Austin, William W(eaver)
Austin, William W(eaver)
Austin, William W(eaver), American musicologist; b. Lawton, Okla., Jan. 18, 1920; d. Ithaca, N.Y., March 15, 2000. He was educated at Harvard Univ. (B.A., 1939; M.A., 1940; Ph.D., 1951, with the diss. Harmonic Rhythm in Twentieth-Century Music). In 1947 he joined the faculty of Cornell Univ., where he was a prof. from 1960 until his retirement as a prof. emeritus in 1990. In 1961-62 he held a Guggenheim fellowship. He was made an honorary member of the American Musi-cological Soc. in 1996.
Writings
Music in the 20th Century from Debussy Through Stravinsky (N.Y., 1966); ed. New Looks at Italian Opera: Essays in Honor of Donald J. Grout (Ithaca, N.Y., 1968); “Susanna,” “]eanie” and “The Old Folks at Home”: Meanings and Contexts of the Songs of Stephen C. Foster from His Time to Ours (N.Y., 1975; 2nd ed., 1987); tr. C. Dahlhaus’s Musikästhetik as Esthetics of Music (Cambridge, 1982).
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire