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(b Dobrova, nr Ljubljana, Slovenia; Dec 25, 1877; d Ljubljana, Dec 6, 1936). Slovenian music educator, conductor, and writer on music. Uncle of composer Bojan Adamič. He received his first musical education at the Ljubljana Glasbena Matica society music school, from 1911 to 1912 he studied at the Conservatory in Trieste, and in 1912 he passed the national examination at the Ljubljana Conservatory. During World War I he joined the Austrian Army, and from 1915 to 1920 was a prisoner of war at Tashkent. In 1920 he returned to Ljubljana, where he taught music at the teacher’s college and at the classical gymnasium until his retirement in 1932. From 1925 to 1928 he was conductor of the Orchestral Society at the Glasbena Matica music society, and from January 1928 to December 1929 editor of the Nova muzika (‘New Music’) magazine. He was also active as a music critic and reviewer for the magazines ...

(fl first half of the 11th century). Arab musician and writer. The son of an eminent musician, he became a prominent singer at the Cairo court of the Fatimid caliph al-Ẓāhir (1021–36), and was still active as a teacher in 1057. His music treatise, completed after 1036 and entitled Ḥāwī al-funūn wa-salwat al-maḥzūn (‘Compendium of the arts to comfort sad hearts’), is of particular interest in that it deals with various topics of little concern to other authorities. Written from the perspective of a cultured musician rather than that of a philosopher-theorist, it calls upon a literary tradition of writing about music, and its historical content is frankly derivative, even if of interest for the implication of continuity with the court music of 9th-century Baghdad. But it is wide-ranging in its treatment of contemporary practice, dealing not only with such basics as mode and rhythm, but also with such matters as the normal sequence of events in performance, deportment and etiquette, the materials and construction of the ‘...

(b Bucharest, 2/Aug 14, 1893; d Bucharest, Feb 18, 1959). Romanian composer, pianist, conductor, teacher, music critic, and director of music programmes. A leading figure of the first half of the 20th century, he laid the foundation of the Romanian school in music, concert life, and musical journalism. He studied with A. Castaldi, D. Dinicu, D.G. Kiriac, and E. Saegiu at the Bucharest Conservatory (1903–11), completing his education with two periods of study in Paris (1913–14, 1923–4), where he studied with d’Indy at the Schola Cantorum and with Paul Vidal at the Conservatoire. A remarkable accompanist, he worked with Enescu, Thibaud, Mainardi, Moodie, and others during the period 1919–45. As a conductor he always achieved a soberly balanced performance; he conducted more than 1500 performances at the Romanian Opera in Bucharest (1921–59), where he specialized in the French repertory (Bizet, Massenet, and Gounod). In his capacities as conductor of the Romanian Philharmonic Society, and as conductor and artistic manager of the Romanian RSO, he did much to encourage Romanian composers. He was also active as a music critic for Romanian and French reviews. Much of his compositional work was done during his youth, including ...

(b Stockholm, Nov 28, 1793; d Bremen, Sept 26, 1866). Swedish author, pedagogue, journalist, and composer. After an education administered mainly by private tutors, Almqvist attended university in Uppsala and graduated in 1816. He then took a position as a government clerk in Stockholm, where he engaged in youthful and idealistic movements that worshiped Gothic ideals, the early German romanticism, and Swedenborg’s teachings. He was soon the leading spirit in these circles, and with his visionary religiosity he gained almost prophet-like status among them. In an attempt to realize his ideals, from 1823 to 1824 he lived as a farmer in the remote Wermland but soon returned to Stockholm where in 1827 he became a teacher at the Military Academy of Karlberg; he took an additional teaching post in 1829 at the recently founded experimental college Nya Elementarskolan. There he served as headmaster from 1829 to 1841 and wrote a dozen textbooks on different subjects from linguistics to mathematics....

(b Bucharest, Dec 22, 1894/Jan 5, 1895; d Bucharest, Feb 4, 1974). Romanian composer, pianist, teacher, and critic. An erudite personality of Romanian music, he contributed to the formation of a Romanian school of composition during the inter-war years. At the Bucharest Conservatory (1906–13) he studied with Kiriac-Georgescu, Castaldi, Klenck, and Dunicu. In 1919 he graduated law school in Bucharest and then took the PhD in 1922 in Paris. During his stay in France, he participated in the courses of composition of Vincent d’Indy and Gabriel Faure. In 1920, he founded the Society of Romanian composers with other important musicians. At the Bucharest Conservatory (now the National University of Music Bucharest) he taught chamber music (1926–48) and composition (1948–59). His students include Stefan Niculescu, Dumitru Capoianu, and Aurel Stroe. He was not only a partner at the chamber concerts of George Enescu, but also promoted together with Enescu the new Romanian and French chamber music. He wrote for numerous publications on subjects ranging from music aesthetics to jazz and folk music, for instance, ‘George Enescu the Way I Met Him’ in ...

