Edmunds, John (actually, Charles Sterling)
Edmunds, John (actually, Charles Sterling)
Edmunds, John (actually, Charles Sterling), American composer and music scholar; b. San Francisco, June 10, 1913; d. Berkeley, Dec. 9, 1986. He studied with Scalero at the Curtis Inst. of Music in Philadelphia, Piston at Harvard Univ. (M.A., 1941), Harris at Cornell Univ., Luening at Columbia Univ., and Goldsbrough and Dart in England. He taught at Syracuse Univ. (1946–47), and was co-founder of the Campion Soc. in San Francisco (1946–53), notable for its annual Festival of Unfamiliar Music. After serving as head of the Americana collection at the N.Y Public Library (1957–61), he taught at the Univ. of Calif, at Berkeley (1965–66). In 1951 he held a Fulbright Scholarship and in 1969 a Guggenheim fellowship. As a music scholar, Edmunds devoted much time to preparing The Major Epoch of English Song: The 17th-Century from Dow-land to Purcell (12 vols., 1940–76), an unpublished collection of more than 300 songs arranged for voice and piano as realized from lute tablatures and figured basses. He also publ. The Garden of the Muses (N.Y., 1985). As a composer, he was especially successful as a songwriter. Among his other works were masques, ballets, and choral music.
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire