Thomas Dunn (musician)
| Thomas Dunn | |
|---|---|
Thomas Dunn, 1979
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| Born |
December 21, 1925 Aberdeen, South Dakota |
| Died | October 26, 2008 (aged 82) Bloomington, Indiana |
| Nationality | US |
| Occupation | Musician, Conductor |
| Known for | Contribution to early music revival |
Thomas Dunn (December 21, 1925 – October 26, 2008) was an American musician and music editor known for his performances of Baroque music. He is considered an important figure in the development of the 20th-century early music revival and adoption of historically informed performance practices in the United States.
Dunn was born in Aberdeen, South Dakota, on December 21, 1925, and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of educator Wendell E. Dunn and younger brother of chemical engineer-inventor Wendell E. Dunn, Jr. He was also the nephew of civil engineer Everett Dunn. He loved music as a child and at about age 11 he was named assistant organist of a Baltimore church. At 16 he became the organist of another local church and was named director of its professional choir not long afterward.
He studied at Johns Hopkins University and received his bachelor's degree from the Peabody Conservatory where he studied organ with Virgil Fox and E. Power Biggs. He earned a master's degree at Harvard University in 1948, and then studied at the Amsterdam Conservatory. His harpsichord teachers were Charles Courboin, Ernest White, and Gustav Leonhardt. He studied conducting with Robert Shaw, G. Wallace Woodworth, William Ifor Jones, and Anthon van der Horst.
In the 1950s he was a music director for several churches in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and in 1957 moved to New York City to become music director at the Church of the Incarnation. In 1959, he succeeded Arthur Mendel and Alfred Mann as director of New York's Cantata Singers. He expanded the group's repertoire to include 19th and 20th-century works, but gained notice for presentations rarities from its traditional repertoire, especially Handel's Belshazzar and Rameau's Les Indes galantes.Harold Schonberg assessed a 1959 concert of works by Purcell and Britten with these words:
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