[Glebov, Igor′]

(b St Petersburg, 17/July 29, 1884; d Moscow, Jan 27, 1949). Russian musicologist, composer and critic. He studied at the St Petersburg Conservatory from 1904 to 1910 with Rimsky-Korsakov and Lyadov, and graduated in 1908 from the faculty of history and philology of the University of St Petersburg. From 1910 he worked as a repetiteur; from 1916 edited and composed ballet music and from 1919 was a member of the board of directors and repertory consultant at the Mariinsky and Mikhaylovsky Theatres. In 1919 he became head of the Central Library for State Musical Theatres. In the same year, in association with Lyapunov and Bulich, he organized the music department at the Petrograd Institute for the History of the Arts (now the Zubov Institute for the History of the Arts); he was its director from 1921. Between 1922 and 1925 he was responsible for the organization there of concerts of contemporary music. He was made a professor at the Leningrad Conservatory in ...

(b Ísafjörður, Oct 11, 1928). Icelandic composer, teacher and critic. He graduated in 1955 from the Reykjavík College of Music, where he studied the piano with Árni Kristjánsson and theory with Victor Urbancic. Further composition studies were undertaken at the RSAMD in Glasgow (1955–6) and at the Guildhall School of Music in London (1965). In 1961 he received a teacher's diploma from the Reykjavík College of Music. Ásgeirsson has conducted various choirs, and became the principal music critic of Morgunblaðið in 1970. Formerly president of the Icelandic Composers' Society, he has taught at various institutions and is currently professor at the Icelandic Teachers' College.

His works are mainly traditional in style though he has written a few serial compositions. He is particularly interested in reviving Icelandic folksongs and dances and has set related folk poetry found without music; he has also served as music director for productions of the ancient dances by the National Dance Company. In ...

[Giorgos, Yorgos]

(b Mariupol, Ukraine, near the north coast of the Sea of Azov, Sept 27, 1875; d Athens, May 16, 1924). Greek composer, critic, and music educator. After the return of his family to Athens in 1887 he studied music privately with Loudovikos Spinellis, and later, in 1895, he went to Naples, Italy, to study composition at the Conservatory of San Pietro a Majella with Paolo Serrao. He came back to Athens in 1901, where he clashed with the representatives of the biggest music institution, the Athens Conservatory, due to the shift of the repertory towards German instead of Italian music, and the changing of the method of music education. He founded, along with Georgios Lambelet, one of the most important cultural magazines of the period, the journal Kritiki (1903–4), through which he expressed his ideas about the paths of music education and Greek music. During the period ...

(b Belgrade, Feb 10, 1927; d Belgrade, Oct 13, 2009). Serbian composer and music critic. He studied composition with Milenko Živković at the Academy of Music in Belgrade, graduating in 1955, and at the Accademia Nazionale di S. Cecilia in Rome (1967–8). He was a conductor of the choral society Napredak (1953–5), and then taught at Stanković music school (1955–66) and at the Music Academy (today Faculty of Music, 1966–96). As a music critic, he collaborated with various newspapers (Borba, Naša borba, Politika, Večernje novosti) and translated several books. He received awards from Udruženje kompozitora Srbije (‘the Association of Serbian composers’) and Yugoslav Radio, and received the Vukova nagrada. He followed the aesthetic of Stevan Mokranjac and his own professor Živković. His lyric music, predominantly choral, is distinguishable by his afinity for humour, both in his choice of lyrics and the musical means. He uses verbal punning (...

(b Coburg, June 30, 1823; d Basle, July 16, 1896). German critic, teacher and composer. He studied the piano and cello at the Prague Conservatory and moved to Vienna in 1842, where he studied theory with Sechter and was active performing, teaching and composing. He was appointed to the Vienna Conservatory in 1852, but his high standards and outspoken critical stance led to his dismissal in 1855. In 1859 Bagge became the editor of a new journal, the Deutsche Musik-Zeitung, which opposed the ‘New German’ sympathies of Franz Brendel’s Neue Zeitschrift für Musik. He moved to Leipzig in 1863 to edit the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung (later the Leipziger allgemeine musikalische Zeitung); it closely reflected his conviction that composers should strive to imitate music of the past. Bagge’s own reviews praise music by such composers as Bargiel, Volkmann, Reinecke and Kirchner. He regarded much of Brahms’s music as undisciplined, contributing to a critical climate that may have prompted Brahms to adopt a more classically-oriented style....

