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Emma Kirkby

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Dame Emma Kirkby is an English soprano and early music specialist, born in 1949. She went to school in Dorset and studied classics at Somerville College, Oxford. Her father was an officer in the Royal Navy. She had not planned to become a professional singer. At the end of the 1960s she sang in Oxford in the Schola Cantorum, a student choir led by Andrew Parrott. After her studies she became a teacher, but she became more and more involved in singing early music. For years she taught at the Dartington International Summer School and the Guildhall School of Music & Drama.

Music and breakthrough

Kirkby made more than a hundred recordings: madrigals from the Italian and English Renaissance, cantatas and oratorios from the Baroque, and works by Mozart, Haydn and Johann Christian Bach. A 1981 recording with Gothic Voices of A Feather on the Breath of God, with music by Hildegard of Bingen, became well known. Later came, among others, Handel Opera Arias, Bach's wedding cantatas, Classical Kirkby with Anthony Rooley from 2002 and songs by William Byrd with Fretwork from 2005.

Influence

Her voice is clear, light and almost without vibrato, and fits the way in which early music came to be performed on period instruments in the late twentieth century. In this way she showed how Baroque music sounded before the big operatic voice became the norm. She is an example of the movement that brought early music back to the concert platform.

Listening

Listening tip. Listen to Exsultate, jubilate by Mozart sung by Emma Kirkby and notice the clear, straight tone of her voice. Can you hear how the fast passages are sung without heavy vibrato?

Discography

Studio albums

Categories: Artists