Conductor
John Eliot Gardiner is a leading figure in the historical performance movement, having founded the
Monteverdi Choir for performances of Baroque music and the
Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, devoted to music of the 19th century. He is especially noted for performances and recordings of
Bach's choral music, and his label, Soli Deo Gloria ("To the Glory of God Only"), takes its name from the small S.D.G. signature
Bach affixed to many of his works.
Gardiner was born on April 20, 1943, in the village of Fontmell Magna in England's Dorset County. It is worth notice that for the first part of his musical education, he was largely self-taught: he sang in a village church choir and played the violin. At 15, he took up conducting, and while he was studying history, Arabic, and medieval Spanish at Cambridge, he also began conducting choirs there. He led choirs from Oxford and Cambridge on a Middle Eastern tour while still an undergraduate, and in 1964, he conducted a performance of
Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610, a work little known at the time. Out of this performance grew the
Monteverdi Choir, his primary performing ensemble.
Gardiner studied musicology and conducting with
Thurston Dart and
Nadia Boulanger in the mid-'60s, which was his only period of formal musical study. In 1968, he founded a
Monteverdi Orchestra to go with the choir; in the '70s, the group began to use Baroque instruments and was renamed the
English Baroque Soloists. With this group and the
Monteverdi Choir,
Gardiner has made recordings numbering in the hundreds. Mostly during the first part of his career, he also worked with conventional symphony orchestras. His U.S. debut came in 1979 with the
Dallas Symphony Orchestra, and in the '80s and early '90s, he was music director of the
CBC Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, the Opera de Lyon Orchestra, and the
North German Radio Orchestra (now the
NDR Elbphilharmonie). In 1990, as understanding of the historical instruments used in the music of
Beethoven and subsequent composers was just developing, he founded the
Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, leading it on tour in 1993 with a then recently rediscovered Messe solennelle of
Berlioz.
One of
Gardiner's most celebrated accomplishments was his Bach Cantata Pilgrimage of 2000, with the
Monteverdi Choir and
English Baroque Soloists. The group toured for 52 weeks, performing all of
Bach's cantatas at their appropriate times in the liturgical year, often in churches with relevance in
Bach's own career. The performances were recorded and issued in lavish packaging on Soli Deo Gloria, with essays by
Gardiner delving into the meaning of each work. These essays led
Gardiner to publish a book, Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven (2013).
Gardiner has also recorded for Deutsche Grammophon, Philips, and other labels. His Schumann symphony recordings with the
Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique are credited with introducing a trend toward smaller forces in those works. Another major tour came in Spain in 2004, as
Gardiner and the
Monteverdi Choir retraced the medieval Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route and sang medieval Spanish repertory.
Gardiner has also appeared as a guest conductor with major symphony orchestras, including the
Berlin Philharmonic, the
Chicago Symphony, and the
Cleveland Orchestra. His recording career has not slackened in the least in his senior citizen years, as he has often released a half-dozen recordings per year or more. In 2019, he and the
Monteverdi Choir released
Love is come again, featuring music from the Springhead Easter Play, a mime event staged annually at
Gardiner's family home and originally directed by his mother. He was not slowed much in 2020 by the coronavirus pandemic, for he already had material in the hopper, including a modern-instrument recording of a pair of
Schumann symphonies with the
London Symphony Orchestra. He returned in 2022 with the
Monteverdi Choir and
English Baroque Soloists in a new recording for the Deutsche Grammophon label of
Bach's St. John Passion, BWV 245.
Gardiner's many awards include designation as Commander of the British Empire in 1990 and as Chevalier of the Legion of Honor in France in 2011. ~ James Manheim