Hewitt, Helen (Margaret)
Hewitt, Helen (Margaret)
Hewitt, Helen (Margaret), American musicologist; b. Granville, N.Y., May 2, 1900; d. Denton, Tex., March 19, 1977. She studied at Vassar Coll. (B.A., 1921) and the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y (B.M., 1925), and then took lessons in organ with Widor and in harmony with Boulanger at the American Cons, in Fontainebleau (1926), and in organ with Farnam at the Curtis Inst. of Music in Philadelphia (1928–30). After taking her Master of Sacred Music degree at Union Theological Seminary (1932), she pursued training in musicology with Lang at Columbia Univ. (M.A., 1933) and Besseler at the Univ. of Heidelberg; she then completed her education at Radcliffe Coll. (Ph.D., 1938, with the diss. O Petrucci: Harmonice Musices Odhecaton A; publ, in Cambridge, Mass., 1942; 2nd ed., 1946). In 1947 she received a Guggenheim fellowship. She taught at the State Normal School in Potsdam, N.Y. (1925–28), Fla. State Coll. for Women (1938–39), Hunter Coll. (1942), and North Tex. State Univ. in Denton (1942–69). She ed. the valuable compilation Doctoral Dissertations in Musicology (Denton, 1952; 4th> ed., rev, 1965) and contributed important articles on Renaissance music to various journals.
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire