Colloquium - Professor Davitt Moroney

University of California, Berkeley

Airs of the Ancien Régime: The Songs of Anne-Madeleine Guesdon de Presles

Davitt Moroney was born in England in 1950. After studies at King’s College (University of London), he completed the Master’s program in musicology with a thesis on Italian music for the Roman Counter-Reformation: "Giovanni Animuccia, Missarum Liber Primus" (1972). He studied performance with the Austrian organist Susi Jeans, the Canadian harpsichordist Kenneth Gilbert and Dutch organist and harpsichordist Gustav Leonhardt, and holds concert performance and teaching diplomas from London’s Royal Academy of Music (1974) and Royal College of Music (1975). He entered the doctoral program in musicology at Berkeley in 1975. His doctoral dissertation, "Under Fower Sovereygnes: Thomas Tallis and the Transformation of English Polyphony" (1980) was a study of the music composed by Thomas Tallis and William Byrd for the English Reformation. After leaving Berkeley, for twenty-one years he was based in Paris, working mostly as a freelance recitalist in many countries. For his services to music he was named Chevalier in "Order of Cultural Merit" by Prince Rainier III of Monaco (1988), and the French government named him Officier in the "Order of Arts and Letters" (2000). He returned to Berkeley as a Professor in August 2001. He is also University Organist.