Books by Peter Holman

How was large-scale music directed or conducted in Britain before baton conducting took hold in the 1830s?This book investigates the ways large-scale music was directed or conducted in Britain before baton conducting took hold in the 1830s. After surveying practice in Italy, Germany and France from Antiquity to the eighteenth century,the focus is on direction in two strands of music making in Stuart and Georgian Britain: choral music from Restoration cathedrals to the oratorio tradition deriving from Handel, and music in the theatre from the Jacobean masque to nineteenth-century opera, ending with an account of how modern baton conducting spread in the 1830s from the pit of the Haymarket Theatre to the Philharmonic Society and to large-scale choral music. Part social and musical history based on new research into surviving performing material, documentary sources and visual evidence, and part polemic intended to question the use of modern baton conducting in pre-nineteenth-century music, Before the Baton throws new light on many hitherto dark areas, though the heart of the book is an extended discussion of the evidence relating to Handel's operas, oratorios and choral music. Contrary to near-universal modern practice, he mostlypreferred to play rather than beat time. PETER HOLMAN is Emeritus Professor of Historical Musicology at Leeds University. When not occupied with writing and research, he organises performances of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century music, mostly directing them from the keyboard. He is director of The Parley of Instruments, Leeds Baroque, the Suffolk Villages Festival and the annual Baroque Summer School run by Cambridge Early Music.

Leeds Baroque is a period instrument performance group (choir and orchestra) based in West Yorkshire directed by Peter Holman. Members are drawn from professional andnon-professional players with students from the University of Leeds School of Music and the region's music colleges and conservatoires. Free workshops given by leaders in the field of Baroque performance practice provide training, and the funds available are used to enable members of the orchestra to perform concerts with internationally renowned soloists. Both the choir and orchestra have launched several young performers on their professional careers.Their repertoire is wide ranging, encompassing great Baroque 'standards' such as Bach, Handel and Purcell but including less frequently performed works by composers of the period. Leeds Baroque is a regular contributor to the University of Leeds International Concert series (http//:concerts.leeds.ac.uk ) and in 2015 was delighted when the Vice Chancellor of the University, Sir Alan Langlands, accepted an invitation to become their Honorary Patron.Leeds Baroque is supported by a grant from Wades Charity and an active and lively Friends organisation that provides both financial and practical assistance. The Friends have helped in the purchase of instruments for use by up-and-coming students and they frequently provide grants to cover professional fees of guest artists and the hire of performance material. Their support is greatly valued and allows Leeds Baroque to be more adventurous in its programming.

New research throws light on the history of the viol after Purcell, including its revival in the late eighteenth century through Charles Frederick Abel.

Covers the period dating from Purcell to Elgar, which is traditionally seen as a dark age in British musical history. This book concentrates specifically on musical life in the provinces, bringing together archival research and offering a fresh perspective on British music of the period.