Powers, Harold (Stone)

Powers, Harold (Stone) , learned American musicologist; b. N.Y., Aug. 5, 1928. He was educated at Syracuse Univ. (B.Mus. in piano, 1950) and Princeton Univ. (M.F.A. in composition and musicology, 1952; Ph.D. in musicology, 1959, with the diss. The Background of the South Indian Kāga-System). He taught at Princeton Univ. (1955–58) and at Harvard Univ. (1958–60). From 1961 to 1973 he was a member of the music dept. and jointly of the South Asia Regional Studies dept. at the Univ. of Pa., and then was a prof. at Princeton Univ. from 1973 to 2001. He also served as a visiting prof. at several U.S. and European univs. He was made a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1995, an honorary member of the American Musicological Soc. in 1996, and a corresponding Fellow of the British Academy in 1999. Powers has worked in diverse fields, including Indie musicology, Italian opera, Medieval and Renaissance music theory, language and music et al. Among his important Writings since 1980 are: “Language models and musical analysis,” Ethnomusicology, 24 (1980); India I (“The region, its music and music history”), India II (“Theory and practice of classical music”), and Mode, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1980); “Tonal types and modal categories in Renaissance polyphony,” Journal of the American Musicological Society, 34 (1981); “‘La solita forma’ and ‘the uses of convention’,” Acta musicologica, 59 (1987); “Reinterpretations of traditions: Omkarnath Thakur contra V.N. Bhatkhande on sangīta-stra and śāstrīya-sangta,” in J. Katz, ed., The Traditional Indian Theory and Practice of Music and Dance (Leiden, 1992); “Is mode real? Pietro Aron, the octenary system, and polypohony,” Basier fahrbuch für historische Musikpraxis, 16 (1992); “Boito rimatore per musica,” in G. Morelli, ed., Arrigo Boito: Atti del convegno internazionale (Florence, 1994); “La dama velata: Act II of Verdi’s ‘Un ballo in maschera’,” in M. Chusid, ed., Verdi’s Middle Period (Chicago, 1997); “From psalmody to tonality,” in C.C. Judd, ed., Tonal Structures in Early Music (N.Y., 1998).

—Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire