Sounding Mirror: Courage and Music in Our Time

Illuminating the author’s unshakable faith in the power of music in people’s lives, this text draws upon the fields of literature, philosophy, psychology, and religious thought to highlight the importance of music in an increasingly chaotic and techno-centric world. Issues such as the folly of the work/play mindset and the relationship of music to time’s inexorable passage are discussed, as are many ways in which music can lead to a deeper understanding of the human condition. The superficiality of the market-driven world of professional pop music and the ineffectual approach of traditional music education are also explored.

BIO –
Thomas Stumpf, born in Shanghai in 1950, received his degrees from the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria, and the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. He won concerto competitions at both institutions, and was awarded the Bösendorfer Prize (Vienna, 1970) and the Lilli Lehmann Medal (Salzburg, 1972). His performing career has taken him across four continents, and he has performed with sopranos Rita Streich, Edith Mathis, and Jayne West, mezzos Hanna Ludwig and D'Anna Fortunato, clarinettists Richard Stoltzman and Jack Brymer, saxophonist Kenneth Radnofsky, flautists Claude Monteux and Robert Stallman, violinists Yuri and Dana Mazurkevich and Arturo Delmoni, violists Walter Trampler and Michael Zaretsky, and cellist Leslie Parnas. He has appeared with the Hong Kong Philharmonic, the Boston Pops Orchestra (under Arthur Fiedler), Alea III, and numerous other ensembles.
Stumpf's compositions have appeared on concert programs throughout the United States as well as in Germany and the former Soviet Union. In 1992 he won the Kahn Award for his music theater project "Dark Lady," a portion of which was recorded by soprano Joan Heller on the Neuma label. He has given numerous recitals with Heller, including two in Moscow and two in St. Petersburg in 1990, and recorded a song-cycle by Irwin Bazelon with her for the Albany label as well as a CD of modern Walt Whitman settings for Garland Press. Stumpf has also performed regularly with soprano Jean Danton, including two recitals in New York in 1994; Danton premiered his song-cycle "Little Girl Found." They collaborated on the CDs "Songs of Innocence," "Origins," and "American Dreamer" for the Albany label. Stumpf's choral compositions have been performed by the Follen Church choir and his setting of Rabindranath Tagore was commissioned and performed by the MasterSingers under Adam Grossman.
Stumpf is the Artistic Director of Prism Opera, a music theater ensemble which under his musical and stage direction has performed Mozart's "The Magic Flute" (in Stumpf's own translation), Menotti's "Amahl and the Night Visitors," and Barber's "Vanessa." Stumpf has also conducted and directed Prism's productions of Britten's "The Rape of Lucretia" and "The Turn of the Screw," Holst's "Savitri," and Vaughan-Williams' "Riders to the Sea." Most recently Prism presented a production of Mozart's "La Clemenza di Tito" in Stumpf's translation; Stumpf conducted the Early Music ensemble Sarasa from the fortepiano.
Stumpf has been Director of Music at Follen Church in Lexington, Massachusetts, for ten years. There he has conducted the Senior Choir in the Bach Magnificat, St. Matthew Passion and Cantata 98, Handel's "Messiah," the Charpentier Christmas Mass, the Mozart Requiem and Mass in C minor, Dvorak's Mass in D, the Brahms Gypsy Songs, Respighi's "Laud to the Nativity," and Britten's "Ceremony of Carols," as well as numerous smaller choral works ranging from Josquin des Prez and Monteverdi to Messiaen and Arvo Pärt. At Follen Church also, Stumpf annually directs a fully staged production of a Gilbert and Sullivan opera with the joint Youth and Junior Choirs. He has also held adult education classes at Follen and has delivered a number of distinguished sermons there, twelve of which are collected in A Sounding Mirror.
As a music educator, Stumpf has a distinguished career. From 1979 to 1984 he taught at the New England Conservatory; from 1984 to 1990 he headed the Piano Department at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. From 1990 to 1997 he was Chair of the Collaborative Piano Department at Boston University, where he worked with many distinguished singers and played for the master classes of Carlo Bergonzi, Régine Crespin, Phyllis Curtin and Nico Castel. Stumpf has regularly held master classes for singers and pianists at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute, the Montanea Festival in Switzerland and at the Musikschule in Mannheim.