[Jones, (Everett) LeRoi]

(b Newark, NJ, Oct 7, 1934; d Newark, Jan 9, 2014). American writer. He studied piano, drums, and trumpet privately and attended Howard University (BA 1954). In the early 1960s he achieved wide recognition for his poetry and plays and for his writings about jazz, which included articles for Down Beat, Jazz, and Jazz Review; a selection of his writings, many from Down Beat, was published in 1967 as Black Music. His book Blues People (1963), the first full-length study of jazz by a black writer, is both a sociological inquiry, using blues and jazz as a means of understanding how African Americans became assimilated into American culture, and a superb discussion of the cultural context of the music in the United States. Besides his activities as a writer, Baraka was involved in many black cultural and community projects. He was a founder of the Black Arts Repertory Theater-School, which was in existence from ...

(b Créteil, France, Nov 30, 1907; d San Antonio, TX, October 25, 2012). Cultural historian, critic, and teacher of French birth. Born into the artistic environs of French modernism, he wrote widely on Western culture and its documents, founding the discipline of cultural history at Columbia University, where he spent his academic career.

After leaving France for America in 1920, he attended Columbia University (BA 1927, PhD 1932) where he lectured on contemporary civilization from 1927, becoming assistant professor (1937), professor (1945), Seth Low Professor of History (1955), Provost (1958–67), and University Professor (1967–75). He also served as president of the American Academy of Arts (1972–5, 1977–8), and was made an Extraordinary Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge University in 1960.

Barzun regarded culture as a fabric of interwoven ideas which historians should trace through time, and between which exist a series of links: “because culture is a web of many strands; none is spun by itself, nor is any cut off at a fixed date.” He viewed music through the prism of a broader culture, typified in the scope of ...

(b Manchester, April 27, 1803; d Vienna, Nov 23, 1848). German critic, composer and teacher. The son of a Hanau merchant who had settled in Manchester, he was taken as a child to Germany. He studied law in Jena, Berlin, Heidelberg and Leiden, taking a doctorate despite his prosecution for ‘demagogic activities’; his first compositions date from this time. Already an ardent revolutionary, in whom Wagner detected ‘a certain wildness and vehemence’ (Mein Leben), he held various posts in rapid succession, including those of lawyer in Elberfeld (c1830), editor of a Cologne commercial newspaper founded by his father, the Handelsblatt (1834), and critic for the Kölner Zeitung and Neue Zeitschrift für Musik. On the failure of the Handelsblatt, he devoted himself entirely to music. After the death of his father and his wife he moved to The Hague to teach theory and aesthetics at the Royal Music School (...

(Andrejevich )

(b Novosibirsk, Russian SFSR [now Russia], March 16, 1947). Russian drummer, writer, broadcaster, and educator. He began playing jazz in 1962, and after graduating from the state medical institute in Novosibirsk in 1971 he pursued a dual career as a jazz musician and an obstetrician. In 1975 he established Tvorcheskoye Dhazovoye Ob’yedinenie (Creative Jazz Unity), the first association of musicians and jazz promoters east of the Urals. He performed with Vladimir Tolkachev in the Musical Improvising Trio (1975–9), with Igor Dmitriev in various groups (including, from 1977, Zolotoye Gody Dhaza (Golden Jazz Years), with Vytautas Labutis in the quartet SibLitMash (Siberian-Lithuanian Jazz Machine, 1980s), and with Vagif Sadykhov in another quartet (1998), while also working as a freelance with Vladimir Chekasin, Anatoly Vapirov, Igor Butman, Joe Locke, Paul Bollenback, and former members of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, among others. In 1990 he began to broadcast on radio, and in ...

(b Dessau, Nov 27, 1794; d Cologne, Feb 24, 1867). German music critic, writer and teacher. After participating in the Napoleonic Wars, he studied philology in Berlin, had a notable career as teacher and school director that included 26 years in Wesel, and moved in 1850 to Cologne to become music critic of the Kölnische Zeitung and to found the Rheinische (later Niederrheinische) Musikzeitung, which he edited and to which he contributed until his death. His writings, distinguished by their musical acuity and vivid expressiveness, strove to raise the public's musical standards and served as a voice for the lower Rhineland.

