Aldrich, Putnam (Calder)
Aldrich, Putnam (Calder)
Aldrich, Putnam (Calder), American harpsichordist and pedagogue; b. South Swansea, Mass., July 14, 1904; d. Cannes, France, April 18, 1975. He studied at Yale Univ. (B.A., 1926), then took piano lessons with Matthay in London (1926–27) and harpsichord lessons with Landowska in Paris (1929–33). He then completed his education at Harvard Univ. (M.A., 1936; Ph.D., 1942). He toured as a harpsichordist, and also taught at the Univ. of Tex. (1942–44), Western Reserve Univ. (1946–48), Mills Coll. (1948–50), and Stanford Univ (1950–69). He publ. an important treatise, Ornamentation in J. S. Bach’s Organ Works (N.Y., 1950), as part of a much larger and very valuable work on Baroque ornamentation, originally submitted as his doctoral diss. at Harvard; the work still awaits publication.
Writings
Ornamentation in J. S. Bach’s Organ Works (N.Y., 1950); Rhythm in Seventeenth-century Italian Monody (London, 1965).
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire