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Paul Van Nevel

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

Paul Van Nevel was born in 1946 and is a Belgian conductor, musicologist and art historian. He grew up in a musical family. From the age of eleven to eighteen he sang four hours a day, and his father, who played the violin, encouraged him to try every instrument in the house. His father loved Wagner; he himself chose Béla Bartók. From 1969 to 1971 he studied early music at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Switzerland. There, in 1971, he founded the Huelgas Ensemble, a choir devoted to the polyphonic music of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The name comes from the Codex Las Huelgas, from a Cistercian monastery near Burgos, which he visited at the age of twenty-four and was able to study for two weeks.

Music and breakthrough

Van Nevel is known for tracking down little-known medieval polyphony, which he then performs. The Huelgas Ensemble recorded, among other things, Las Ensaladas, Ars moriendi and La Favola di Orfeo. His recordings have won several prizes, including the Diapason d'Or in 1996 and the MIDEM Cannes Classical Award for best choral music in 1998. In 1994 he received the Prix Paris in honorem of the Académie Charles Cros.

Influence

He teaches at the conservatoire in Amsterdam and has been guest conductor of the Collegium Vocale Gent, the Netherlands Chamber Choir and the choir of the Netherlands Bach Society. Van Nevel is known for his love of cigars, which comes through in the 2011 album The Art of the Cigar.

Listening

Listening tip. Listen to a recording by the Huelgas Ensemble, for example Las Ensaladas. Notice how several voices weave through one another without any single voice carrying the melody alone.

Discography

Studio albums

Categories: Artists