Strunk, (William) Oliver
Strunk, (William) Oliver
Strunk, (William) Oliver distinguished American musicologist; b. Ithaca, N.Y., March 22, 1901; d. Grottaferrata, Italy, Feb. 24, 1980. He studied at Cornell Univ. (1917-19). In 1927 he took a course in musicology with Otto Kinkeldey there, and then entered the Univ. of Berlin to study musicology with J. Wolf (1927-28). Returning to America, he served as a member of the staff of the Music Division at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. (1928-34), and then was head of its music division (1934-37). In 1937 he was appointed to the faculty of Princeton Univ.; after retirement in 1966, he lived mostly in Italy. He was a founding member of the American Musicological Soc., serving as the first ed. of its journal (1948) and as its president (1959-60), then was director of Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae (1961-71). He publ. State and Resources of Musicology in the U.S.(Washington, D.C, 1932) and the extremely valuable documentary Source Readings in Music History (N.Y., 1950; rev. ed., 1998, by L. Treitler). Collections of his writings were publ, as Essays on Music in the Western World (N.Y., 1974) and Essays on Music in the Byzantine World (N.Y., 1977).
Bibliography
H. Powers, ed., Studies in Music History: Essays for O. S.(Princeton, NJ., 1968).
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire