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At various times in musical history, the word ‘academy’ has meant diverse things, including (i) a formal association of people interested in mutually communicating their opinions on various philosophical, intellectual or cultural issues (most such academies sponsored theatrical events with music and some included discussions of musical questions on their regular agenda), or even, in some few cases, a formal association devoting itself primarily to the study of music; (ii) a more loosely formed circle of intellectuals interested in holding lively discussions on various topics; (iii) an official national society that serves as an arbiter of tastes and standards; (iv) a society formed specifically to sponsor musical performances (including opera); (v) a single concert, either public or private; or (vi) an institution for the training of musicians.

The first of these definitions must be considered the original and therefore the primary meaning. The word itself derives from the mythological character Akademos, after whom a garden or grove in Athens was named, where it is said that the Greek philosopher Plato met his students to discuss philosophy, although recent scholarship has shown that exclusive reference to Plato was never intended by users of the word (Chambers, ...

The now defunct African Music Society was founded in 1948 by Hugh Tracey and anthropologist Winifred Hoernle, whose principal objective was to encourage research in traditional and popular musics in Africa. The society emphasized the importance of recordings to document the range and character of African indigenous music, much of which has been extremely localized due to barriers of distance and language, and through dependence on oral tradition. The society also encouraged the dissemination of musical styles through education and radio programmes. It developed into the ...

State university system with a main campus in Tuscaloosa and satellite campuses in Birmingham and Huntsville. The main campus opened in 1831 and the music department was established in 1918 with the appointment of Robert Lawrence, who taught voice and choir. The first BM degree was awarded in 1938. The music faculty established the Southeastern Composers’ League in 1951 and for 20 years hosted the Regional Composers’ Forum (1951–70). In 1955 Alabama Educational Television’s network telecast of the School of Music’s production of Puccini’s La bohéme was the earliest known live opera broadcast for educational television. Currently the School of Music offers the BM, BA, BS, MA, MM, DMA, EdS, EdD, and PhD degrees in such fields as administration, arranging, composition, conducting, education, jazz studies, musicology, performance, theory, therapy, and church music. In 2009 enrollment surpassed 350 students served by a full-time faculty of 37. Since 1984, over 185 eminent scholars and musicians have held residences in the Board of Trustees’ Endowed Chair in Music program. The University of Alabama System, consisting of three autonomous public universities, was established in ...

[ACDA]

Professional organization founded in 1959. A group of 35 attendees at the biennial conference of the Music Teachers National Association in Kansas City, Missouri, formed this organization. A steering committee consisting of J. Clark Rhodes, Elwood Keister, Curt Hansen, Harry Robert Wilson, R. Wayne Hugoboom, Warner Imig, and Archie N. Jones created a working philosophy called the original ten purposes. The first purpose states: “To foster and promote choral singing which will provide artistic, cultural, and spiritual experiences for the participants.” The first national convention, held the following year in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in conjunction with a convention of the Music Educators National Conference (MENC), featured five concerts, reading and interest sessions, and panel discussions, a model that continues to the present day. During its first decade the ACDA formed division and state chapters following the MENC model. R. Wayne Hugoboom was appointed the first executive secretary (1964...

An American educational and service organization for organists, clergy, and choral conductors. The guild was founded in New York in 1896 by over 100 of the leading organists and clergy, including John Knowles Paine and George Chadwick, and chartered by the New York State Board of Regents. Dudley Buck served as the first honorary president. Its goals are to promote the organ, encourage excellence in the performance of organ and choral music, to support education and certification of Guild members, and to set and maintain standards of artistic excellence among its members. The Guild sponsors competitions in organ performance, improvisation, and in organ and choral composition, as well as national and regional conventions. The Guild also conducts examinations in organ playing and choir training, awarding successful candidates certificates and designating them as fellows, associates, or choirmasters. Monthly since 1967 it has published the American Organist, the most widely read journal devoted to organ and choral music in the world. With some 20,000 members in 322 chapters in all 50 states, Panama, and Europe, the Guild is one of the world’s largest organizations of musicians specializing in a single instrument....