Bischoff venerated certain values in the music of the past as representing the highest in musical art. His writings reflect the then growing enthusiasm for Handel and Bach, while his aesthetic ideals were realized in the music of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. He held an ambivalent position towards Romantic music, admiring its expressive qualities but decrying a perceived decline in the accessibility, formal integrity and universality that he most valued. While he supported contemporary composers active in Cologne (e.g. Ferdinand Hiller, Carl Reinecke, Eduard Franck, Reinthaler, Bargiel and Bruch), his encounter with the progressive New German School of Liszt and Wagner, supported by a dedicated band of critics and essayists, impelled him to become one of its first and most outspoken opponents....

[Rudolph] (Pickett)

(b Guthrie, OK, Jan 21, 1899; d Gilmanton, NH, Aug 25, 1985). American writer on music. He attended Dartmouth College and earned the BS in architecture from the University of California, Berkeley. In the 1940s he served as jazz critic for the San Francisco Chronicle and the New York Herald Tribune. He wrote a pioneering serious history of jazz, Shining Trumpets (1946), and with Harriet Janis was co-author of the first history of ragtime, They All Played Ragtime (1950). The latter work established him as the leading authority in this field, and eventually prompted a revival of the music. Also with Janis, he founded Circle Records, a small but significant jazz label which became the first to issue the Library of Congress recordings of Jelly Roll Morton. In 1953 they sold Circle Records – apart from the Morton recordings – to Jazzology Records. From 1947 to 1950...

(b Stockholm, June 6, 1804; d Stockholm, March 17, 1861). Swedish music critic, historian and composer. He was a pupil of Per Frigel. He earned his living as a clerk in the Swedish Customs and was for many years music critic for the Post och inrikes tidningar. In 1849 he was elected a member of the Swedish Royal Academy of Music, the library of which he helped to catalogue. In 1850 he translated Birch’s Darstellung der Bühnenkunst into Swedish. He lectured extensively on music history at the conservatory in 1852, and wrote articles for the Ny tidning för musik during the whole period of its existence (1853–7). The most important of these was ‘En blick på tonkonsten i Sverige’, a survey of Swedish music during the previous 50 years. Boman is considered one of the most reliable and important Swedish writers on music before Adolf Lindgren. (...

[Fišer, Zbyněk]

(b Prague, 20 Jan 1930; d Bratislava, 9 April 2007).Czech philosopher, writer, and poet, and a leading figure of the Czechoslovak underground. Egon Bondy’s legendary career began in 1947, when he briefly joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia only to resign immediately after the party’s takeover in February 1948. For the next ten years Bondy freewheeled on the edge of the law, proto-beatnik style. During those years he gained visibility among members of the underground by cofounding the illegal samizdat review Půlnoc (‘Midnight’). With the 1949 Půlnoc collection Jewish Names he started to use the name Egon Bondy. In 1957 he enrolled at Prague’s Charles University on distance study while working as a nighttime security guard. He received the PhD in 1967 with a dissertation entitled Útěcha z ontologie (‘Consolation from Ontology’). From that year Bondy lived on disability while continuing to write, but other than his study ...

(b Burton-in-Kendal, Cumbria, March 10, 1872; d Chicago, Sept 6, 1956). American composer, teacher and critic of British origin. He was educated in London and Cologne and began his career in Aberdeen. In 1897 he joined the Chicago Musical College as teacher of the violin, composition and history. He became president of the college (1916–25) and then moved to Northwestern University, first as special lecturer in history and form, then as professor of musicology (1937–42). His books The Standard Operas (Chicago, 1928) and The Standard Concert Guide (Chicago, 1932), republished together in 1936, were expansions of works by George P. Upton, whose role as Chicago’s leading music critic (for the Chicago Tribune) Borowski inherited. He was also responsible for building the music collection of the Newberry Library, beginning soon after his arrival in Chicago and continuing as a part-time staff member (...

(b Lisbon, Oct 12, 1890; d Lisbon, Nov 27, 1955). Portuguese composer, teacher, musicologist and critic. He studied composition in Lisbon privately with Augusto Machado and Tomás Borba, then with Désiré Pâque and Luigi Mancinelli. He also studied the piano and the violin. He completed his studies in Berlin with Humperdinck and Pâque (1910) and in Paris with Grovlez (1911). After his marriage he lived on Madeira for two years, returning to Lisbon in 1914. He taught at the Lisbon Conservatory (1916–39), later becoming its assistant director (1919–24). There he worked with Mota in the major reforms which began in 1918. At the same time he established himself as a composer, musicologist, critic and lecturer and slowly rose to a position of fundamental importance in Portuguese musical life. As a teacher, he also played an important role in the preparation of a new generation of composers. In the 1930s, he began to have difficulties with the political authorities and in ...