Graf, Walter
Graf, Walter
Graf, Walter, Austrian ethnomusicologist; b. St. Pölten, June 20, 1903; d. Vienna, April 11, 1982. He studied musicology with Lach, Adler, and Wellesz, as well as anthropology, philosophy, psychology, and phonetics, at the Univ. of Vienna (Ph.D., 1932, with a diss. on German influences on Estonian folk song; Habilitation, 1952, with a study of the music of New Guinea; publ. in Vienna, 1950). He became lecturer (1958) and then asst. prof. (1962) at the Univ. of Vienna; from 1957 to 1963 he also was head of the Austrian Academy of Sciences recording archive, which he greatly expanded. In his articles, he continued Lach’s anthropological concept of music; he also attempted to define the characteristics of sound that are important in the hearing and understanding of music. Among his writings are “Die ältesten deutschen Überlieferungen estnischer Vblkslieder,” Musik des Ostens, I (1962), Die musikalische Klangforschung: Wege zur Erfassung der musikalischen Bedeutung der Klangfarbe (Karlsruhe, 1969), and “Zur Rolle der Teiltonreihe in der Gestaltung klingend tradiertet Musik,” Festschrift Kurt Blaukopf (Vienna, 1975).
Bibliography
E. Schenk, ed., Musik als Gestalt und Erlebnis: Festschrift W. G. zum 65. Geburtstag (Vienna, 1970).
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire