Gerald Moore

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Gerald Moore CBE (July 30, 1899 – March 13, 1987) was an English pianist best known for accompanying many famous singers in the performance and recording of Lieder. Moore was born in Watford but received some of his musical education in Toronto, Canada, to which country his family emigrated when he was a child, and where he was organist at St Thomas' Church, Huron Street.

He accompanied notable instrumentalists such as Pablo Casals, but became better known for his work with singers, among them Elisabeth Schumann, Maggie Teyte and Kathleen Ferrier. He is credited with doing much to raise the status of accompanist from a subservient role to that of an equal artistic partner, in part through his influential 1943 book The Unashamed Accompanist.

Moore also gave lectures and wrote about music, publishing his much-admired memoir Am I Too Loud?: Memoirs of An Accompanist in 1962. He published two other volumes of autobiography: "Farewell Recital: Further Memoirs" (1978) and "Furthermoore" (1983). These literary activities continued after his farewell concert in 1967, in which he accompanied three of the singers with whom he was long associated: Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Victoria de los Angeles and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. Moore retired from public performances in 1967, and from making recordings in 1975.

In his memoirs Moore wrote that his services were not needed at Benjamin Britten's Aldeburgh Festival, 'as the presiding genius there is the greatest accompanist in the world.' Moore would therefore have been interested that, when in 2006 The Gramophone magazine invited eminent present-day accompanists to name their 'professional's professional', the joint winners were Britten and Moore himself.

Moore was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1954. He died in Buckinghamshire.

[edit] References

Am I too loud?, Memoirs of Gerald Moore, Hamish Hamilton Ltd, London, 1962