Gombosi, OttO (János)
Gombosi, OttO (János)
Gombosi, OttO (János), eminent Hungarian musicologist; b. Budapest, Oct. 23, 1902; d. Natick, Mass., Feb. 17, 1955. He studied piano with Kovacs and composition with Weiner and Siklos at the Budapest Academy of Music, then musicology with Hornbostel, Sachs, and Wolf at the Univ. of Berlin (Ph.D., 1925, with the diss. Jacob Obrecht: Eine stilkritische Studie; publ. in Leipzig, 1925). From 1926 to 1928 he ed. the progressive Hungarian music periodical Crescendo. In 1939 he went to the U.S.; was a lecturer in music at the Univ. of Wash., Seattle (1940-46); then taught at Mich. State Univ. and the Univ. of Chicago (1949-51); from 1951 to 1955, was a prof, at Harvard Univ. He contributed numerous valuable papers to various periodicals, in Hungarian, German, Italian, and English; among his most important writings were Bakfark Bdlint elete es muvei (Der Lautenist Valentine Bakfark) (in Hungarian and German; Budapest, 1935) and Tonarten und Stimmungen der antiken Musik (Copenhagen, 1939).
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire