- Voice
Denis William Stevens is a British musicologist specialising in early music, conductor, professor of music and radio producer.
He was born in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire and attended the Royal Grammar School there. He won a scholarship to read modern languages at Jesus College, Oxford in 1940. From 1949 to 1954, he was a producer at the BBC Third Programme. Stevens completed the task of producing the Supplementary Volume to the 5th edition of Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, which Eric Blom had not been able to complete by the time of his death in 1959. The Supplementary Volume was published in 1961. From 1964 to 1976, he was professor of musicology at Columbia University, New York. In 1995, he was appointed as visiting professor at Goldsmiths College in London.
Best known for his work on early baroque Italian composers, especially Claudio Monteverdi, and for his pioneering concerts and recordings with the Accademia Monteverdiana, which he founded, her was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1984.
He teaches at the Académie musicale de Villecroze in 1996 and 2009.