Joshua Rifkin
Rifkin argued that "so long as we define 'chorus' in the conventional modern sense, then Bach's chorus with few exceptions simply did not exist.
Released by Nonesuch,[4] a classical music label, the album was critically acclaimed, commercially successful and led to other artists exploring the ragtime genre.
[7] His work as a revivalist of Joplin's work immediately preceded the recording and subsequent performances of The Red Back Book, orchestrations of 15 rags, by Gunther Schuller and The New England Ragtime Ensemble (originally the New England Conservatory Ragtime Ensemble); and the adaptation of Joplin's music by Marvin Hamlisch for the 1973 film The Sting.
Rifkin is best known to classical musicians for his thesis that much of Johann Sebastian Bach's vocal music, including the St Matthew Passion, was performed with only one singer per voice part, an idea generally rejected by his peers when he first proposed it in 1981.
The conductor Andrew Parrott wrote a book arguing for the position (The Essential Bach Choir; Boydell Press, 2000; as an appendix, the book includes the original paper that Rifkin began to present to the American Musicological Society in 1981, a presentation he was unable to complete because of a strong audience reaction).
One of Rikfin's widely accepted findings, which he published in 1975, is that Bach's St Matthew Passion was first performed on Good Friday in 1727, not 1729 as was previously believed.
[15] In a paper published in the Bach-Jahrbuch in 2000, Rifkin argued that the cantata Nun ist das Heil und die Kraft, BWV 50 was not written by Bach, but by an as-yet-unidentified composer.
[16] Rifkin studied with Vincent Persichetti in the Music Division at the Juilliard School and received his Bachelor of Science degree in 1964.
As a choral conductor he has recorded motets of Adrian Willaert with the Boston Camerata Chamber Singers, and music of the Medici Codex with the Dutch ensemble Capella Pratensis; that 2011 CD, titled Vivat Leo!
[19] He performed with the Even Dozen Jug Band (along with David Grisman, Maria Muldaur, Stefan Grossman, and John Sebastian among others)[20] and made a recording of his humorous re-imaginings of music by Lennon and McCartney in the style of the 18th century, notably Bach, known as The Baroque Beatles Book and recently reissued on CD.
[21] In a related vein, Rifkin sang the countertenor solo in the 1962 premiere performance of the spoof cantata "Iphigenia in Brooklyn" by P. D. Q. Bach (Peter Schickele).