Organization founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts, by Armen Carapetyan in 1944 as the Institute of Renaissance and Baroque Music. The primary purpose of the institute is to publish scholarly editions of compositions and theoretical works, chiefly those of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and thus to promote the study of these sources in the humanistic disciplines in institutions of higher education. In 1946 the new name was adopted, and headquarters were moved to Rome (though offices were maintained in Cambridge and in Dallas, the latter’s circulation office moving to the firm of Hänssler-Verlag in Stuttgart in 1974). A group of eminent scholars served as an advisory board until 1949, when Carapetyan became the sole director. A choir was established in 1947, and summer sessions featuring advanced studies in medieval and Renaissance music history were held in 1947 and 1948; both were soon discontinued.

In its range of publications the institute has always aimed at high standards of scholarship and book production; following Carapetyan’s death in ...

[AOSA]

Professional organization for Orff Schulwerk teachers. The organization promotes the artistic and pedagogical principles of Bavarian composer and educator Carl Orff (1895–82) and his colleague Gunild Keetman (1904–90). Orff Schulwerk (schoolwork) uses children’s poems, rhymes, games, songs, and dances as examples and basic materials. The non-competitive approach emphasizes creativity through music and movement. Specially designed Orff instruments are a part of the approach. The American Orff-Schulwerk Association was founded in Muncie, Indiana, in 1968 when educators who had studied Orff Schulwerk convened a meeting. The organization holds annual conferences and oversees guidelines for Orff teacher training courses. There are almost 120 regional chapters that sponsor teacher education workshops. The organization’s journal, the Orff Echo, is published quarterly. The membership elects a board of directors representing each region of the country. AOSA is the largest of many Orff organizations internationally that look to the Orff Institute of the University Mozarteum in Salzburg as the center of the Orff movement. AOSA members and other Orff-trained teachers use various materials published by Orff and Keetman, most prominently the multi-volume set ...

(ASBDA)

Professional association of band directors teaching at the elementary- or secondary-school level. Established in 1953, its objectives were to represent school band directors in the academic and business communities; to foster the exchange of ideas and methods that will advance the standards of musical and educational achievement; to stress the importance of the school band in the educational process and establish bands as a basic course in the school curriculum; to maintain a program for the improvement of school bands through research and experimentation; and to cooperate with existing associations that share the aim of promoting the band as a worthwhile medium of musical expression. Membership (by invitation) is open to active school band directors with a minimum of five years’ teaching experience who command the respect of their colleagues for the standard of performance and musicianship achieved by their bands. The association presents two biennial awards, the A. Austin Harding Award to individuals for valuable and dedicated service to the bands of America, and the Edwin Franko Goldman Award as a measure of appreciation for outstanding personal contributions to the school band movement....

American organization founded in New York in 1974, a successor to the Mailamm (active 1931–9), the Jewish Music Forum (1939–63), and the Jewish Liturgical Music Society of America (1963–74). Membership includes libraries, synagogues, cantors, composers, educators, musicologists, ethnologists, historians, performers, and lay members who are active or interested in Jewish liturgical and secular music. The society maintains relationships with similar organizations throughout the world. It presents a variety of public programs each season, often with the American Jewish Historical Society, its host at the Center for Jewish History. The organization publishes scholarly works relevant to Jewish music, notably the multilingual journal Musica judaica (since 1975). It also sponsors the Jewish Music Forum, which hosts academic seminars, events, and forums to promote awareness and dialogue about Jewish music. It awards prizes for new Jewish works and schedules to have them performed. Albert Weisser served as its first president....

