Pratt, Waldo Selden
Pratt, Waldo Selden
Pratt, Waldo Selden , distinguished American music historian and pedagogue; b. Philadelphia, Nov. 10, 1857; d. Hartford, Conn., July 29, 1939. He studied at Williams Coll. and at Johns Hopkins Univ., specializing in classical languages; was practically self-taught in music. He was asst. director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in N.Y. (1880–82); in 1882 he was appointed to the faculty of the Hartford Theological Seminary, where he taught hymnology; remained there until his retirement in 1925; he also taught music history at Smith Coll. (1895–1908), and later at the Inst. of Musical Art in N.Y. He ed. the American supplement to Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians (N.Y., 1920; rev. 1928) and The New Encyclopedia of Music and Musicians (N.Y., 1924; 2nd ed., rev., 1929). He also publ. The History of English Hymnody (Hartford, Conn., 1895), Musical Ministries in the Church (N.Y., 1901; 4th ed., rev., 1915), The History of Music (N.Y., 1907; 3rd ed., aug., 1935), The Music of the Pilgrims (Boston, 1921), and The Music of the French Psalter of 1562 (N.Y., 1939).
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire