“There's a lot of music out there that no one has recorded,” said Kivie Cahn-Lipman, Lawrence University’s new cello professor.
For Cahn-Lipman, forgotten music isn’t a dead end—it’s an invitation. Throughout his career, he has made it his mission to resurrect hidden gems, often giving them their first recordings.
To date, he has performed on more than 50 recordings, with a repertoire that stretches from early Celtic folk and the complete Bach cello suites to the works of contemporary composers such as Kaija Saariaho and George Crumb.
“There have been amazing women composers throughout music history,” Cahn-Lipman said, naming three women whose works he has recently recorded—“from Caterina Giani in the seventeenth century, to Emilie Mayer in the nineteenth century, to Daijana Wallace writing a piece for the Lawrence University Cello Ensemble right now.”
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For Cahn-Lipman, who joined the Conservatory of Music faculty in the fall, his efforts to widen the canon also concern its bookends, both early and contemporary music. His latest project takes this commitment to early music a step further.
On March 7, Cahn-Lipman will release the premiere recording of The Gentle Shepherd by Allan Ramsay, performed by Makaris, the Celtic classical/folk ensemble he founded.
First published in 1725, The Gentle Shepherd is considered the first Scottish opera and a prime contender for the first-ever ballad opera—an eighteenth-century “jukebox” compilation of popular tunes. Despite its historical importance, the work remains obscure, largely overshadowed by John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera (1728), which went on to define the genre.
Cahn-Lipman first encountered The Gentle Shepherd by accident while researching for an earlier project.
“I randomly stumbled across The Gentle Shepherd,” he said. “It was being compared to The Beggar's Opera by a bunch of sources in the same sentence—but I had never heard of it and I realized, ‘Wow, this is a really important piece from its time that is completely forgotten about.’”
The work’s obscurity isn’t just a matter of neglect—it’s a logistical challenge.
“There's no score,” said Cahn-Lipman, “there's a libretto, and what Allan Ramsay did is he wrote the song text, and indicated the tune, but then there's no attachment of music to the actual words.”
Assembling the opera was no simple task. Although some songs fit neatly with their indicated tunes, others posed significant challenges, with multiple melodies sharing the same name or simply rhythmic patterns that didn’t align with the text.
“I had to create a new edition from scratch that would match the melody to the text and then orchestrate it and then syllabize everything,” Cahn-Lipman said.
The result is not just a performance but a reconstruction—one that required Cahn-Lipman to step into the roles of composer, librettist, editor, and historian. As with many of his projects, he wrote extensive program notes to document the process and highlight the opera’s significance.
With a fresh score in hand, the next step was recording.
For that, Cahn-Lipman turned to Makaris, one of several ensembles whose inceptions he was crucial in—he was founder of the string band ACRONYM, founding cellist of International Contemporary Ensemble and co-founder of two viol consorts, LeStrange and Science Ficta.
Cahn-Lipman came to Lawrence from Youngstown State University, where he had taught cello since 2017. He previously taught at The College of New Jersey, Mount Holyoke College, and Smith College and has been a frequent performer as a cellist and gambist. He earned a DMA from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, a master’s from The Juilliard School, and a bachelor’s degree from Oberlin College Conservatory of Music.
Throughout, Cahn-Lipman has not only championed forgotten works but also developed a deep respect for the process of rediscovery, an appreciation he hopes to instill in his students at Lawrence.
“I encourage my students to seek out lesser-known composers,” Cahn-Lipman said, “particularly if they're from an underrepresented minority. That's a responsibility that musicians should inherit—I think I do—and to question whether the few composers whose works have become standard repertoire are the only ones who deserve to be there.”
