Marrocco, W(illiam) Thomas

Marrocco, W(illiam) Thomas, American violinist and musicologist; b. West New York, N.J., Dec. 5, 1909; d. Eugene, Ore., Jan. 1, 1999. After initial music studies in the U.S., he went to Italy and entered the Cons. di Musica S. Pietro a Majella in Naples, receiving his diploma di Magistero in 1930. He then studied violin and musicology at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y. (B.M., 1934; M.A., 1940), and earned his Ph.D. at the Univ. of Calif. at Los Angeles with the diss. Jacopo da Bologna and His Works (1952; publ. as The Music of Jacopo da Bologna, Berkeley, 1954). After teaching at Elmira (N.Y.) Coll. (1936–39) and serving as a visiting lecturer at the Univ. of Iowa (1945–46), he was on the music faculty of the Univ. of Kans. in Lawrence (1946–49). He was prof. of music at the Univ. of Calif. at Los Angeles (1950–77), and also played in the Roth String Quartet. He publ. numerous informative essays dealing with early Italian and American music, and ed. Vols. VI-IX of Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century: Italian Secular Music (Monaco, 1967–78). He also publ. Fourteenth Century Italian Cacce (Cambridge, Mass., 1942; 2^nd ed., rev. and aug., 1961), Music in America: An Anthology (with H. Gleason; N.Y., 1964), Medieval Music (with N. Sandon; London, 1977), Inventory of Fifteenth Century Bassedanze, Balli and Balletti in Italian Dance Manuals (N.Y., 1981), and Memoirs of a Stradivarius (N.Y., 1988).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire