Spivacke, Harold
Spivacke, Harold
Spivacke, Harold, eminent American musicologist and librarian; b. N.Y., July 18, 1904; d. Washington, D.C., May 9, 1977. He studied at N.Y.U. (B.A., 1923; M.A., 1924) and at the Univ. of Berlin (Ph.D., 1933, with the diss. Über die objektive und subjektive Tonintensität); while in Berlin, he took private lessons with d’Albert and Leichtentritt as an American-German Students Exchange Fellow and an Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung Fellow. Returning to the U.S., he joined the staff of the Music Division of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., first as asst. chief (1934–37), then as chief (1937–72). He also held numerous advisory positions with the Dept. of State, UNESCO et al. As chief of the Music Division of the Library of Congress, he was responsible for the acquisition of many important MSS by contemporary composers, including a large collection of Schoenberg’s original MSS. He also commissioned works from contemporary composers for the Coolidge Foundation at the Library of Congress. He pubi, some valuable bibliographical papers, among them Paganiniana (Washington, D.C., 1945). In 1939 he was chairman of the Organizing Committee of the National Music Council, and until 1972 was Archivist and a member of the Executive Committee of the Council.
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire