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[Erik]

(b Ilmajoki, Feb 2, 1911; d Tampere, Sept 2, 1996). Finnish musicologist and folklorist. He studied at Helsinki Conservatory (1929–36) and under A.O. Väisänen at Helsinki University (MA 1942), where he took the doctorate in 1956 with a dissertation on the polska in Finland. His extended fieldwork on folk music and instruments in Finland and Sweden resulted in a collection of over 10,000 melodies (now in Tampere University library). After teaching music at Helsinki Conservatory (1951–7) and lecturing at Helsinki University (1957–62) he held a research grant from the State Humanities Committee (1962–75). He was professor of folk research at Tampere University (1975–7) and director of the university folk research institute (1977–81). He was active in many folk music research organizations. A list of his writings is included in the Festschrift Kentältä kentälle: juhlakirja Erkki Ala-Könnin 70 - vuotispäiväksi 2.2.1981...

(b S Antônio de Jesus, Bahia, Dec 6, 1895; d Rio de Janeiro, Jan 25, 1981). Brazilian musicologist and folklorist. After graduating from law school in Rio de Janeiro, he set out to be an author, journalist and critic. His first writings dealt with criticism and philosophy, but he also wrote important works on music, including the well-known História da música brasileira (Rio de Janeiro, 1926). The second edition (1942) contains over 150 musical examples and gives a chronological treatment to the art-music tradition as well as a detailed account of Brazilian folk and popular music. This was the standard Brazilian reference book for many years.

From 1947 Almeida turned his attention to folk music and folklore studies. For many years he was a member of the executive board of the International Folk Music Council. He was a founder-member of the Brazilian Academy of Music and chief of the information service of the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Relations. He was also the first chairman of the Comissão Nacional de Folclore, created in ...

(Paoliello de)

(b Varginha, Dec 6, 1911; d São Paolo, Feb 23, 1984). Brazilian folklorist and musicologist. At the São Paulo Conservatory of Drama and Music, Mário de Andrade directed her towards the study of Brazilian folk and popular musical traditions; she also studied ethnography and folklore with Dina Lévi-Strauss (1937). Her main areas of activity were sound archive organization, ethnomusicology and folklore: she organized and directed the Discoteca Pública Municipal de São Paulo from its foundation in 1935 until her retirement in 1968. The collection of historical recordings, the Discoteca Oneyda Alvarenga of the Centro Cultural São Paulo, was named after her to honour her contributions to the field. She was a founder-member of the Brazilian Academy of Music, a member of the Conselho Nacional de Folclore of the Ministry of Education and of the executive committee of the International Association of Music Libraries, a corresponding member of the International Folk Music Council, and a member of the Conselho de Música Popular Brasileira, do Museu da Imagem e do Som established at Rio de Janeiro. Her publications include editions of the volumes on music in the complete works of Mário de Andrade....

(b Kingston-on-Thames, Surrey, UK, March 14, 1940). English dealer in musical instruments, rare music books, music iconography, and related ephemera. After leaving school at the age of 16, Bingham trained as a quantity surveyor and opened his own surveying business in 1961, about the same time he began dealing in general antiques. He had a partnership in a musical instrument business for one year until 1966, when he opened his first independent shop at 247 Kings Road, London. Through extensive travels Bingham obtains and sells both Western and non-Western instruments. He specializes in assembling collections of European woodwinds, illustrating their development also with patent documents, methods, and other materials. His shop at 11 Pond Street features collections of metronomes, oil paintings of musicians, trade cards, tuning forks, and trade catalogues in addition to instruments. Major museum clients include the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), the National Music Museum (South Dakota), the Musée de la Musique (Paris), and the Musashino Academia Musicae (Tokyo), while private collectors have included Joe R. Utley, Nicholas Shackleton, and H. Iino. Bingham has also published several important works on musical instruments, such as William Waterhouse’s ...

(b Lugoj, 20 March/April 2, 1877; d Bucharest, Dec 19, 1968). Romanian composer, folklorist and administrator. He studied privately in Lugoj with Josif Czegka and Sofia Vlad-Rădulescu, in Blaj with Iacob Mureşianu, in Sibiu with Hermann Kirchner and in Braşov with Paul Richter. Extremely active in the musical life of Romania, he participated in the foundation of the Romanian Opera, the Romanian National Theatre (1919), the Dima Conservatory, Cluj (1920), the Society of Romanian Composers (1920) and the Astra Conservatory, Braşov (1928); during this period he directed the opera houses in Cluj and Bucharest. He collected more than 2000 folksongs, recorded on 214 cylinders, and made use of them in his ten books of Doine şi cântece poporale (‘Doinas and Other Folksongs’) and in eight books of instrumental pieces published as Jocuri populare româneşti (‘Romanian Folkdances’); he also published a scholarly collection, ...

(Aloysius )

(b Takoma Park, MD, Feb 28, 1939; d Salem, OR, Feb 22, 2001). American guitarist, folklorist, and record producer. As a teenager, Fahey’s early interest in country music was expanded to include bluegrass and country-blues due to a friendship with richard Spottswood , later a noted folk and ethnic music scholar. With Spottswood and famed collector Joe Bussard, Fahey sought out pre-war 78 r.p.m. records. After taking up the guitar, Fahey’s made his first recordings for Bussard’s private Fonotone label on 78 r.p.m. shellac discs, some of which Fahey claimed to have slipped into boxes of more “authentic,” vintage records at flea markets. In 1959 Fahey founded Takoma Records to distribute his own recordings, beginning with the LP Blind Joe Death; his liner notes also frequently mock the language of then-contemporary blues scholars, the very people he had hoped to fool with the Fonotone 78s.

Despite his sense of humor Fahey was a serious student of American vernacular music. He travelled long distances to find Bukka White and Skip James in the Mississippi Delta in the early 1960s; he relates these events in the memoir, ...

(Viktorovich)

(b Moscow, 1944; d Moscow, 1996). Russian ethnomusicologist, collector, folklorist, ensemble director and actor. In the mid-1960s he studied the balalaika at the Gnesin Academy of Music. After undertaking fieldwork with his mother, who was an ethnographer, he became fascinated by folklore and founded an experimental ensemble which rehearsed for the first time on 16 September 1973 under his direction. The young participants did not learn the songs from memory but improvised them as though they had adopted them from traditional singers. Their songs were in the style of the drawn-out songs of the Don Cossacks, which have distinctive qualities of timbre, texture and structure. This was the beginning of a powerful revival of traditional songs in various regions of Russia. Pokrovsky's work encouraged others to establish ensembles for the purpose of performing regional traditional musics, and by the early 1980s thousands of such groups were playing traditional material based on his principles. Pokrovsky's ensemble and the revival movement won enormous popularity, which troubled the KGB. After ...

(b Passaic, NJ, July 20, 1934; d Washington, DC, July 2, 1994). American Musician, promoter, record producer, author, folklorist, and museum administrator. He grew up in Passaic, New Jersey, and it was at Swarthmore College that he was first exposed to folk music. He became one of the most important individuals behind the scenes during the folksong revival of the late 1950s. Rinzler performed on many instruments but was mainly associated with the mandolin. He was a onetime member of the urban bluegrass group the Greenbriar Boys.

Rinzler decided he would rather spend his time promoting the music of others than performing himself. He studied with Alan Lomax in England. Rinzler was appointed the chief talent scout for the Newport Folk Festival and was the person responsible for bringing traditional musicians such as Clarence Ashley, John Hurt, Maybelle Carter, and others to the festival. His fieldwork for the festival led to the rediscovery of Ashley and, in turn, the discovery of guitarist Doc Watson. He later managed Watson and Bill Monroe, organizing shows nationwide....

[Tomás Parés, Juan]

(b Barcelona, April 6, 1896; d Barcelona, Nov 7, 1967). Catalan choral director, composer and folklorist. From the age of 11 he studied solfège with Lluís Millet, the piano with María R. Canals and Juan Battista Pellicer and composition with Antonio Nicolau and Enrique Morera at the Barcelona Municipal School of Music. In 1908 Millet gave him a place in the children’s section of Orfeó Català, and later he joined the main chorus, becoming one of its deputy directors in 1946. In the same year he joined the newly founded Instituto Español de Musicología under Anglès. As a prominent choral director he conducted such choirs as the Chor Infantil Mossèn Cinto, la Escuela Coral de Tarrasa, Parroquia de S Paciano and Orfeó Lluis Millet; he taught music and was organist at the Colegio de S Ignacio de los PP Jesuítas de Sarriá and for the student group Pere Vila. In the early 1950s he became director of the schola cantorum of the Barcelona Seminary. His main area of research was Spanish folk music; having participated in many field trips throughout Catalonia, Castile and León, he began to prepare a systematic study of regional Spanish cancioneros, which is fundamental to the study of Spanish traditional folk music. His compositions include several choral works, including ...