Active as both a scholar and performer, Peter Bennett teaches in the Musicology and Historical Performance Practice programs at CWRU. Focusing in particular on the intersection of music, religion, and politics in 16th-19th-century France, he has also long been active as a harpsichordist and organist, in Europe (where he studied) and the USA.
Musicology. Bennett holds degrees from Cambridge (B.A./M.A., Natural Sciences), King’s College, London (M.Mus.), and Oxford (D.Phil.), and was appointed to the CWRU faculty in 2005. In addition to presenting at numerous conferences in the US and Europe he has published articles in the Journal of the American Musicological Society, Early Music, and the Revue de Musicologie, and his first book, Sacred repertories in Paris under Louis XIII (Ashgate, 2009), appeared in the Royal Musical Association Monograph series (a “magisterial study”, Early Music). In 2015-16 he held a Le Studium fellowship at the Centre d’Études Supérieures de la Renaissance, Tours, France, where his research centered on Louis XIII’s ceremonial Գٰé. The project culminated in an international conference on early-modern ceremonial, and in the publication (with Bernard Dompnier, co-editor) of Cérémonial politique et cérémonial religieux dans l’Europe modern: Échanges et métissages (Classiques Garnier, 2020). Research from this fellowship also informed his most recent book, Music and Power at the Court of Louis XIII: Sounding the Liturgy in Early Modern France (Cambridge University Press, 2021), a study of power and absolutism as seen through the lens of court liturgical and musical practices (“charts a masterful journey”, Journal of the American Musicological Society.) He is currently working on another book project, this time exploring sacred music during and after the French Revolution, provisionally titled God Save the Emperor, Long Live the King: Music, Religion, and Politics in Revolutionary France.
Historical Performance Practice/Early Keyboard. Bennett brings a diverse range of experiences to his life as a performer. Beginning his musical education as violinist, pianist, and singer, he took up the organ in his teens while primarily focusing on a future as an engineer and scientist. He studied organ with Nicolas Kynaston (as an organ scholar at Cambridge University, alongside his degree in Natural Sciences) before switching directions and studying with Peter Planyavsky (Hochschule für Musik, Vienna) and then taking up the harpsichord, studying with Jill Severs (London) and Kenneth Gilbert (Siena (Academia Chigiana) and Paris). After several years as a freelance organist and continuo player in London, he founded Ensemble Dumont (1995-2003), a consort of singers, viols and continuo which he directed from the keyboard: the ensemble appeared in the UK and Europe, performing at the Bruges (Belgium) and Innsbruck (Austria) Early Music Festivals, the MDR-Sommer Festival (Germany), and the Wigmore Hall, London, also broadcasting on the BBC, RAI (Italy), MDR/SWR (Germany), and R3 (Belgium). His recordings for Linn Records received accolades from Gramophone Magazine (Editor’s Choice “meltingly gorgeous”, and Critics’ Choice “one of the year’s most beautiful releases … sublime performances”), Diapason (“Est-il pourtant disque plus sensuel, plus ravissant que celui-ci?”), BBC Music Magazine (”performed with gracefulness and sensibility”), Le Monde de la Musique, and others. In Cleveland, Bennett teaches harpsichord in the CWRU HPP program and at CIM (where he is Head of Harpsichord) and performs as a continuo player across the USA: he has appeared with orchestras such as the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Houston Symphony, and has played regularly with Apollo’s Fire, the Cleveland Baroque Orchestra, since 2006.