Faà di Bruno, Giovanni Matteo [Horatio, Orazio] 83

Fidelis, Lancilotto

(fl 1570). Flemish composer, active in Italy. All that is known of him comes from the single surviving partbook of his volume of four-part madrigals (RISM 1570²⁵), where he is called a Fleming. He dedicated his work, calling it ‘questa mia operetta di madrigali’, to a Genoese patrician, describing himself as ‘still young and not yet expert in music’. His madrigals, setting well-known texts by Petrarch, Ariosto and Tansillo, are called ‘madrigali aerosi’. From the surviving tenor part it would seem that at least a few of them resemble the declamatory ‘narrative’ style for which Antonio Barré had first used the term ‘arioso’ (in RISM 1555²²).

JAMES HAAR

Fidicen

(Lat.).

A Kithara player.

Fido [Fidoe, Fidow, Fidor], John

(b c1570; d ?Worcester, c1640). English organist and composer. His first recorded appointment was at Hereford Cathedral, where he was organist from 1591 until he was replaced by John Farrant in 1592. The Hereford Cathedral archives record Fido’s reappointment on 24 December 1593, although his unruly behaviour led to his dismissal in February 1595. Within less than a month Fido was appointed organist of Worcester Cathedral on the death of Nathaniel Patrick. He held this post until about October 1596. Despite his previous record the dean and chapter of Hereford again saw fit to reappoint him in 1596; he was replaced by William Inglott in the following year. By 1610 Fido was back at Worcester as a minor canon. It appears that his disagreements with the cathedral authorities were not yet over, for on 25 November 1633, after repeated admonitions, he was suspended. He was rector of St Nicholas’s Church, Worcester, from 1615 to 1636. Payments to Fido are recorded in the Worcester Cathedral Treasurer’s Accounts as late as 1639, but his name has disappeared by 1642. Of his six verse anthems (his only known compositions) only Hear me, O Lord appears to have enjoyed more than a local appeal. A Fido was employed in copying music and playing the organ at King’s College, Cambridge, in 1607, and a John Fido is mentioned in the records of the College of Vicars-choral at Wells during the early 17th century.

WORKS

6 anthems (5 inc.), GB-Cp, DRc, GL, Lbl, Lcm, Ob, Y, US-BE

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Atkins: The Early Occupants of the Office of Organist and Master of the Choristers of the Cathedral Church of Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary, Worcester (Worcester, 1918)

J. Morehen: ‘The Southwell Minster Tenor Part-Book in the Library of St. Michael’s College, Tenbury (MS 1382)’, ML, l (1969), 352–64

W. Shaw: The Succession of Organists of the Chapel Royal and the Cathedrals of England and Wales from c.1538 (Oxford, 1991)

JOHN MOREHEN

Fiedel

(Ger.).

See Fiddle.

Fiedler, Arthur

(b Boston, 17 Dec 1894; d Boston, 10 July 1979). American conductor and violinist. The son of Emanuel Fiedler, an Austrian-born violinist in the Boston SO and the Kneisel Quartet, who was his first teacher, he went as a boy to Berlin, where he studied the violin, the piano and conducting at the Hochschule für Musik. He made his début there at 17 as a violinist, but returned to the USA at the outbreak of World War I and joined the Boston SO as a viola player, under Muck, Monteux and Koussevitzky. In 1924, with 25 of his fellow players, he formed the Boston Sinfonietta to vary the city’s concert fare; he toured with it to remote centres in Massachusetts and neighhouring states. From 1929 he organized the highly successful outdoor series of Esplanade Concerts at Boston, where his skill in attracting and holding the interest of large audiences led the next year to his appointment as conductor, in succession to Casella, of the Boston Pops Orchestra, which he directed until his death. The Boston Pops Orchestra became a model for similar undertakings throughout the USA; when an annual summer ‘pops’ season was created in San Francisco, Fiedler was engaged to conduct the San Francisco SO (1951–78). He created a separate Boston Pops Tour Orchestra, which travelled around the USA from 1953. He also made appearances internationally as a guest conductor from 1957. Fiedler’s force of personality and eclectic approach to music (he frequently extended the orchestral repertory to include show-tune medleys and arrangements of popular songs in a variety of styles) combined with commercial success in a great quantity of television, radio and recording work to bring him a wide reputation at home and abroad.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

R. Moore: Fiedler, the Colorful Mr. Pops (Boston, 1968) [incl. discography]

C.G. Wilson: Arthur Fiedler, Music for the Millions (New York, 1968)

J.R. Holland: Mr. Pops (Barre, MA, 1972)

H.E. Dickson: Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops (Boston, 1981)

BERNARD JACOBSON/R

Fiedler, (August) Max

(b Zittau, 31 Dec 1859; d Stockholm, 1 Dec 1939). German conductor and composer. He first studied the piano under his father, Karl August Fiedler, and later entered the Leipzig Conservatory (1877–80), intending to become a concert pianist. He was on the staff of Hamburg Conservatory, 1882–1908, and director from 1903. In 1904 he assumed the conductorship of the Philharmonic concerts in Hamburg. He visited England in 1907, and was conductor of the Boston SO from 1908 to 1912. In 1916 he was appointed music director to the city of Essen, where he remained until 1934; he then lived in Berlin and Stockholm, where he was active as a guest conductor, and also as a piano accompanist.

As a conductor Fiedler had a wide repertory, including Classical, Romantic and contemporary works, among them music by Strauss and Russian composers; it was, however, as a conductor of Brahms that his reputation chiefly stood. He was noted for his spontaneity and the natural musicianship of his interpretations. His compositions include chamber music (notably a string quartet and a string quintet), piano music, songs and choral works, and a number of orchestral pieces, which, apart from two overtures Lustspiel (1914) and Essen (1933), are mostly early works.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

MGG1 (F. Felders)

G. Dejmek: Max Fiedler: Werden und Wirken (Essen, 1940)

H.C. COLLES/R