Collegium Musicum

Gerald Hoekstra is Professor of Music at St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN, where he directs the Collegium Musicum and Early Music Singers and teaches courses in music history. Dr. Hoekstra completed his Ph.D. in musicology at The Ohio State University in 1975 with a dissertation dealing with the French chansons of the sixteenth-century Antwerp composer André Pevernage, written under the direction of Professor Richard H. Hoppin. During his years at Ohio State, Hoekstra also performed in the Ohio State Collegium Musicum. Hoekstra earned his B.A. at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich. As a student he played in the college band and orchestra and sang in the Calvin Cappella. During his junior and senior years he played second trumpet in the Grand Rapids Symphony Orchestra.

Hoekstra's area of scholarly interest and expertise is Flemish music of the late sixteenth century, though he has published articles on other the medieval motet as well. He has published articles in Early Music, Musica Disciplina, The Choral Journal, and Speculum. His critical editions of historical music include The Complete Chansons of André Pevernage, Recent Researches in the Music of the Renaissance 60-64 (Madison, Wis.: A-R Editions); Hubert Waelrant, Il primo libro de Madrigali e Canzoni Francezi (1558), RRMR 88; a volume of seven chansons by Pevernage in Das Chorwerk, and a late sixteenth-century anthology of chansons, Le Rossignol musical (Antwerp, 1597), RRMR 138. He is currently working on a 3-volume edition of Andreas Pevernage, Cantiones aliquot sacrae...e elogia nonnulla (Douai, 1578), also to be published in the RRMR series. He currently serves as General Editor of the Yale Collegium Musicum series published by A-R Editions.

Professor Hoekstra's musical interests encompass a wide variety of music, including twentieth-century music, jazz, Bach, and Beethoven, but his strongest interests lie in early historical music, particularly the music of the Renaissance. The courses in music history that he teaches regularly at St. Olaf include the music history survey for majors, an interim course in the history of jazz, upper level period courses for majors in the Renaissance and Baroque eras. He has also taught seminars in the music of Bach and Beethoven. He has long been active in the performance of early music, and besides directing early music vocal ensembles, he plays and teaches recorder, viola da gamba, and cornetto. In 2002 he was presented with the Thomas Binkley Award, for outstanding contributions in the field of early music performance in higher education, by Early Music America.

Professor Hoekstra is an active member of the American Musicological Society, Early Music America, and the Viola da Gamba Society of America. He has been a member of the board of EMA since 2003 and has served as Chair of the EMA Committee for Early Music in Higher Education since 2001.