Nancy B. Reich

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Nancy Bassen Reich (July 3, 1924 in New York City - January 31, 2019 in Ossining, NY) was an American musicologist, most renowned for her 1985 biography of Clara Schumann.

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Biography

She attended the High School of Music and Art, where she played viola and violin. She obtained a bachelor's degree in music in 1945 at Queens College, and a master's degree in 1947 at Columbia University's Teachers College. She received her PhD in 1972 from New York University. [1]

In the 1960s she studied application of computers to music making, music reading, and music pedagogy. At NYU she worked at the Institute for Computer Research in the Humanities, and released an early catalog of composer William Jay Sydeman's compositions (Sydeman lived until 2021); this was a notable early effort in creating a machine-readable document. A 2nd edition was released in 1968. [2] 35 years later, in 2001, she would write the Grove Dictionary of Music's entry for Sydeman. [3] She investigated music notation digitization and replay on early IBM 1130 computers. [4]

Reich taught at NYU, Queens College, and Manhattanville College. While at Manhattanville, she discovered the first four pages of a Franz Liszt composition (Introduction and Variations on a March from Rossini's Siege of Corinth ) previously thought lost, and subsequently researched its provenance. [5] [6]

She was a visiting professor at Bard and Williams, [1] and was a visiting scholar at the Center for Research on Women at Stanford University. [7] She was heavily involved in advancing feminist musicology studies, including chairing the College Music Society's Committee on the Status of Women in Music, and editing its major bibliographic report CMS Report No. 5: Women's Studies/Women's Status. [8] [9] She contributed the chapter European composers and musicians, ca. 1800-1890 to the college textbook Women & Music, A History. Joan Tower, who joined the faculty of Bard College in 1972, credits Reich's course on the history of women in music with changing her life. [10]

In 1985 she published her seminal biography Clara Schumann: The Artist and the Woman, the first scholarly biography of a woman composer. [11] The first half of the book is a straightforward chronological treatment; the second half a thematic treatment. This book established Clara as an important musical figure independent of her husband, the composer Robert Schumann. Her research in the early 1980s took her behind the Iron Curtain. She also collaborated with psychoanalyst Anna Burton, who had been analyzing Clara Schumann since 1968. [12] The success of the book, which was translated into several languages, is credited with significantly increasing and re-evaluating female subjects in musicology. [1] [13] A revised 2nd edition was published in 2001. [14] She was asked to review others' works about or inspired by Clara Schumann, and authored the New Grove Dictionary of Music's Clara Schumann entry. [15]

Further areas of study included Fanny Hensel, [16] Ernst Rudorff, [17] Juliane Reichardt, [17] Luise Reichardt, [18] [19] Helene Liebmann, [20] Maria Carolina Wolf, [21] and Rebecca Clarke. [22]

In June 2019, a few months after her death, the Women's Philharmonic Advocacy established the Nancy B. Reich fund to support orchestras in the performance of major works by women composers. [11]

She is the dedicatee of John C. Tibbetts' book Composers in the Movies: Studies in Musical Biography. [23]

Prizes and awards

Essays and books

Related Research Articles

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References

  1. 1 2 3 da Fonseca-Wollheim, Corinna (11 Feb 2019). "Nancy B. Reich, Scholarly Champion of Clara Schumann, Dies at 94". New York Times. Retrieved 1 July 2019.
  2. ↑ Lincoln, Harry B. (March 1969). "Reviewed Work: Catalog of the Works of William Sydeman by Nancy B. Reich". Notes. Music Library Association. 25 (3): 503. JSTOR   895368.
  3. ↑ "Sydeman, William". Grove Music Online. doi:10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.27230 . Retrieved 2022-10-24.
  4. ↑ Reich, Nancy B. (February 1969). "The Subject is Computers". Music Educators Journal. 55 (6): 47–118. doi:10.2307/3392420. S2CID   144209621.
  5. ↑ REICH, NANCY B. (1976). "Liszt's Variations on the March from Rossini's Siège de Corinthe". Fontes Artis Musicae. 23 (3): 102–106. ISSN   0015-6191. JSTOR   23506355.
  6. ↑ Benton, Rita; Reich, Nancy B.; Köhler, Karl-Heinz (1979). "Communiqués/Mitteilungen/Communications". Fontes Artis Musicae. 26 (3): 235–238. ISSN   0015-6191. JSTOR   23505431.
  7. ↑ Smith, David Kenneth. "A Revised Biography of Clara Schumann" . Retrieved 2022-10-23.
  8. ↑ Cook, Susan C. (1989). "Women, Women's Studies, Music and Musicology: Issues of Pedagogy and Scholarship". College Music Symposium. 29: 93–100. ISSN   0069-5696. JSTOR   40373951.
  9. ↑ Block, Adrienne Fried; College Music Society, eds. (1988). Women's studies/women's status. CMS report. Boulder, CO: College Music Society.
  10. ↑ Rubsam, Robert (2020-01-21). "The Bard Professor Who Was Named Composer of the Year". Hudson Valley Magazine. Retrieved 2022-10-24.
  11. 1 2 3 "Remembering Dr. Nancy B. Reich | Women's Philharmonic Advocacy" . Retrieved 2022-10-24.
  12. ↑ Feder, Stuart; Karmel, Richard L.; Pollock, George H. (1990). Psychoanalytic Explorations in Music. International Universities Press. ISBN   978-0-8236-4407-0.
  13. ↑ Wood, Elizabeth (1985). Reich, Nancy B.; Ostwald, Peter; Chissell, Joan (eds.). "A Classical Trio". The Women's Review of Books. 3 (1): 7–8. doi:10.2307/4019758. ISSN   0738-1433. JSTOR   4019758.
  14. ↑ Reich, Nancy B. (2001). Clara Schumann: the artist and the woman (Rev. ed.). Ithaca, NY. ISBN   0-8014-6830-2. OCLC   856430972.
  15. ↑ "Schumann [née Wieck], Clara". Grove Music Online. doi:10.1093/omo/9781561592630.013.90000380188 . Retrieved 2022-10-24.
  16. ↑ Reich, Nancy B. (November 2007). "The Diaries of Fanny Hensel and Clara Schumann: A Study in Contrasts". Nineteenth-Century Music Review. 4 (2): 21–36. doi:10.1017/S1479409800000860. ISSN   2044-8414.
  17. 1 2 Reich, Nancy B. (1974). "The Rudorff Collection". Notes. 31 (2): 247–261. doi:10.2307/897122. ISSN   0027-4380. JSTOR   897122.
  18. ↑ Reichardt, Luise (1981). Songs. Nancy B. Reich. New York. ISBN   0-306-79552-3. OCLC   8329375.
  19. ↑ Reichardt, Luise (1998). Reich, Nancy B. (ed.). Five Lieder. Bryn Mawr, PA: Hildegard Pub. Co. OCLC   39777037.
  20. ↑ Reich, Nancy B. (2018-01-31), "Liebmann [née Riese], Helene", Oxford Music Online, Oxford University Press, doi:10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.2020207 , retrieved 2022-10-24
  21. ↑ Reich, Nancy B. (2001), "Benda [Wolf], Maria Carolina", Oxford Music Online, Oxford University Press, doi:10.1093/omo/9781561592630.013.60000200204, ISBN   978-1-56159-263-0 , retrieved 2022-10-24
  22. ↑ Liane Curtis, ed. (2004). A Rebecca Clarke reader. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN   0-253-34395-X. OCLC   53144495.
  23. ↑ Tibbetts, John C. (2005). Composers in the movies: studies in musical biography. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN   978-0-300-12803-1. OCLC   123125259.
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