Daniel Robert Waitzman (born July 15, 1943) is an American flutist and composer.
Early life and education
Born in Rochester, New York, Waitzman grew up in New York City, where he graduated from the High School of Music and Art in 1961. At Columbia College (B.A. 1965), he majored in Music. He received his M.A. in musicology from Columbia University in 1968. Waitzman studied recorder with Bernard Krainis, Baroque Flute with Claude Monteux and Paul Ehrlich, and modern flute with Samuel Baron, Harold Bennett, and Harry Moskovitz. He studied composition with Otto Luening, harmony and counterpoint with Charles Walton, Genevieve Chinn, and Peter Westergaard, orchestration with Howard Shanet, and musicology with Paul Henry Lang.
Career
Waitzman's professional career began in 1959, when he made the first of several recordings with his teacher, Bernard Krainis, at the age of 15. In 1962, he recorded a Frescobaldi Canzona with Krainis and lutenist Joseph Iodine on the Baroque one-keyed flute. This performance appeared on a recording entitled The Virtuoso Recorder.
In 1965, Waitzman had a bell key (originally invented by Carl Dolmetsch) fitted to his recorder; and he began to develop a new technique for playing the bell-keyed recorder. He arranged three of J.S. Bach’s Organ Trio Sonatas for bell-keyed recorder and harpsichord, and also arranged J.S. Bach’s E Major Violin Concerto for bell-keyed recorder and strings. It was around this time that he became dissatisfied with the early music movement’s philosophical approach to the performance of the older repertoire, and also with the limitations of the one-keyed “Baroque” flute. Later, he published several critiques of the modern early music movement, including a book entitled Up from Authenticity, or How I Learned to Love the Metal Flute—A Personal Memoir. The original essay on which this book was based served as the subject for a feature article in The New York Times in 1990. In an article published in The American Recorder in 1980, Waitzman had called for a more flexible approach to the performance of early music:
“Musical and historical authenticity are not always identical, nor are the disciplines of musicology and performance the same. If a musical repertoire is worth playing for its own sake—for its musical truth, rather than merely for its historical significance or quaintness—then it must of necessity be as modern today as when it was newly-composed. It transcends temporal considerations; it exists outside of time and place. . . . Let me emphasize that I am not advocating the abandonment of historically correct instruments. Rather, I am calling attention to the need for a more humanistic stance—one in keeping with the spirit of the old masters. Despite the dangers of such ideological relaxation, especially in an age such as this, there is really no other valid alternative. Either we are practitioners of a living art, or we are museum curators and morticians. I do not think that a mausoleum is an appropriate setting for our musical heritage. Only those who remain unmoved by this heritage could dare to advocate its embalmment in the formaldehyde of historical fundamentalism—and they do not deserve to be hailed as its guardians.”
In 1971, Waitzman acquired an antique conical Boehm flute built ca. 1875 by Louis Lot. That same year, he made his formal début in Carnegie Recital Hall as a winner of the Concert Artists Guild Award, at which he performed on recorder, Baroque flute, and conical Boehm flute. Waitzman has taught flute and recorder at Queens College, CUNY, and at Hofstra University.
In 1973–74, Waitzman persuaded the brothers Bickford and Robert Brannen to revive the manufacture of conical Boehm flutes. This project led to the establishment of the flute-making firm of Brannen Brothers.
By 1976 Waitzman became convinced that it was possible to play the modern flute in a manner consistent with the aesthetic requirements of the older repertoire, using a type of embouchure very close to that of Boehm, the original inventor of the modern flute. He established himself as a performer on modern flute, and gave numerous recitals illustrating the history of the flute.