Joseph Sargent

Joseph Sargent holds a Ph.D. in musicology from Stanford University and teaches at the University of San Francisco.

Articles By This Author

Rhapsody in Bach

Joseph Sargent - January 13, 2009
The cottage industry surrounding how to "properly" interpret J.S. Bach's beloved Suites for Solo Cello sometimes borders on the ridiculous. Like operagoers defending their most beloved divas with delirious fervor, many aficionados blindly swear by their own favorite approach to these remarkable works.

New Views of Bach

Joseph Sargent - October 21, 2008
If you're one of those Bach devotees who can quote Brandenburg Concerto themes or name all the movements of an orchestral suite, Philharmonia Baroque's new twist on several orchestral classics might be just up your alley.
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Review

Faithfully Yours

Joseph Sargent - October 14, 2008

Medieval secular music has a way of inspiring a startling array of interpretive approaches. There are those ensembles that gussy up their performances with (literally) all manner of whistles and bells, mystical in sound but dubious in authenticity. At the other end are the extreme purists, demanding authenticity to a fault and using only the barest surviving historical evidence to generate "faithful" but lifeless performances.

Royal Delights

Joseph Sargent - October 7, 2008
For several years now, the Baroque ensemble Magnificat has made seventeenth-century French composer Marc-Antoine Charpentier into something of a cottage industry. A regular fixture on the ensemble's season calendars, this composer embodies Magnificat's stated mission of uncovering the "'new music' of the early Baroque" — masters of the era who have yet to receive their due.

Baroque's Lively Light

Joseph Sargent - April 8, 2008
As the musical establishment for England’s monarchy, the Chapel Royal has played host to some of that nation’s most renowned musicians, from Thomas Tallis and William Byrd to Henry Purcell and George Frideric Handel.

Smaller, But No Less Passionate

Joseph Sargent - March 11, 2008
With Easter just around the corner, the timing seems about right for a performance of a passion by J.S. Bach, one of the genre’s great masters. But while Bach’s St. Matthew Passion might spring immediately to mind, the San Francisco Bach Choir opted for the shorter, less grandiose Johannes-Passion. Too often overshadowed by its more famous cousin, the St.
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Review

New Musical Worlds

Joseph Sargent - February 19, 2008
To most Americans, Christopher Columbus is known as the "discoverer" of our part of the world.

Renaissance Faire

Joseph Sargent - February 12, 2008
In an increasingly crowded field of Bay Area choral ensembles, certain groups have devised creative methods of garnering attention.
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Review

An Off-Season Oratorio

Joseph Sargent - January 29, 2008
Early music aficionados across the Bay Area would have been wise to circle American Bach Soloists' January performance of J.S. Bach's Weihnachts-Oratorio (Christmas oratorio) on their calendars.

A Baroque Near-Miss

Joseph Sargent - December 11, 2007
What if you programmed an orchestral concert and then proceeded to ignore the orchestra? Hearing Philharmonia Baroque's concert set "The Majesty of Christmas" Saturday at Berkeley's First Congregational Church, I got the sense that conductor Konrad Junghänel had somehow managed this dubious achievement.