CONE, Edward T(oner) 1917-2004

OBITUARY NOTICE— See index for CA sketch: Born May 4, 1917, in Greensboro, NC; died from complications following heart surgery October 23, 2004, in Princeton, NJ. Musicologist, composer, musician, educator, and author. Cone was a retired music professor at Princeton University who was widely recognized as a talented composer and author of books about music that are now considered classics in the field. Educated at Princeton, where he earned a master's degree in 1942, he spent World War II in the U.S. Army's Office of Strategic Services. After the war, he returned to his alma mater as an instructor. By 1960 he had been named a full professor, and he remained at Princeton until his 1985 retirement; from 1979 to 1985 he was also Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large for Cornell University. A talented pianist, in addition to teaching Cone was well respected for his musical compositions which blended styles from a wide variety of sources. He garnered even more acclaim for his books about music, especially Musical Form and Musical Performance (1968) and The Composer's Voice (1974), the latter of which won the 1975 Deems Taylor Award from the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers; he was also the author of Music: A View from Delft (1989) and editor of a number of other musicology books. Among his other honors were the Howard T. Behrman Award for distinguished achievement, a Guggenheim fellowship, and a Woodrow Wilson fellowship; in 2004 he was presented with an honorary doctorate from Princeton University.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

periodicals

Independent (London, England), November 29, 2004, p. 34.

New York Times, October 30, 2004, p. B15.

online

Princeton University Web site, http://www.princeton.edu/ (November 1, 2004).