The old boy - Count Nikolaus de la Fontaine und d'Harnoncourt-Unverzagt - was eighty on Sunday. Lordy, how the music establishment hated him when he started. Now they can't get enough of him.
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He showed early on a keen interest in the arts and studied the cello at Vienna's Academy of Music, joining the Vienna Symphony Orchestra as cellist in 1952.
But the authoritarianism of conductors enraged his rebellious intellect.
His intensive research into historical instruments and period performance practice led him to set up Concentus Musicus in 1953 and it began giving concerts in 1957.
Over the years, Harnoncourt's ideas have gained wider currency, and now even the world's greatest modern-instrument orchestras like the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonics use key elements of period practice, such as articulation, tempi, phrasing and the absence of vibrato.
Nevertheless, he hates being pigeon-holed.
"I don't like the word 'authenticity'. It's dangerous. I'm not interested in museum music. My intention is not to do a guided tour through Bach's oeuvre," Harnoncourt once said in an interview.
AFP
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Nikolaus Harnoncourt - Happy 80th Birthday