[ASTA]

National professional organization for string music education. ASTA was founded in 1946 to encourage student performance of bowed instruments; to foster study and research on the pedagogy of string playing; and to facilitate the continuing education of string teachers. It was organized partly in reaction to the proliferation of wind bands in the public schools. The association’s activities have included special study of violin pedagogy (beginning in 1966), workshops for school orchestra directors who are not string specialists (1971–), and an international workshop with the European String Teachers Association held in Exeter, Great Britain (1975). ASTA also grants annual awards to artist-teachers and for distinguished service to the string teaching profession. In addition to various monographs and bulletins, the association has published the (now quarterly) American String Teacher since 1951. Its 11,500 members are string teachers and performers from all 50 states. Its current headquarters opened in Reston, Virginia, in ...

An educational and service organization for organists and theater organ enthusiasts, founded in 1955. Its goals are to preserve and promote the organs that were originally designed to accompany silent movies in the motion picture palaces of the 1920s. In addition, the society works to preserve, restore, maintain, and promote the theater pipe organ in places ranging from original motion picture palaces to skating rinks, schools, colleges and universities, pizza restaurants, and even private homes. To encourage young musicians to become proficient theater organists the ATOS sponsors an annual Young Organist Competition as well as annual scholarships for aspiring young organ students. The society has more than 3500 members in approximately 75 chapters across the United States, Great Britain, and Australia. The organization and the various chapters sponsor an annual convention, concerts, screening of silent films, and educational and technical programs (including a youth camp for young organists), and publish a bimonthly journal, ...

Among Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck’s (see Amsterdam: Concert life) pupils were founders of the so-called North German organ school, as well as dilettantes from well-to-do families. During the 17th and 18th centuries instrument makers also gave music lessons to their customers and apprentices. Music, mainly singing, was taught in elementary schools in the 18th century. Didactic books were published and such societies as the Maatschappij tot Nut van 't Algemeen (1784) were founded with the improvement of music education among their aims.

In 1827 the Koninklijke Muziekschool opened (later called the Stedelijke Muziekschool, 1844–52). The Maatschappij tot Bevordering der Toonkunst started a new music school in 1853, with J.B. van Bree as its director; it closed in 1857. In 1862 Toonkunst opened a ‘Zangschool’ for dilettantes. The Amsterdam Conservatory was founded in 1884 with Frans Coenen as director, followed by Daniël de Lange and Julius Röntgen. Bernard Zweers, Willem Pijper and Ton de Leeuw taught composition there. The Orkestschool, an initiative of Willem Kes, was opened in the Concertgebouw in ...

Archives and manuscripts constitute the “raw materials” of music history, since the foundation of much humanistic scholarship is based on the interpretation and re-interpretation of primary and secondary sources. Music archival collections and manuscripts may be found both within and outside musical organizations, such as conservatories, academic institutions, libraries, historical societies, museums, businesses, performing arts organizations, research centers, radio and television stations, government archives, and church archives.

This article will cover the single manuscript and paper-based archival traditions in the USA. For media-based archives, see Archives, sound recording and moving image. For details of specific collections see Libraries and collections; for jazz archives see Libraries and archives in GroveJ.

Archives are defined as groups of documents produced by an institution, an organization, an individual, or a family in the course of daily activity, and preserved for enduring value. They are typically kept together as organized bodies of records and are maintained in their original order. The term archive also refers to the repository where archives are located; it is often also used to describe a specialized collection....

Repositories for the permanent retention, preservation, and access of sound recordings (e.g., CDs, LPs, audio cassettes, cylinders, digital audio files) and moving image media (e.g., motion-picture film, kinescope, videotape, digital video files); often included along side of these collections are the mechanical playback devices for such media. The history of archives of this kind in the United States reveals trends towards the amalgamation of sound and moving image materials into single units based either on format (e.g., Library of Congress’ Motion Picture Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division) or academic discipline (UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive). Traditionally the distinction between a library and an archive is essentially one of purpose and a material’s publication status: whereas libraries collect published materials for use by general patrons within and outside the library, archives generally accession and preserve unpublished materials, allowing restricted access for research purposes. However, with the development of the Internet, digitization technologies, and online modes of distribution, the distinction between library and archive hosted sound recording and moving image collections has become more fluid with both kinds of institutions posting published and unpublished audio and video files online with varying degrees of accessibility. Parallel advances in preservation technologies have also enabled archivists to digitize analog sound recordings and moving image recordings that is thought to ensure long-term, if not permanent, access to the content housed on the original analog carriers....

