Leipzig Bach Festival in Germany, the Festival international de l’orgue ancienne in Sion, Switzerland, and the Festival Internacional de Órgano y Música Antigua in Oaxaca, Mexico. In 2017, he held a fellowship from the Frank Huntington Beebe Fund to study and pursue research at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel, Switzerland, and has since performed on many of the most important historic organs in the world. He chairs the AGO’s national Editorial Resources Committee, is the Founder and Editor of the journal Vox Humana, and has presented papers and lectured at leading international musicology conferences in the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, and Switzerland. His research has also been published in Early Music (with a forthcoming paper in Keyboard Perspectives 12). He previously studied organ with Robert Bates at the University of Houston and Dana Robinson at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.