Brook, Barry S(helley)

Brook, Barry S(helley), eminent American musicologist; b. N.Y., Nov. 1, 1918; d. there, Dec. 7, 1997. He studied piano privately with Mabel Asnis, then entered the Manhattan School of Music, where he was a student of Louise Culver Strunsky in piano, of Hugh Ross in conducting, and of Sessions in composition. He subsequently studied at the City Coll. of the City Univ. of N.Y. (B.S., social sciences, 1939), then took courses in musi-cology with Lang at Columbia Univ. (M.A., 1942, with the diss. Clement Janequin). From 1942 to 1945 he was a member of the U.S. Air Corps. Selecting as his major subject French music history, he went to Paris, where he studied at the Sorbonne (Ph.D., 1959, with the diss. La Symphonie française dans la seconde moitié du XVIII^esiècle). In 1945 he became a prof, at Queens Coll. of the City Univ. of N.Y. He also was a lecturer at Brooklyn Coll. (1945–46) and a prof, at Hunter Coll. (1954) of the City Univ. of N.Y. In 1967 he became a prof, of music and executive officer of the Ph.D. program at the Graduate School and Univ. Center of the City Univ. of N.Y., leaving these posts in 1989 to become director of the Univ.’s Center for Music Research and Documentation. He also taught at the Institut de Musicologie at the Univ. of Paris (1967–68), the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y (1973), the Univ. of Adelaide (1974), the Juilliard School in N.Y (from 1977), the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris (1983), and the Univ. of Ala. (1987). He served as ed. in chief of RILM[Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale] Abstracts of Music Literature (from 1966), The Symphony 1720-1840 (61 vols., N.Y., 1979-86), and French Opera in the 17^th and 18^th Centuries (75 vols., N.Y., 1984 et seq.); with F. Degrada and H. Hucke, he was general ed. of Giovanni Battista Pergolesi Complete Works/Opere Complete (18 vols., N.Y., 1986 et seq.). In 1954-55 he held a Ford Foundation fellowship, in 1958-59 a Fulbright Research scholarship, and in 1961-62 and 1966-67 Guggenheim fellowships. In 1965 he became the first American to receive the Dent Medal of the Royal Musical Assn. of England, in 1972 he was made a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France, in 1978 he was awarded the Smetana Medal of Czechoslovakia, and in 1989 he became the first non-Scandinavian musicologist to be elected to membership in the Royal Swedish Academy of Music. In 1997 he was made an honorary memory of the American Musicological Soc. Brooks especially distinguished himself as an authority on 17^thand 18^th century music and on musical bibliography.

Writings

La Symphonie française dans la seconde moitié du XVIII^e siècle (3 vols., Paris, 1962); The Breitkopf Thematic Catalogue, 1762-1787 (N.Y., 1966); ed. Musicologi and the Computer; Musicology 1960-2000: A Practical Program (N.Y., 1970); ed. with E. Dowries and S. Van Solkema, Perspectives in Musicology: The Inaugural Lectures of the Ph.D. Program in Music at the City University of New York (N.Y., 1972; 2^nd ed., rev., 1975); Thematic Catalogues in Music: An Annotated Bibliography (N.Y., 1972; 2^nded., 1997, with R. Viano).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire