Lewis Lockwood

Last updated

Lewis H. Lockwood (born December 16, 1930) [1] is an American musicologist whose main fields are the music of the Italian Renaissance and the life and work of Ludwig van Beethoven. [1] Joseph Kerman described him as "a leading musical scholar of the postwar generation, and the leading American authority on Beethoven". [2]

Contents

Early life and education

Born in New York City in December 1930, Lockwood attended the High School of Music and Art. He then did his undergraduate work at Queens College, where his main advisor was the well-known Renaissance scholar, Edward Lowinsky. He went on to do graduate work at Princeton University in the early 1950s with Oliver Strunk, Arthur Mendel, and Nino Pirrotta. After a Fulbright scholarship to Italy in 1955–56, he took the Ph.D. in musicology at Princeton with a dissertation on the 16th-century Italian composer, Vincenzo Ruffo, whose sacred music shows the direct influence of the aesthetic of the Counter-Reformation. Lockwood was trained as a cellist, studying first with Albin Antosch and later with Lucien Laporte of the Paganini Quartet. and he is still active in chamber music.

Work

After serving in the U.S. Army in 1956–58, where he played as cellist in the Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra, Lockwood taught at Princeton University from 1958 to 1980, and at Harvard University from 1980 to 2002. [1] After his retirement from Harvard in 2002, he was given an honorary appointment at Boston University and is presently co-director of the Boston University Center for Beethoven Research. [3] He edited the Journal of the American Musicological Society from 1964 to 1967 and was president of the American Musicological Society from 1987 to 1988. [1]

Lockwood's work in Italian music history focused first on issues of style and genre, including redefinition of the familiar term "Parody mass" and related subjects. In later years he turned to the study of a single major musical center of the Renaissance, fifteenth-century Ferrara, and carried out extensive archival research which resulted in his major book, Music in Renaissance Ferrara, 1400-1505(1984). This is a comprehensive study of the music, musicians, and patronage by which the Este dynasty built their court into an important center. In his later work, on Beethoven, Lockwood is known for manuscript research, especially on Beethoven's sketchbooks and autographs, but also wider frameworks of study [4] His earliest Beethoven research was on the composing score of the Cello Sonata Op. 69, first movement, a rare and remarkable example of Beethoven's radical transformation of a movement at a late stage of composition. There followed other similar studies focused on sources. His biography, entitled Beethoven: The Music and the Life (Norton, 2003), was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in biography. Thereafter he published a book on the string quartets with the Juilliard String Quartet members as co-authors, entitled Inside Beethoven's Quartets (2008). In 2013, in collaboration with Alan Gosman, he completed seven years of work on the first critical edition of one of the largest and most revealing of the many surviving Beethoven sketchbooks. The publication, Beethoven's "Eroica" Sketchbook, was issued by the University of Illinois Press in that year. Then followed his book, Beethoven's Symphonies: An Artistic Vision (Norton, 2015) and a critical survey of the broad field of Beethoven biography, from the 1830s to the present, entitled Beethoven's Lives (2020). Most recently his essay on the Beethoven manuscripts in the library of the Juilliard School in New York appeared in a volume describing all the music manuscripts at Juilliard, edited by Jane Gottlieb (2023). The collection includes Beeethoven's annotated copy of the Ninth Symphony and both sketches and the full-score autograph manuscript of the Scherzo of the String Quartet in Eb Major, Op. 127.

Awards and distinctions

In 1984, Lockwood was elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 2013 to the American Philosophical Society. [5] A festschrift in his honor was published in 1996. [6] The Lewis Lockwood Award of the American Musicological Society, awarded annually to an exceptional book by a musicologist within ten years of his or her Ph.D., is named in his honor. [7] In 2018 he was elected an Honorary Member of the Beethoven-Haus Verein in Bonn. In the same year he was, with Margaret Bent, the co-winner of the Guido Adler Prize for his contributions to the field of musicology.

