Born in Montreal in 1978, the lutenist and musicologist Benjamin Narvey graduated from the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London and has studied under musicians such as Paul O’Dette, Nigel North, Hopkinson Smith and Robert Barto.

The jury described his essay as “an excellent and well documented research article, written and presented in such a way as to make its subject matter easily accessible to a non-specialist readership”. The article, which has been awarded a cash prize of €3,000 will be published in Goldberg Magazine's next issue 51 (April 2008). The second prize of €2,000 has been awarded to Bruno Forment for his essay entitled “Apostolo Zeno: A librettist caught between his study and the stage”; and the third prize of €1,000 has gone to Annie Choisy Kress for her essay “Un inconnu illustre: Johann Adolf Hasse”.

The Goldberg Foundation, recently created with the aim of encouraging initiatives to recover, promote, disseminate and reappraise the classical music heritage, thus bridges the gap between early music scholars and researchers, on the one hand, and music lovers on the other, making new knowledge arising from research more readily available to the wider public. The inaugural Essay Competition also coincides with the tenth anniversary of Goldberg.