Record company. It was originally established in Los Gatos, California, in 1960 by record collector Chris Strachwitz. The label’s first release was bluesman Mance Lipscomb’s Texas Sharecropper and Songster, of which 250 copies were originally produced. Strachwitz held down a day job as a high school teacher for the first two years of the label’s existence, supplementing his income with sales of collectible 78s. In exchange for engineering the recording session at which Country Joe McDonald first recorded “I feel like I’m fixin’ to die rag,” Strachwitz was awarded the publishing rights to the song, which was featured in the Woodstock concert documentary film and album, and which brought Arhoolie its “first real money.”

While Arhoolie is best known as a blues label, with a roster that includes Big Mama Thornton, Bukka White, Mississippi Fred McDowell, and others, Arhoolie maintains an extensive catalogue of Cajun and Zydeco music, featuring artists such as Clifton Chenier, Beausoleil, and Canray Fontenot. The label also has released a wide-ranging collection of Mexican regional and Tejano music from artists such as Freddy Fender, Flaco Jimenez, and others. Arhoolie is the sole American importer of the Dutch world music label Pan and the Austrian blues and gospel label Document, and retains ownership of a retail outlet, Down Home Music Store, located in El Cerrito, California....

American record company. It was formally established in New York, New York, by former Columbia Records chief Clive Davis in June 1974. A year to the day after having been fired from Columbia, Davis signed a deal with Columbia Pictures Industries (unrelated to his former label) to organize their music businesses, which at that time consisted mainly of the Bell label and Screen Gems Music, a publishing company. Other labels owned by the company at the time, but largely dormant, were Colgems (the successor to Colpix) and SGC.

When Davis debuted the newly-organized Arista Records (named for the New York City high school honor society of which he was once a member) in November 1974, its front-line artists included a few holdovers from the Bell era, such as Suzi Quatro, Gryphon, and Tony Orlando and Dawn, plus new signings including Gil Scott-Heron. Surprisingly, it was some of their less-heralded artists—Melissa Manchester, Barry Manilow, and the Outlaws—that would bring the label some of its biggest early successes....

The University of Arizona was established as the territory’s land grant institution in 1885. The School of Music—an independent entity within the five-unit College of Fine Arts—began as a Department of Music (1893) and took its current name in 1926. In 2009, under director Peter McAllister, the 60-member faculty serviced approximately 550 students. Degrees offered include the BA in music; the BM in composition, jazz studies, music education, and performance; the MM in composition, conducting, ethnomusicology, music education, musicology, music theory, and performance; the DMA in composition, conducting, and performance; and the PhD in music education and music theory. The Fine Arts Library houses collections for the College of Fine Arts and College of Architecture, with notable music collections such as the National Flute Association Library, Conley Choral Library, Frank Simon Band Library, Hill and Phillips Collections of popular sheet music, and the Nelson Riddle and Artie Shaw Collections....

[AE]

Nonprofit organization dedicated to educating, promoting, and supporting emerging leaders by exploring the intersection between the arts and business to promote social growth and entrepreneurial thinking. The organization was founded in 2006 at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, by an interdisciplinary team of students and faculty, including Chris Genteel, Kelly Dylla, Nathaniel Zeisler, and Mark Clague. Operating first as a student group, AE soon expanded to other colleges and universities, including Bowling Green State University, University of Wisconsin, University of Missouri at Kansas City, University of Iowa, and Claremont Graduate University. Chapters operate independently, advocating on behalf of AE’s mission while engaging the broader student body through skills-based workshops, performances, consulting projects, and service programs. To account for the movement’s continued growth, a national support organization was formed in 2008 to offer professional development resources and empower student leadership through action-based learning. Since 2009 Arts Enterprise has produced an annual summit, which includes keynote addresses from industry leaders and a case competition for new student businesses....