Wünsch, Walther

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Wünsch, Walther

Wünsch, Walther, Austrian ethnomusicologist; b. Gablonz an der Niesse, July 23,1908; d. Vienna, Feb. 24, 1991. He studied with Becking at the German Univ. in Prague (Ph.D., 1932, with the diss. Die Geigentechnik der jugoslawischen Guslaren; publ. in Brno, 1934) and completed his Habilitation in 1960 at the Univ. of Graz. After working at the musicological inst, of the Pestalozzi Academy in Prague (1932-35), he was active at the Inst. for Acoustics in Berlin (1935-38). From 1945 he was active as a chamber music player and taught at the Steiermarkischen Landeskonservatorium; in 1960 he joined the faculty of the Inst. for Music Ethnology at the Graz Hochschule für Musik, where he became a prof. in 1968. He publ. several important studies on ethnomusicology, including Heldensänger in Südosteuropa (Leipzig, 1937).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn /Dennis McIntire