Loren Ludwig is a performer-scholar based in Baltimore, MD.
Loren studied viola da gamba at Oberlin Conservatory and holds a PhD in Critical and Comparative Studies in Music from the University of Virginia.
As a viol player, Loren performs widely as a soloist and chamber musician. He is a co-founder of critically acclaimed ensembles LeStrange Viols, the 17th century string band ACRONYM, and Science Ficta.
As a scholar of early modern musical culture, Loren researches what he terms polyphonic intimacy, the idea that music in the Western tradition is constructed to foster social relationships among its performers and listeners. Loren has served as musicology faculty at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University, Grinnell College, and the New Zealand School of Music. Loren teaches chamber music and performance practice at residencies and festivals across four continents.
Current projects include the reconstruction of a lost tradition of ensemble string playing in New England c1800 and archival work in VA and MD uncovering evidence of the participation by African American musicians in colonial musical culture. For ongoing, public-facing content related to this work, please visit the publications area of my website.
Recent projects include articles on the history of tuning and temperament (“Bach, the Viola da Gamba, and Temperament in the Early Eighteenth Century” in BACH: Journal of the Riemenscheider Bach Institute 53), and on the history of the American early music revival (articles on the early music activism of civil rights luminary Bayard Rustin in Emag and the twin birth of Minimalism and early music revivalism in post-war New York [Routledge]). My ongoing research on New England viols and the rich culture of vernacular stringed instrument building and music making is (sporadically) chronicled in this blog.
Articles documenting my discovery of the secret origins of 17th-century alchemist Michael Maier’s 50 alchemical fugues in his magnum opus Atalanta Fugiens (1618), as well as my research on the presence of use of the viola da gamba in colonial Virginia and Maryland (and world premiere recordings of viola da music from Virginia), are linked on my publications page.
Please direct inquiries to LML4F[at]virginia[dot]edu