Gurlitt, Wilibald

Gurlitt, Wilibald, eminent German musicologist and editor, cousin of Manfred Gurlitt; b. Dresden, March 1, 1889; d. Freiburg im Breisgau, Dec. 15, 1963. He studied musicology at the Univ. of Heidelberg with Philipp Wolfrum, and also with Riemann and Schering at the Univ. of Leipzig, where he received his Ph.D. in 1914 with the diss. Michael Praetorius (Creuzbergensis): Sein Leben und seine Werke (publ. in Leipzig, 1915). He subsequently was an assistant to Riemann. He served in World War I, and was taken prisoner in France. After the Armistice, he became a lecturer at the Univ. of Freiburg im Breisgau in 1919. He directed its dept. of musicology from 1920, and was made a full prof, in 1929, but was removed from his position by the Nazi regime in 1937. He resumed his professorship in 1945, retiring in 1958. Gurlitt’s investigations of the organ music of Praetorius led him to construct (in collaboration with O. Walcker) a“Praetorius organ,” which was to reproduce the tuning of the period. This gave impetus in Germany to performance of historic works on authentic or reconstructed instruments. Gurlitt’s other interests included the problem of musical terminology, resulting in the publication of his Handworterbuch der musikalischen Terminologie. In 1952 he revived the moribund Archiv fiir Musikwissenschaft. He edited the first 2 vols. of the 12th ed. of Riemann’s Musik-Lexikon (Mainz, 1959 and 1961). He also publ. Johann Sebastian Bach: Der Meister und sein Werk (Berlin, 1936; 4th ed., 1959; Eng. tr., St. Louis, 1957).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire