Spink, Ian (Walter Alfred)

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Spink, Ian (Walter Alfred)

Spink, Ian (Walter Alfred), noted English musicologist; b. London, March 29, 1932. He studied at London’s Trinity Coll. of Music (B.Mus., 1952) and pursued postgraduate studies at the Univ. of Birmingham (diss., 1957–58, The English Declamatory Ayre, c. 1620–60). He served as an overseas examiner for Trinity Coll. of Music (1958–60), then was senior lecturer at the Univ. of Sydney (1962–69); subsequently was head of the music dept. of Royal Holloway Coll. at the Univ. of London (from 1969), where he was a reader (1971–74) and a prof. (from 1974); aso was dean of the Faculty of Arts (1973–75; 1983–85) and of the Faculty of Music (1974–78). A learned authority on English lute songs, he ed. the valuable collection English Songs, 1625–1660 for the Musica Britannica series, XXXIII (1971); also authored An Historical Approach to Musical Form (London, 1967) and English Song: Dowland to Purcell (London, 1974; rev. 1986), and ed. Vol. 3, The Seventeenth Century, in The Blackwell History of Musk in Britain (1992).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire