Collegium Musicum

Gerald Hoekstra is Professor of Music at St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN, where he teaches courses in music history and directs the Collegium Musicum and Early Music Singers. Before joining the St. Olaf faculty in 1981, Dr. Hoekstra taught at Trinity Christian College, Palos Heights, Ill. (1975-79), where he directed the Trinity Choir and taught courses in music history, choral conducting, and music theory. From 1979-81 he was a member of the musicology faculty at Wichita State University in Wichita, Kan., where he directed the Wichita State Collegium Musicum, a vocal and instrumental ensemble devoted to early music, and taught undergraduate and graduate level courses in music history.

Dr. Hoekstra earned his B.A. at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich., with a major in music and minors in art and English literature. As a student there he played in the college band and orchestra and sang in the Calvin Cappella. During two of his student years he also played trumpet in the Grand Rapids Symphony Orchestra. Fascinated by the study of music history as an undergraduate student, Hoekstra continued his studies in musicology at the graduate level. He attended The Ohio State University on a University Fellowship and earned his Ph.D. in Music History in 1975. His dissertation on the French chansons of the sixteenth-century Antwerp composer André Pevernage was 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 has studied choral conducting as an undergraduate at Calvin College, at The Ohio State University with Maurice Casey, and in workshops with Marcel Couraud, John Alldis, and Paul J. Christiansen. He began directing choirs during his college years, when he organized the Summer Collegiate Chorale in the southwest Chicago area. From 1975-1979 he served as the director of the Trinity Christian College Choir and the Trinity Summer Chorale in Palos Heights, Ill. He has also served as director of various church choirs in the Chicago area and in Northfield, Minn.

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 regularly teaches 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 occasionally teaches 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 by Early Music America for outstanding contributions in the field of early music performance in higher education.

In his work as a musicologist, Hoekstra's area of special interest and expertise is Flemish music of the late sixteenth century, though he has published articles on other subjects as well.. His articles have appeared in Early Music, Musica Disciplina, and Speculum. His critical editions of historical music include The Complete Chansons of André Pevernage, Recent Researches in the Music of the Renaissance nos. 60-64 (Madison, Wis.: A-R Editions); Hubert Waelrant, Il primo libro de Madrigali e Canzoni Francezi (1558), Recent Researches in the Music of the Renaissance no. 88; and a volume of seven chansons by Pevernage in Das Chorwerk, and a late sixteenth-century anthology of chansons, Le Rossignol musical (Antwerp, 1597), Recent Researches in the Music of the Renaissance no. 138. He is currently working on a 3-volume edition of Andreas Pevernage, Cantiones aliquot sacrae...e elogia nonulla (Douai, 1578).

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.