Hammond, Frederick (Fisher)

Hammond, Frederick (Fisher), American musicologist and keyboardist; b. Binghamton, N.Y., Aug. 7, 1937. He was educated at Yale Univ. (B.A., 1958; Ph.D., 1965, with the diss. The Summa de Speculatione Musicae of Walter Odington: A Critical Edition and Commentary), where he received training in harpsichord from Kirkpatrick. He taught at the Univ. of Chicago (1962–65) and at Queens Coll. of the City Univ. of N.Y. (1966–68). In 1969 he made his N.Y. recital debut. His engagements took him throughout the U.S., Canada, and Europe. From 1968 to 1992 he taught at the Univ. of Calif, at Los Angeles. He was asst. music director of the Castelfranco Veneto Festival from 1975 to 1980. In 1986 he founded the E. Nakamichi Festival of Baroque Music, serving as its director until 1990. In 1989 he became the Irma Brandeis Prof, of Romance Studies at Bard Coll. and in 1995 music director of the Clarion Music Soc. His honors include a Rome Prize Fellowship (1965–66), a Harvard Renaissance Center Fellowship (1971), and the Cavaliere al merito della Repubblica of Italy (1986). His research has focused on 17^th century Rome. His biography of Frescobaldi (1983) is a standard source.

Writings

Girolamo Frescobaldi (Cambridge, Mass., 1983); Girolamo Frescobaldi: A Guide to Research (N.Y, 1988); Music and Spectacle in Baroque Rome (New Haven, 1994); ed. Ambiente Barocco: Life and the Arts in the Baroque Palaces of Rome (New Haven, 1999).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire