About Frans Brüggen
Franciscus ("Frans") Jozef Brüggen (30 October 1934 – 13 August 2014) was a Dutch conductor, recorder player and baroque flautist. == Biography == Born in Amsterdam, Brüggen was the youngest of the nine children of August Brüggen, a textile factory owner, and his wife Johanna (née Verkley), an amateur singer. He studied recorder and flute at the Amsterdam Muzieklyceum. He also studied musicology at the University of Amsterdam. In 1955, at the age of 21, he was appointed professor at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague. His reputation was initially as a recorder and Baroque flute virtuoso, and he commissioned several works for recorder including Luciano Berio's Gesti (1965). In 1972, he co-founded recorder ensemble Sour Cream with Kees Boeke and Walter van Hauwe. Brüggen introduced a flexibility of tone and rhythm to solo recorder playing that was novel to historically informed performance practice at the time. Notes in slow passages would be slightly bent for emotional affect, tone warmed and cooled, messa di voce employed, alongside considerable use of rubato. Such approaches provoked some controversy at the time, but in part due to his use of them, have since become more commonplace.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.