Eckardt, Hans

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Eckardt, Hans

Eckardt, Hans, distinguished German musicologist; b. Magdeburg, Oct. 9,1905; d. Berlin, Feb. 26,1969. He studied philology in Leipzig, took courses in musicology with Sachs, Hornbostel, and Schiinemann at the Univ. of Berlin, and received his Ph.D. in 1932 at the Univ. of Heidelberg with the diss. Die Musikanschauung der franzosischen Romantik (publ. in Kassel, 1935). He then went to Japan, where he taught at the Imperial Univ. in Fukuoka (1932–35); after studies at the Univ. of Tokyo (1936–37), he served as director of the Japanese-German Research Inst. of Cultural History in Kyoto (1938–45) and was a teacher at St. Thomas’s Philosophical Coll. there (1946–47). Upon his return to Germany, he completed his Habilitation in 1954 at the Free Univ. of Berlin with his Das Kokonchomonshu des Tachibana Narisve als musikgeschichtliche Quelle (publ. in Wies-baden, 1956), joining its faculty as a lecturer in 1958 and as a prof, in 1964. He was an authority on Japanese music, and contributed many articles to both Japanese and German publications.

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire