Oscar Sonneck

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Oscar Sonneck (1914)

Oscar Sonneck , full Oscar George Theodore Sonneck (born October 6, 1873 in Jersey City , † October 30, 1928 in New York City ) was a German-American musicologist, librarian and bibliographer.

Life

Oscar Sonneck was born in New Jersey, but grew up in Germany. He attended the Kiel School of Academics and the Kaiser-Friedrich-Gymnasium in Frankfurt am Main until he graduated from high school in 1893. From 1893 to 1897 he studied musicology at the universities of Heidelberg and Munich. He also took piano and composition lessons. In 1899 he went on a study trip to Italy.

After almost 30 years of absence, he returned to the USA. He was determined to research and publish the music history of the USA for the first time. The first result was A Bibliography of Early Secular American Music . Sonneck could not find a publisher for the work and had to have it printed at his own expense. Herbert Putnam , the director of the Library of Congress , who sent Sonneck a copy, became aware of him and in 1902 offered him to head the newly created music department of the Library of Congress. Sonneck succeeded, from the numerous, but scattered Copyright - legal deposit to create one of the world's largest archives of music research in music printing. To this end, he developed a set of library rules introduced in 1904 as part of the Library of Congress Classification for class M: sheet music and music literature , which in a revised form is essentially still in use today. He systematically built up an international collection of printed music, autographs and musical literature , also with the help of dealers in Europe such as Leo Liepmannssohn . In 1908 he succeeded in purchasing Albert Schatz's libretti collection .

Sonneck founded The Musical Quarterly in 1915 and became its editor-in-chief. In 1917 he resigned from the service of the Library of Congress. He went to the New York music publisher G. Schirmer , where he became vice president of the company in 1921. Here he worked closely with Theodore Baker .

From 1918 he was a volunteer librarian for the New York Beethoven Association . The Beethoveniana collection he had built up came to the New York Public Library in 1940 .

Sonneck also composed, especially pieces for piano and songs. His bibliographies are standard works to this day.

estate

Sonneck's research notes and extensive parts of his correspondence gradually came to the Library of Congress, where they form the Oscar George Theodore Sonneck Collection .

Works

Fonts

  • A critical-polemical lecture on the music-aesthetic issues etc. by Friedrich Rösch as a protest against symbolism in music. Frankfurt aM 1897
  • A Bibliography of Early Secular American Music. 1905, 2nd increased edition, ed. by William Treat Upton, 1945
  • Early Concert-Life in America. Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel 1907
  • Report on "The Star-Spangled Banner", "Hail Columbia", "America", "Yankee Doodle". 1909
  • The Star-Spangled Banner. 1914
  • Catalog of Opera Librettos Printed before 1800. 2 volumes, Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office 1914
  • Early Opera in America. New York: Schirmer 1915
  • Suum cuique: Essays in Music. New York: Schirmer 1916
  • Catalog of first editions of Edward Mac Dowell: (1861-1908). Washington 1917
  • Miscalleneous studies in the History of Music. New York: Macmillan 1921
  • Beethoven: Impressions of Contemporaries. New York: Schirmer 1926
  • The Riddle of the Immortal Beloved: A Supplement to Thayer's "Life of Beethoven". New York 1927

Compositions

  • Mixed songs. New York: Breitkopf & Härtel 1912
  • Four Poems by Edgar Allan Poe. for baritone and piano, op.16, 1917
  • A small song cycle: six songs based on poems by Theodor Storm. op. 18, 1921
  • Studies in Song. op. 19, 1923

literature

  • Otto Kinkeldey: Oscar George Theodore Sonneck (1873-1928). In: Notes 11 (1953), pp. 25–32 ( JSTOR )
  • Hugh Wiley Hitchcock: After 100 [!] Years: the editorial side of Sonneck: a lecture: in memoriam, Oscar George Theodore Sonneck, 1873–1928. Washington, DC: Library of Congress 1975 ( digitized version )
with bibliography

Web links

Commons : Oscar Sonneck  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Biographical stations according to Kinkeldey (lit.)
  2. ↑ A look back at the institute's first 25 years. Supplement to the 1913 school program, p. 15
  3. ^ Oscar George Theodore Sonneck Collection , Library of Congress
  4. ↑ Happy 240th, Beethoven! And thank you, Beethoven Association! , New York Public Library, accessed July 30, 2019
  5. ↑ Oscar George Theodore Sonneck Collection , accessed July 30, 2019
personal data
SURNAME Sonneck, Oscar
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sonneck, Oscar George Theodore (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American musicologist, librarian and bibliographer
DATE OF BIRTH October 6, 1873
PLACE OF BIRTH Jersey City
DATE OF DEATH October 30, 1928
Place of death New York City