Hall, David

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Hall, David

Hall, David, American writer on music; b. New Rochelle, N.Y., Dec. 16, 1916. He was educated at Yale Univ. (B.A., 1939) and Columbia Univ. (graduate study in psychology, 1939-40). He worked for Columbia Records and NBC (1942–48); from 1948 to 1956 he was music director of the classics division of the Mercury Record Corp., where he pioneered in the development of high-fidelity recordings; then was music ed. of Stereo Review (1957–62); later was president of Composers Recordings, Inc. (1963–66). From 1967 to 1980 he was head of the Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound at the N.Y. Public Library, and from 1980 its curator. He publ, several annotated guides to recordings; also contributed countless articles and record reviews to leading publications.

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire