Karl Geiringer

GEIRINGER, KARL (1899–1989), musicologist. Born in Vienna, Geiringer studied with Guido *Adler and Curt *Sachs, and earned his doctorate at the University of Vienna in 1922 for a dissertation on musical instruments in Renaissance painting. In 1929 he was appointed to the commission of the Denkmäler Tonkunst in Oesterreich and a year later became custodian of the museum and library of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, Vienna. Following the Nazi invasion of Austria in 1938, he went to London, where he worked for the BBC, wrote articles for the fourth edition of the Grove's Dictionary, and taught at the Royal College of Music. In 1941 he was appointed professor of history and theory of music at Boston University, where he remained for 21 years. He was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1959 and was an honorary member of the American chapter of the Neue Bach-Gesellschaft and of the Oesterreichische Gesellschaft fuer Musikwissenschaft. In 1962 Geiringer was appointed professor of music at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he retired in 1971. Geiringer's writings include Musical Instruments: Their History in Western Culture, (1943), Haydn: a Creative Life in Music (1946), Brahms: His Life and Work (1936), The Bach Family (1954), A Thematic Catalog of Haydn's Settings of Folk Songs from the British Isles (1953), Johann Sebastian Bach: The Culmination of an Era (1966). He edited Antonio Caldara: Ein Madrigal und achtzehn Kanons, Cw, XXV (1933), Music of the Bach Family: An Anthology (1955), Joseph Haydn: 100 schottische Lieder (Munich, 1961); and J. Haydn: Symphony No. 103 in E-Flat Major (New York, 1974).

Sources: Encyclopaedia Judaica. © 2007 The Gale Group. All Rights Reserved.