The course will focus on the music by Frescobaldi and of other Italian composers of the first part of the 17th Century. Given its intensive character, those that attend this course – that will feature individual and collective class activities – will not take part in the final concert of the workshop. The course will take place on August 4th to 7th.

CHRISTOPHER STEMBRIDGE studied languages at Cambridge University and musicology at Oxford University. After 20 years as a lecturer in music at University College Cork (National University of Ireland), then in Brescia and Siena, he moved to Northern Italy where he now lives. He gives regular master-classes on Renaissance organs and travels widely giving lectures, recitals and seminars, in particular in Eastern Europe and Armenia. In 2011 he was musician-in-residence at Villa I Tatti (Center for Renaissance Studies of Harvard University) in Florence. He is currently preparing the new Bärenreiter edition of Frescobaldi’s organ and keyboard music for which he was recently awarded the Noah Greenberg Prize by the American Musicological Society. He specialized in music for the Cembalo cromatico, a harpsichord with 19 notes to the octave – a reconstruction of an instrument that was widely used in late 16th-century Italy – and together with Willard Martin of Pennsylvania has designed the reconstruction of a 19-note just intonation keyboard similar to that proposed by Descartes in 1643. He teaches regularly international workshops on the historical organs in Valvasone (Italy) and Pomssen (Leipzig). Among his CD recordings feature those of music by Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli ( 1534 organ, Duomo di Arezzo),  Ascanio Mayone (Zeffirini organ and harpsichord), Neapolitan musica of the early baroque played on organ and cimbalo cromatico and English music 1520-1770 (Nacchini organo at Ospedaletto di Venezia). A CD with the 12 Toccatas by Girolamo Frescobaldi recently appeared for the label sfz.

Info on the workshop costs and registration is available at this link.