Kinsky, Georg Ludwig

Kinsky, Georg Ludwig, distinguished German musicologist; b. Marienwerder, Sept. 29, 1882; d. Berlin, April 7, 1951. He was self-taught in music. After work-ing under Klopferman at the Prussian Royal Library in Berlin (1908–09), he was curator of the private museum of W. Heyer in Cologne from 1909 until it was closed in 1927. He also was a lecturer in musicology at the Univ. of Cologne (1921–32), where he received his Ph.D. in 1925 with the diss. Doppelrohrblatt-Instrumente mit Wind-kapsel (publ. in the Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, VII, 1925). In 1944 his home and his private library and collection were confiscated by the Nazi government; he then served a year at hard labor until the Allied victory in 1945. Although his health was shattered by this ordeal, he spent his last years in Berlin preparing a thematic catalog of Beethoven’s works, a task completed by Hans Halm.

Writings

Musikhistorisches Museum von Wilhelm Heyer in Coin: Katalog (Cologne, Vol. I, 1910; Vol. II, 1912, and Vol. IV, 1916; Vol. Ill not publ.; greater portion of the MS not extant); ed. Glucks Briefe an Franz Kruthoffer (Vienna, 1927); with R. Haas and H. Schnoor, Geschichte der Musik in Bildern (Leipzig, 1929; Eng. tr., 1930; 2^nd ed., 1951); Erstlingsdrucke der deutschen Tonmeister der Klassik und Romantik (Vienna, 1934); Philobiblon, VII (1934); Die Originalausgaben der Werke Johann Sebastian Bachs (Vienna, 1937); Manuskripte, Briefe, Dokumente von Scarlatti bis Stravinsky, Katalog der Musik-autographen-Sammlung Louis Koch (Stuttgart, 1951; ed. by M.-A. Souchay); Das Werk Beethovens: Thematisc-Bibliographisches Verzeichnis siner sämtlichen vollendeten Kompositionen (Munich and Duisburg, 1955; completed by H. Halm).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire