Christopher Hogwood: the absolutist of early music

The death of Christopher Hogwood has deprived the world of the most successful exponent of early music there has ever been, or is ever likely to be. It has also reduced by one the quartet of conductors who have been called ‘the Class of ’73’, a term coined by Nick Wilson in a recent study of the early-music revolution of the 1970s and 80s. It refers to four groups that were founded in that year that are held to have changed the face of modern concert-giving: Hogwood and the Academy of Ancient Music; Trevor Pinnock and his English Concert; Andrew Parrott’s Taverner Choir; and my own Tallis Scholars. Of these it was Hogwood who had the most immediate impact and commercial success. It is also fair to say that his recordings are the most numerous, but least played, of all the Class.

Hogwood was a perfect example of being the right person at the right time. When he started the Academy in 1973, the major record labels of the day had been recording the centrepieces of the classical repertoire for a very long time in much the same way. Suddenly, thanks to Hogwood, the sound dramatically changed: gut strings rather than steel for the violins, fortepianos instead of Steinway grands, valveless brass instruments, little or no vibrato. And equally suddenly, this was what the public wanted: a crisper, lighter sound.

Hogwood’s vision of absolute authenticity — doing everything just as the composers would have done and heard it — was a dogma that carried all before it. The spirit of that age seemed to need such absolutes. It was no good admitting, as some early musicians did, that in fact one couldn’t get it all right and that to a considerable degree one was ‘making it up’ — to do that was to ask for rejection.