Kolberg, (Henryk) Oskar

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Kolberg, (Henryk) Oskar

Kolberg, (Henryk) Oskar, Polish music scholar and composer; b. Przysucha, near Radom, Feb. 22, 1814; d. Krakόw, June 3, 1890. He studied at the Warsaw Cons, with Eisner and Dobrzyski, then with Girschner and Rungenhagen in Berlin (1835–36). He devoted a major part of his life to traveling and collecting folk songs, his major achievement being the publication of a series of monographs on the various regions of his homeland (33 vols., 1861-90). His collected works began to appear under the auspices of the Polish Academy of Sciences in 1960. He composed a number of popular dances and songs as well as an entertainment, Krol Pasterzy (The Shepherd’s King; Warsaw, March 2, 1859).

Bibliography

I. Kopernicki, O. K. (Krakow, 1889); S. Lam, O. K.:Ż ywot i praca (O. K.: Life and Works; Lemberg, 1914).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire