René Clemencic

René Clemencic was an Austrian composer, flautist, harpsichordist, organist, musicologist, and conductor, and a leading figure in the European early-music movement. He was born in Vienna on February 27, 1928, and died there on March 8, 2022. He grew up in a cosmopolitan family with Slavic and Hungarian roots.

He studied harpsichord and recorder in Nijmegen and Berlin. He also studied philosophy, mathematics, and ethnology at the Sorbonne and the University of Vienna before devoting himself fully to music.

Clemencic began his career as a harpsichordist and flautist in 1957. In 1968 he founded the Clemencic Consort, an early-music ensemble that performed medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque music, as well as works by modern composers written for historical instruments. In the 1970s the ensemble recorded collections of medieval secular music; its discography eventually exceeded 100 albums. Clemencic also worked in film with Ariane Mnouchkine and João César Monteiro. He toured Russia several times, performing on recorder and conducting Baroque ensembles in Moscow in 1992, and appearing at the Moscow Roots and Crown festival in 2007.

His compositions included Wonder (1969), music for the film Molière (1978), Mass of the World (1981), the oratorios One World (1986), Kabbalah (1992), Apocalypse (1995–1996), and Journey to Nineveh (1999), and the pantomime ballet Dragon Fight (1987). Other works included Work for Flute and Strings (1991), the chamber opera The Mountain (1993), the piano trio Jerusalem (1995), Fire-Drunk, a concerto for string orchestra (2000), Stabat Mater (2001), the piano trio The House (2004), The Key to Paradise for violin and piano (2004), and the short opera Moonset (2006). His recordings included a five-record set of Carmina Burana (1975), later reissued as a three-CD set by Harmonia Mundi France. He received the Vienna Music Prize in 1997.