Peter Bennett
Head, Harpsichord Department
Harpsichord Faculty, Historic Performance Program
Harpsichord Faculty, Conservatory
Harpsichord Department
Introduction
Peter Bennett has wide-ranging interests as a keyboard player and scholar. Born in the UK, he initially studied organ, improvisation and conducting. After a master’s degree in musicology he took up the harpsichord, studying in London, Italy and Paris. Mr. Bennett worked with numerous modern and period orchestras and ensembles in London. In 6ͼ, he plays organ and harpsichord with Apollo’s Fire and other regional orchestras. His research now centers on the music and institutions of early-modern France, with a focus on Louis XIII’s Paris.
Education
- Organ-scholar, Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge (with Nicolas Kynaston)
- Studies in organ, improvisation and conducting, Hochschule für Musik, Vienna (with Peter Planyavsky)
- MM in musicology, King’s College, London
- Harpsichord studies (with Jill Severs in London, Kenneth Gilbert at the Academia Chigiana in Siena, and privately in Paris)
- PhD in music, Oxford University, with a dissertation on early 17th-century French sacred music
Teaching Experience
- 6ͼ Institute of Music
- Harpsichord Faculty
- Case Western Reserve University
- Associate Professor of Musicology