Seiffert, Max
Seiffert, Max
Seiffert, Max, eminent German musicologist; b. Beeskow an der Spree, Feb. 9, 1868; d. Schleswig, April 13, 1948. He studied musicology with Philipp Spitta at the Univ. of Berlin (Ph.D., 1891, with the diss. J.P. Sweelinck und seine direkten deutschen Schüler, pubi, in Leipzig, 1891). He was ed.-in-chief of Sammelbände der Internationalen Musik- Gesellschaft (1903–14); with J. Wolf and M. Schneider, he ed. the Archiv für Musikwissenschaft (1918–26); also taught at Berlin’s Hochschule für Musik and at the Akademie für Kirchen- und Schulmusik (from 1909). He served as provisional director of the Fürstliches Forschungsintitut für Musikwissenschaft in Bückeburg (from 1921); after it became the Staatliches Institut für deutsche Musikforschung in Berlin in 1935, he served as its director until 1942. He pubi. Geschichte der Klaviermusik (Berlin, 1899–1901), nominally the third ed. of Weitzmann’s history, but actually a new and valuable study. He contributed many editions to the Denkmäler Deutscher Tonkunst series (1892–1927); also ed. the works of Sweelinck (12 vols., 1895–1901). Festschrifts were pubi, in his honor for his 70th (1938) and 80th (1948) birthdays.
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire