Oliver Strunk

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William Oliver Strunk (March 22, 1901 - Feb. 24, 1980) was an American musicologist.

Strunk attended Cornell University from 1917 to 1919 and then again from 1926 to 1927, the latter under Otto Kinkeldey. He studied at Berlin University from 1927 to 1928 and then became a staff member at the Library of Congress in addition to a lecturer at the Catholic University of America. From 1937 he was at Princeton University; he became a full professor in 1950 and retired to Grottaferrata, Italy in 1966.

Strunk was a founding member of the American Musicological Society, as well as the initial editor of JAMS in 1948 and the president of the AMS from 1959-1960. He directed the Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae, 1961-71. His scholarship was exceptionally broad, covering the notation of early Byzantine music, the ars nova, Renaissance motets, Haydn, and Verdi. He was one of the leading figures in post-World War II American musicology. His Source Readings in Music History (1950; rev. 1998 by Leo Treitler) was and is a standard primary-source text for music historians.

[edit] Books

State and Resources of Musicology in the United States (Washington DC, 1932)
Source Readings in Music History (New York, 1950, enlarged 2nd ed. 1998 by Leo Treitler)
(ed.) Specimina notationum antiquiorum (1966)
(with E. Follieri) Triodium Athoum (1975)