The British violinist and violist was an influential musician in the UK baroque music scene, having led numerous ensembles and authored several publications
Judy Tarling, described as ’a profound influence on the performance of baroque music’ in the Guardian, has died of cancer, aged 78.
The British musician was born in Brighton and studied both violin and viola at the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal College of Music in London. Following her studies, she played with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra for a period, before becoming interested in early music performance.
She ran the chamber group Brighton Baroque in the 1970s and was involved in the early Academy of Ancient Music recordings of the complete Mozart symphonies. She was invited to join the Parley of Instruments in 1981, under the directorship of Roy Goodman and Peter Holman. She led the group since the 1980s, specialising in 17th-century string consort repertoire, made over 70 recordings for Hyperion Records and toured Europe, the US and South America.
Tarling was also principal viola of the Hanover Band for 20 years and a principal member of the Brandenburg Consort. She also led the band of Opera Restor’d in performances and recordings, and led the Cambridge Baroque Camerata.
As an educator, she was a tutor for the European Union Baroque Orchestra and lectured on Baroque style at Cambridge University, The Royal Academy of Music, The Royal College of Music, The Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Trinity College of Music, London and the Birmingham conservatoire.
She was the orchestral tutor and leader at the Baroque Opera Project at Little Benslow Hills, teaching baroque style on modern instruments, and was the violin/viola tutor for the Parley of Instruments International Summer School in Cambridge since its inception.
Tarling gave masterclasses and lectures in musical rhetoric at institutions worldwide, such as Veracruz, Utrecht, Oslo and Amsterdam. In the US, she embarked on a teaching tour in 2010, visiting schools including the Juilliard, Longy, Oberlin, Harvard, Jacobs and Yale schools of music.
She was the author of Baroque String Playing ‘for ingenious learners’ (2000), The Weapons of Rhetoric: a guide for musicians and performers (2004) and Handel’s Messiah: a rhetorical guide (2014).
In addition to her musical accomplishments, Tarling held a first class honours degree in the humanities with classical studies from the Open University and achieved a distinction in MA garden history. She published a book on gardening in 2020 called Landscapes of Eloquence? finding rhetoric in the English landscape garden.
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