Merritt, A(rthur) Tillman

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Merritt, A(rthur) Tillman

Merritt, A(rthur) Tillman, American musicologist and pedagogue; b. Calhoun, Mo., Feb. 15, 1902. He studied at the Univ. of Mo. (B.A., 1924; B.F.A., 1926) and Harvard Univ. (M.A., 1927), then went to Europe on a J.K. Paine traveling scholarship from Harvard, and studied in Paris with Boulanger and Dukas. Upon his return to America, he taught at Trinity Coll. in Hartford, Conn. (1930–32). In 1932 he joined the faculty of the music dept. of Harvard Univ., serving as its chairman from 1942 to 1952 and from 1968 to 1972, when he retired. He publ. the valuable treatise Sixteenth-century Polyphony: A Basis for the Study of Counterpoint (Cambridge, Mass., 1939), and also ed. works by Janequin. On his retirement, he was honored with a Festschrift, Words and Music: The Scholar’s View (Cambridge, Mass., 1972).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire