Velimirović, Miloš

Velimirović, Miloš, eminent Serbian- American music scholar; b. Belgrade, Dec. 10, 1922. He studied violin and piano at the Belgrade Academy of Music with Stojanović. In 1943 he was sent to a forced labor camp by the German occupation authorities. After the liberation, he studied Byzantine art at the Univ. of Belgrade, graduating in 1951; simultaneously took composition lessons with Mihovil Logar at the Belgrade Academy of Music. In 1952 he emigrated to the U.S.; studied at Harvard Univ., obtaining his M.A. in 1953 and his Ph.D. in 1957 with the diss. Byzantine Elements in Early Slavic Chant (publ, in an enl. ed., 1960, in Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae, Subsidiae,IV, 1960); also took a course in Byzantine music with Wellesz at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C. (1954). He was on the faculty of Yale Univ. (1957-69) and the Univ. of Wise. (1969-73); in 1973, was appointed a prof, of music at the Univ. of Va. in Charlottesville; served as chairman of the music dept. there (1974-77). A linguist, he has contributed a number of scholarly articles to various publications, mainly on subjects connected with liturgical music in Byzantium and in the Slavic countries. He was general ed. of Collegium Musicum (1958-73) and assoc. ed. (jointly with E. Wellesz) of Studies in Eastern Chant (4 vols., London, 1966-78); wrote articles on Russian and Slavic church music for The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1980).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire