Smithers, Don (LeRoy)
Smithers, Don (LeRoy)
Smithers, Don (LeRoy), American music historian, trumpeter, cornet player, and wind player; b. N.Y, Feb. 17, 1933. He studied at Hofstra Univ. (B.S., 1957), attended seminars in musicology at N.Y.U. (1957–58), took courses in Renaissance and Reformation history at Columbia Univ. (1958), and completed his training in music history at the Univ. of Oxford (Ph.D., 1967, with the diss. The Baroque Trumpet: Instruments and Music c. 1600–1700). In 1965 he co-founded and became the first music director of the Oxford Pro Musica. He also gave many performances as a Baroque trumpeter, cornet player, and Renaissance wind player. After teaching at Syracuse Univ. (1966–75), he taught at the Royal Cons. of Music in The Hague (1975–80). In addition to his numerous articles in books and journals, he publ. The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet Before 1721 (1973) and Number, Symbolism, and Allegory in the Late Works of Johann Sebastian Bach (1975).
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire