Mann, Alfred
Mann, Alfred
Mann, Alfred, German-born American musicologist and choral conductor; b. Hamburg, April 28, 1917. He was a student of Kurt Thomas, Hans Mahlke, and Max Seiffert at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik (certificate, 1937). After teaching at the Berlin Hochschule für Kirchen- und Schulmusik (1937–38), he studied at the Milan Cons. (1938). In 1938–39 he taught at the Suola Musicale di Milano. In 1939 he emigrated to the U.S. and in 1943 he became a naturalized American citizen. He studied at the Curtis Inst. of Music in Philadelphia (diploma, 1942), where he also taught (1939–42) before completing his education with Paul Henry Lang, William J. Mitchell, and Erich Hertzmann at Columbia Univ. (M.A., 1950; Ph.D., 1955, with the diss. The Theory of Fugue). From 1947 to 1980 he taught at Rutgers Univ. He was conductor of the Cantata Singers in N.Y. from 1952 to 1959, and of the Bach Choir in Bethlehem, Pa., from 1970 to 1980. In 1978 he was a visiting prof. at Columbia Univ. He was a prof. at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y, from 1980 to 1987, and continued to teach there as a prof. emeritus from 1987. He served as ed. of the Rutgers Documents of Music series (1951–88) and the American Choral Review (1962–98), and also edited works for the critical editions of Handel, Fux, Mozart, and Schubert. His articles have appeared in many scholarly journals.
Writings
Ed. J. Fux’s Gradus ad Parnassum (Die Lehre vom Kontrapunkt) (Celle, 1938; 2nd ed., 1951; partial Eng. tr., N.Y., 1943, as Steps to Parnassus; 2nd ed., N.Y. and Toronto, 1965, as The Study of Counterpoint); The Study of Fugue (New Brunswick, N.J., 1958; 3rd reprint, N.Y., 1987); Bethlehem Bach Studies (N.Y., 1985); Theory and Practice: The Great Composer as Student and Teacher (N.Y. and London, 1987); ed. Modern Music Librarianship (Stuyvesant, N.Y, and Kassel, 1988); Handel: The Orchestral Music (N.Y.,1995); ed. with G. Buelow, Paul Henry Lang’s Musicology and Performance (New Haven, N.Y, and London, 1997).
Bibliography
M. Parker, ed., Eighteenth-Century Music in Theory and Practice: Essays in Honor of A. M.(Stuyvesant, N.Y, 1993).
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire