David, Hans T(heodor)

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David, Hans T(heodor)

David, Hans T(heodor) , German-American musicologist; b. Speyer, Palatinate, July 8, 1902; d. Ann Arbor, Mich., Oct. 30, 1967. He was educated at the univs. of Tubingen, Göttingen, and Berlin (Ph.D., 1928, with the diss. Johann Schobert als Sonatenkomponist; publ. in Borna, 1928). In 1933 he went to the Netherlands, and in 1936 he emigrated to the U.S. In 1937 he joined the staff at the N.Y. Public Libary, and in 1939 became a lecturer at N.Y.U. After serving as a prof, and head of the musicology dept. at Southern Methodist Univ. in Dallas (1945–50), he was prof. of music history at the Univ. of Mich, at Ann Arbor (from 1950). He was highly regarded as a Bach scholar.

Writings

With A. Rau, A Catalog of Music of American Moravians, 1742–1842, from the Archives of the Moravian Church at Bethlehem (Bethlehem, Pa., 1938); Bach’s ’Musical Offering’: History, Interpretation and Analysis (N.Y, 1945); ed. with A. Mendel, The Bach Reader (N.Y, 1945; 2nd ed., rev., 1966; rev. and enl. ed., 1998, by C. Wolff as The New Bach Reader).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire