Dragan Plamenac

PLAMENAC, DRAGAN (1895–1983), U.S. musicologist of Yugoslav origin. He was born in Zagreb where he first studied law and took a degree. Thereafter, he turned to his early interest in music and studied composition in Vienna (1912) and Prague (1919), musicology with Pirro at the Sorbonne and with Hugo *Adler, one of the founders of modern musicology, in Vienna. He took his doctorate in 1925 with his dissertation on Ockegem's motets and chanson; in 1928 he began teaching musicology at the University of Zagreb. He went in 1939 to the U.S. as the Yugoslav representative to the International Musicological Society Congress in New York and decided to remain there during World War II. He became an American citizen in 1946. Plamenac was thereafter professor of music at different universities, mainly the University of Illinois (1954–63), where he received an honorary doctorate in 1976. Plamenac held several offices at the American Musicological Society and received a number of awards.

In his numerous writings Plamenac distinguished himself as a prominent researcher and editor of early music, namely that of the 14^th and 16^th centuries as well as the music of Adriatic coastal areas in the Renaissance and early Baroque period. His studies and editions of manuscripts provide important insights into the practice of those periods.

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