Selected publications

In addition, Lockwood is the author of many articles and other publications in both Renaissance and Beethoven studies, and was the founder of the yearbook Beethoven Forum. A list of his articles and books is included in The New Beethoven (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press), ed. by Jeremy Yudkin (2020), xv-xix. A redent article on the Beethoven manuscripts in the Juilliard School Library in New York City, appeared in "Juilliard School Library: Music Manuscripts & Other Treasures by and for Performers", ed. by Jane Gottlieb and Richard Griscom (Scala Publishers, New York, 2024),51-69.

Personal life

Lockwood was married to Doris Hoffmann Lockwood from 1953 until her untimely death in 1992, and they had two children, Daniel Lockwood and Alison Lockwood Cronson. His two grandchildren are Rachel Cronson and Jeremy Cronson. In 1997, he married Ava Bry Penman.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Symphony No. 4 (Beethoven)</span>

The Symphony No. 4 in B♭ major, Op. 60, is the fourth-published symphony by Ludwig van Beethoven. It was composed in 1806 and premiered in March 1807 at a private concert in Vienna at the town house of Prince Lobkowitz. The first public performance was at the Burgtheater in Vienna in April 1808.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bagatelles, Op. 126 (Beethoven)</span>

Ludwig van Beethoven's Bagatelles, Op. 126 for solo piano were published late in his career, in the year 1825. Beethoven dedicated them to his brother Nikolaus Johann van Beethoven (1776–1848), and wrote to his publisher, Schott Music, that the Opus 126 Bagatelles "are probably the best I've written".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">String Quartet No. 1 (Beethoven)</span> 1800 string quartet by Ludwig van Beethoven

The String Quartet No. 1 in F major, Op. 18, No. 1, was written by Ludwig van Beethoven between 1798 and 1800, published in 1801. The complete set of six quartets was commissioned by and dedicated to the Bohemian aristocrat Joseph Franz von Lobkowitz. It is actually the second string quartet that Beethoven composed, following his third.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">String Quartet No. 6 (Beethoven)</span>

The String Quartet No. 6 in B-flat major, Op. 18, No. 6, was written between 1798 and 1800 by Ludwig van Beethoven and published in 1801, and dedicated to Joseph Franz von Lobkowitz.

Absolute music is music that is not explicitly "about" anything; in contrast to program music, it is non-representational. The idea of absolute music developed at the end of the 18th century in the writings of authors of early German Romanticism, such as Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder, Ludwig Tieck and E. T. A. Hoffmann but the term was not coined until 1846 where it was first used by Richard Wagner in a programme to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.

Gustave Reese was an American musicologist and teacher. Reese is known mainly for his work on medieval and Renaissance music, particularly with his two publications Music in the Middle Ages (1940) and Music in the Renaissance (1954); these two books remain the standard reference works for these two eras, with complete and precise bibliographical material, allowing for almost every piece of music mentioned to be traced back to a primary source.

The three Razumovskystring quartets, opus 59, are a set of string quartets by Ludwig van Beethoven. He wrote them in 1806, as a result of a commission by the Russian ambassador in Vienna, Count Andreas Razumovsky:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Beethoven's musical style</span>

Ludwig van Beethoven is one of the most influential figures in the history of classical music. Since his lifetime, when he was "universally accepted as the greatest living composer", Beethoven's music has remained among the most performed, discussed and reviewed in the Western world. Scholarly journals are devoted to analysis of his life and work. He has been the subject of numerous biographies and monographs, and his music was the driving force behind the development of Schenkerian analysis. He is widely considered among the most important composers, and along with Bach and Mozart, his music is the most frequently recorded.

Peter Mennin was a prominent American composer, teacher and administrator. In 1958, he was named Director of the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, and in 1962 became President of the Juilliard School, a position he held until his death in 1983. Under his leadership, Juilliard moved from Claremont Avenue to its present location at Lincoln Center. Mennin is responsible for the addition of drama and dance departments at Juilliard. He also started the Master Class Program, and brought many artists to teach including Maria Callas, Pierre Fournier and others.

Samuel Hans Adler is an American composer, conductor, author, and professor. During the course of a professional career which ranges over six decades he has served as a faculty member at both the University of Rochester's Eastman School of Music and the Juilliard School. In addition, he is credited with founding and conducting the Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra which participated in the cultural diplomacy initiatives of the United States in Germany and throughout Europe in the aftermath of World War II. Adler's musical catalogue includes over 400 published compositions. He has been honored with several awards including Germany's Order of Merit – Officer's Cross.

