Joshua Rifkin
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Joshua Rifkin (born April 22, 1944 in New York) is an American conductor, keyboard player, and musicologist. He studied with Vincent Persichetti at the Juilliard School of music and received his B.S. in 1964. He also studied with Gustave Reese at New York University (1964-1966), at the University of Göttingen (1966-1967), and later with Mendel, Lockwood, Milton Babbitt, and Oster at Princeton University where he received his M.F.A. in 1969. He also worked with Karlheinz Stockhausen at Darmstadt in 1961 and 1965.
Rifkin has taught at several universities, including Brandeis University (1970-1982), Harvard, Yale, and (currently) Boston University. He is noted for his research in the field of Renaissance and Baroque music. He is particularly noted for advocating the position that much of Johann Sebastian Bach's music, including the St. Matthew Passion, was performed with only one singer per part.
In the 1960s, he created arrangements for Judy Collins and made a recording of his arrangements of music by Lennon and McCartney in the style of the 18th century, known as the Baroque Beatles Book.
Rifkin was at least partly responsible for the ragtime revival in the 1970s when he recorded a collection of Scott Joplin's works for Nonesuch records.
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