President: Bruno Turner

 

Bruno Turner (b.1931) is a freelance choral director and musicologist, specialising in Spanish polyphony of the sixteenth century. As a conductor he was a church choirmaster from 1952 - 1973; director of Pro Musica Sacra (1956 - 1964), frequently conducting Pro Cantione Antiqua

(1968 - 2002), and Coro Cappella (1977 - 1984). He founded Mapa Mundi, publishers, in 1977, specialising in Iberian sacred music.

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President of the Renaissance Society and Singers, he has been President of The Plainsong and Medieval Music Society (founded in 1888), and is a member of the Editorial Committee of the journal Plainsong & Medieval Music (Cambridge University Press). Turner was a regular talks contributor to BBC Third Programme broadcasts in the 1960s and ’70s.

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In the 1950s Turner was deeply influenced by his association with Michael Howard and the Renaissance Singers. As an editor he learned much from Denis Stevens, Thurston Dart and Frank Harrison. His first BBC broadcast concert was in 1958 (Eton Choirbook music), and his first LP was of Taverner’s Missa Gloria tibi Trinitas (1962, Disques Lumen - Schwann).

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Bruno Turner has devised and conducted some sixty LP and CD recordings for DGG Archiv (The Flowering of Renaissance Polyphony); Das Alte Werk (notably El Siglo de Oro); Deutsche Harmonia Mundi; Hyperion, and many others. Awards with PCA include the Deutscher

Schallplattenpreis (1978) and Edison (1979). Recently, the SpanishMinistry of Culture honoured him with La Medalla de Oro al Mérito en las Bellas Artes, presented by the King and Queen of Spain in December 2015 at Seville.

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A book of essays entitled Pure Gold: Golden Age Sacred Music in the Iberian World – A Homage to Bruno Turner – edited by Tess Knighton & Bernadette Nelson – was published in 2011 by Edition Reichenberger, Kassel.