The music of Florence is foundational in the history of Western European music. Music was an important part of the Italian Renaissance. It was in Florence that the Florentine Camerata convened in the mid-16th century and experimented with setting tales of Greek mythology to music and staging the result—in other words, the first operas, setting the wheels in motion not just for the further development of the operatic form, but for later developments of separate "classical" forms such as the symphony.

Elaine Rochelle Sisman is an American musicologist. The Anne Parsons Bender Professor of Music at Columbia University, Sisman specializes in music, rhetoric, and aesthetics of the 18th and 19th centuries, and has written on such topics as memory and invention in late Beethoven, ideas of pathétique and fantasia around 1800, Haydn's theater symphonies, the sublime in Mozart's music, and Brahms's slow movements. She is the author of Haydn and the Classical Variation and Mozart: The 'Jupiter' Symphony and editor of Haydn and His World. Her monograph-length article on "variations" appears in the revised New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, and she is at work on studies of music and melancholy, of Don Giovanni, and of the opus-concept in the eighteenth century.

Joseph Wilfred Kerman was an American musicologist and music critic. Among the leading musicologists of his generation, his 1985 book Contemplating Music: Challenges to Musicology was described by Philip Brett in The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians as "a defining moment in the field". He was Professor Emeritus of Musicology at the University of California, Berkeley.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) had a powerful influence on the works of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827). Beethoven held Mozart in high regard; some of his music recalls Mozart's, he composed several variations on Mozart's themes and he modeled a number of his compositions on those of the older composer. Whether the two men ever actually met remains a matter of speculation among scholars.

Edward Toner Cone was an American composer, music theorist, pianist, and philanthropist.

Kathleen Butler-Hopkins is an American violinist and Professor Emerita of Violin, Viola, and Chamber Music at University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF).

Jean Robert Talbot was a Canadian conductor, violinist, violist, composer, and music educator. For more than 25 years, he was the conductor of the Société symphonique de Québec. A member of the Société française de musicologie, the International Musicological Society, the Musical Association of London, and the Diocesan Commission for Sacred Music, he was the author of several books on music theory. He also contributed music articles to a variety of periodicals.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Kinderman</span> American musicologist

William Andrew Kinderman is an American author and music scholar who plays the piano.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Beethoven's compositional method</span>

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) was a German composer in the transition between the classical and romantic period. He composed in many different forms including nine symphonies, five piano concertos, and a violin concerto. Beethoven's method of composition has long been debated among scholars. His sketches of composition drafts, and his written letters, provide contrasting evidence about his process of composition. However, many scholars agree that, for him, composition was a slow and laborious process. It is clear that his deafness impacted his compositional style, as evinced in certain changes in compositional method from early to late in his career.

Nancy Rachel November is a New Zealand academic, and is professor of musicology at the University of Auckland, specialising in late 18th- and 19th-century chamber music.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Paula Morgan, "Lewis Lockwood [ permanent dead link ]". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, online.
  2. ↑ Kerman, Joseph (2003). "Beethoven the Unruly". The New York Review of Books. 50 (3). Retrieved 14 January 2016.
  3. ↑ Press Release, "Lewis Lockwood to join the BU Faculty, October 10, 2011"
  4. ↑ Stauffer, George B. (2015). "Beethoven's Symphonies: The Revolutions". The New York Review of Books. 62 (19): 40–42. Retrieved 14 January 2016.
  5. ↑ "Newly Elected - April 2013 | American Philosophical Society". Archived from the original on 2014-04-03. Retrieved 2014-03-18.
  6. ↑ Cummings, Anthony M.; Owens, Jessie Ann, eds. (1996), Music in Renaissance Cities and Courts: Studies in Honor of Lewis Lockwood, Detroit Monographs in Musicology, Harmonie Park Press, ISBN   978-0-89990-102-2 .
  7. ↑ Lewis Lockwood Award Archived 2019-01-11 at the Wayback Machine , American Musicological Society, retrieved 2010-04-28.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.