Rufer, Josef (Leopold)

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Rufer, Josef (Leopold)

Rufer, Josef (Leopold) , Austrian music scholar; b. Vienna, Dec. 18, 1893; d. Berlin, Nov. 7, 1985. He studied composition with Zemlinsky, and then with Schoenberg in Vienna (1919–22). He was assistant to Schoenberg at the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin (1925–33); from 1928, was also active as a music critic. From 1947 to 1950 he ed. (with Stuckenschmidt) the monthly music magazine Stimmen; then taught at the Free Univ. (from 1950) and at the Hochschule für Musik (1956–69) in Berlin. He pubi. Die Komposition mit zwölf Tönen (Berlin, 1952; Eng. tr., 1954, as Composition with 12 Notes Related Only to One Another), Musiker über Musik (Darmstadt, 1955), Das Werk Arnold Schönbergs (Kassel, 1959; Eng. tr., 1962, as The Works of Arnold Schoenberg), and Technische Aspekte der Polyphonie in der 1. Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts (Ghent, 1969).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire