Willi Apel

Willi Apel (born October 10, 1893 in Konitz (now Chojnice ), † March 14, 1988 in Bloomington , Indiana , USA ) was a German-born American musicologist .

Life

Willi Apel was born in Konitz, then West Prussia . He interrupted his mathematics studies, which he had begun in 1912, as a result of the First World War and continued from 1918 to 1922 at various universities in the Weimar Republic . During this time his interest in music deepened until he became a full-time musicologist and one of the most influential musicologists of the 20th century. He studied piano and musicology in Berlin and received his doctorate in 1936 with a thesis on "Accidentien and tonality in musical monuments of the 15th and 16th centuries". In the same year, Apel emigrated to the USA. Here he taught from 1936 to 1943 at the "Longy School of Music" in Cambridge (Massachusetts) . From 1938 to 1942 he was a professor at Harvard University and Radcliffe College , from 1950 to 1970 he taught musicology at Indiana University . Retired in 1963, he died in 1988.

His extensive reference works include the Harvard Dictionary of Music , published in 1944, and the Historical Anthology of Music , which he published in 1949 with Archibald Thompson Davison . He pursued the approach of giving as much attention to the music of the Middle Ages , Renaissance music and world music as to well-known classics in the rank of Mozart or Beethoven.

After his death, his widow Ursula Apel-Siemering set up a foundation in his memory to promote early music students at the Indiana University School of Music.

Publications

• as editor: Harvard Dictionary of Music . Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA 1944.
• The Notation of Polyphonic Music, 900-1600 (= Mediaeval Academy of America. Publication 38, ISSN  0076-583X ). The Mediaeval Academy of America, Cambridge MA 1942 (In German: Die Notation der Polyphonen Musik. 900–1600. 5th edition. Breitkopf & Härtel, Wiesbaden et al. 2006, ISBN 3-7651-0180-X ).
• Masters of Keyboard. A brief Survey of Pianoforte Music. Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA 1947.
• History of organ and piano music up to 1700. Bärenreiter-Verlag, Kassel et al. 1967 (In English as: The History of Keyboard Music to 1700. Translated and revised by Hans Tischler. Indiana University Press, Bloomington IN et al. 1972, ISBN 0-253 -32795-4 ).
• Italian violin music in the 17th century (= archive for musicology . Supplement 21). Franz Steiner Verlag, Wiesbaden 1983, ISBN 3-515-03786-1 (In English as: Italian Violin Music of the Seventeenth Century. Edited by Thomas Binkley. Indiana University Press, Bloomington IN et al. 1990, ISBN 0-253-30683- 3 ).

Web links

• Indiana University website, with Apels CV and publications
• Literature by and about Willi Apel in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Willi Apel  in the German Digital Library