Theodore Baker

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Theodore Baker (born June 3, 1851 in New York City , † October 13, 1934 in Dresden ) was an American musicologist , translator , editor and lexicographer working in Germany and the United States of America .

Life

Baker initially trained as a businessman and also worked as an organist in Concord (Massachusetts) . He decided to study music and went to Germany in 1874. He became a student of Oscar Paul at the University of Leipzig and was awarded a Dr. phil. PhD . In his dissertation he examined the chants of the Seneca , an Iroquois people in New York State . With this first scientific study of the music of the North American Indians at all, he also became the first American to receive a doctorate in musicology. The study reached Henry Franklin Gilbert's teacher Edward MacDowell , who found motifs for his Suite No. 2 ( Indian Suite ) in it.

In 1891 Baker returned to the USA and the following year he was editor at the music publisher G. Schirmer , Inc. In this position he worked for 34 years until his retirement in April 1926. As a retired he went back to Germany and lived in Leipzig .

plant

Baker was an important mediator of German and European music in the USA on various levels. He translated songs, books, libretti and articles and distributed them through sheet music and magazines from Schirmer-Verlag such as the Musical Quarterly. As editor, he was responsible for a number of manuals and encyclopedias, including a lexicon of musical terms (1895) and his best-known work, a biographical manual on musicians (1900), which has been reissued over and over again to this day.

Of his song translations some have quickly become popular and have survived to this day, so We gather together ( We Gather Together ), which at Thanksgiving is sung, and the carols Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming ( It's a Ros sprung ) and While by My Sheep I Watch at Night (When I watch my sheep).

Fonts

  • About the music of the North American savages. Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel 1882 (also Diss. Leipzig; digitized version )
An English translation by Ann Buckley was published by Buren, The Netherlands: F. Knuf, New York: [obtainable from] WS Heinman, 1976: On the music of the North American Indians (Source materials and studies in ethnomusicology 9)
  • Dictionary of Musical Terms: containing upwards of 9,000 English, French, German, Italian, Latin and Greek words and phrases used in the art and science of music, carefully defined, and with the accent of the foreign words marked; preceded by rules for the pronunciation of Italian, German, and French. New York: Schirmer 1895 23 1923
Digital copies : 3rd edition , 5 1901
  • [Baker's] Biographical Dictionary of Musicians. New York: Schirmer 1900
2 1905 , revised by Alfred Remy 3 1919 , revised by C. Engel 4 1940, 5 1958 by N. Slonimsky, supplementary volume 1971, 6 1978, 7 1984, 8 1992 by N. Slonimsky
  • A Pronouncing Pocket Manual of Musical Terms. New York: Schirmer 1905 ( digitized ) 2 1947

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ So in most lexicon entries; his obituary in the musical Courier , November 3, 1934, says Leipsic (sic)
  2. ^ Victoria Lindsay Levine: Writing American Indian music. Historic Transcriptions, Notations, And Arrangements. Middleton: AR Editions, Inc., 2002 (Music of the United States of America 11; Recent researches in American music 44) ISBN 9780895794949 , pp. 44f
  3. ^ William Emmett Studwell, Dorothy E. Jones: Publishing glad tidings: essays on Christmas music. Routledge 1998 ISBN 9780789003980 , p. 41
personal data
SURNAME Baker, Theodore
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American musicologist
DATE OF BIRTH June 3, 1851
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City
DATE OF DEATH October 13, 1934
Place of death Dresden