Librarian or Archivist

(b Boston, MA, July 21, 1919; d Danbury, CT, Aug 23, 1992). American librarian, administrator, and writer on music. He studied at Boston, Columbia, and Harvard universities. From 1937 to 1947 he worked at the Boston Public Library, becoming assistant head of the music department. In 1946 he was appointed librarian of the Berkshire Music Center, of which he was later administrator (1957–63); from 1947 he also served as assistant librarian of the Boston SO, a position created for him by Koussevitzky. He was later assistant to Charles Munch (1953–7) and then artistic administrator of the orchestra. From 1963 to 1973 Burkat was employed by CBS, first as director of Columbia Masterworks, then as vice-president of Columbia Records, and finally as vice-president of CBS/Columbia Records Group. In 1975 he began his own syndicated program-note firm. He wrote reviews and articles for the Boston Globe...

(b Wivelsfield, nr Haywards Heath, England, March 20, 1927; d Burnham, England, May 25, 2004). English multi-instrumentalist, record producer, and discographer. He learned piano briefly as a child, took up drums in school and guitar during army service in Austria (1945–8), and played banjo in a quartet before working with Mick Mulligan from October 1948. One month after taking up trombone in 1949 he joined the Crane River Jazz Band, with which he remained until spring 1951 and recorded in 1953. He played with the cornetist Steve Lane (1952), Cy Laurie (late 1954), and Sandy Brown (1955 – summer 1956), at which time he began doubling on alto saxophone; his trombone playing can be heard on Brown’s Africa Blues (1955, Tempo A128). He then joined Acker Bilk (for three months in late 1957), for whom he played alto saxophone and guitar, and led his own band. His principal later associations were as trombonist with and arranger for the Temperance Seven (...

(b Boston, May 13, 1813; d Boston, Sept 5, 1893). American writer on music. A graduate of Harvard College (1832) and Harvard Divinity School (1836), Dwight manifested an early affinity with the German idealist tradition in his annotated translations of poetry by Goethe and Schiller. As a leading contributor to the Associationist Harbinger (1845–9) and Dwight's Journal of Music (1852–81), which he founded and edited, he elevated criticism to a higher and more educational plane. After the death of his wife in 1860, he spent his last 20 years as resident librarian and permanent president of the Harvard Musical Association, which sponsored an annual series of concerts under his management (1865–82).

Dwight's writings of the 1840s reflect New England transcendentalist currents and a familiarity with such European thinkers as E.T.A. Hoffmann, A.B. Marx, Gottfried Fink, Charles Fourier, F.-J. Fétis, Frédéric Kalkbrenner, Thomas Carlyle and William Gardiner. Championing aesthetic education and informed listening, Dwight proposed that music – as art, science, and language of feeling ennobling and uniting people – be made widely accessible. In America he was a pioneer in describing the humanistic importance and large-scale structures of Beethoven's symphonies....

(b New York, July 18, 1904; d Washington DC, May 9, 1977). American music librarian and administrator. At New York University he took the BA in 1923 and the MA in 1924. He later studied at the University of Berlin, where he received the PhD in 1933 with a dissertation on aspects of tonal intensity. His private teachers included Eugen d’Albert and Hugo Leichtentritt. After working in New York as a research assistant to Olin Downes (1933–4), he joined the staff of the music division of the Library of Congress in 1934; he was assistant chief of the division from 1934 to 1937 and chief from 1937 until his retirement in 1972. During his long tenure in the music division Spivacke was active with a number of governmental agencies and departments in addition to the Library of Congress. His activities in professional organizations included a term as president of the Music Library Association (...

[Neil]

(b Newark, NJ, June 29, 1953). American music librarian and administrator. He attended the University of Pennsylvania (BA in English, 1975), Rutgers University (MLS, 1976), and the Ohio State University (MA in Education, 1981). He began working for the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) in 1982. Currently a consulting database specialist and quality control expert, he now serves as OCLC Liaison to the Music Library Association and to the Music OCLC Users Group (MOUG). He has been an advocate for the improvement of music cataloging standards as well as an educator and writer. His manual on MARC coding for music (2001) is the standard text, and he also publishes a column for the MOUG Newsletter. His work has significantly raised the level of bibliographic control for music in the United States. In 2004 he received the MOUG Distinguished Service Award.