Carleton Sprague Smith

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Carleton Sprague Smith (born 1905 in New York City , † September 19, 1994 ) was an American music and cultural scientist, librarian, university teacher and flautist.

Smith received his Masters and Bachelor degrees from Harvard University and studied history and music at the University of Vienna . He also trained as a flautist, to which composers such as Randall Thompson , Heitor Villa-Lobos , Alberto Ginastera and Quincy Porter dedicated works, and performed with the Juilliard String Quartet , among others .

From 1931 to 1959 Smith was director of the music department of the New York Public Library with an interruption from 1943 to 1946, when he worked as the cultural attaché of the United States and university professor in Brazil. In the first year of his activity he founded the Music Library Association , of which he was president from 1936 to 1941, and in 1941 the Music Americana Collection at the Public Library. His memorandum for the establishment of a Library Museum of the Performing Arts , published in 1957, was implemented in the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts located at Lincoln Center . In 1961 John F. Kennedy appointed him to the advisory committee of the National Cultural Center , which opened in 1971 as the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts .

From 1959 to 1961 he was director of the Brazilian Institute he co-founded at New York University , which is dedicated to the study of the language, literature, culture, economy and history of Brazil, and from 1962 to 1968 he was a board member of the institute's academic committee. From 1967 to 1970 he served as managing director of the Spanish Institute , a cultural non-profit organization. In addition, Smith served on the board of directors of the Museum of Modern Art , the Metropolitan Opera Society , the New York Philharmonic Society , the MacDowell Association , and the Aspen Institutes and other institutions and as President of the American Musicological Association . In the 1960s and 1970s he was Professor of History at New York University and taught at its Institute of Public Affairs and Regional Studies . He also gave guest lectures at Stanford University and Columbia University and was co-editor of the American Hymns Old and New (Columbia University Press, 1980).

For his extraordinary services to music in the USA, Johns Hopkins University awarded him its Peabody Medal , the universities of Rio de Janeiro and Bahia awarded him honorary doctorates, and the city of Rio de Janeiro made him an honorary citizen.

literature

  • John Shepard, "The Legacy of Carleton Sprague Smith: Pan-American Holdings in the Music Division of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts," in Notes, Music Library Association, Vol. 62, No. 3, March 2006, p. 621 -662

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