Benton, Rita
Benton, Rita
Benton, Rita, American musicologist and music librarian; b. N.Y., June 28, 1918; d. Paris, March 23, 1980. She studied with Friskin (piano diploma, 1938) and Wagenaar (theory) at the Juilliard School of Music in N.Y., at Hunter Coll. in N.Y. (B.A., 1939), and musicol-ogy at the Univ. of Iowa (M.A., 1951; Ph.D., 1961), where she was a music librarian (from 1953) and a member of the music dept. faculty (from 1967). In 1962–63 she wasb president of the Music Library Assn. She ed. Fontes artis musicae (from 1976), publ. a catalogue of Pleyel’s works (N.Y., 1977), and was general ed. of the Director of Music Research Libraries. J. Halley collaborated with her on the study Pleyel as Music Publisher: A Documentary Source-book of Early 19th-century Music (Stuyvesant, N.Y., 1990).
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire