Bo Lawergren

Bo Lawergren is a Professor Emeritus of Physics at Hunter College, The City University of New York.

He is also notable as a musician and musicologist. He began composing as a teenager and studied with Friedrich Mehler in Sweden. He also studied the piano and the cello, and for a short time in his twenty’s when he was working at UK Atomic Research Centre in Harwell near Oxford, he was first cellist with the Oxford Symphony Orchestra. His mini-opera Captain Cook's Diary was staged on many US campuses including the University of Chicago.

Other compositions are "Seven Miniatures" (1965-73) composed at The MacDowell Colony, an artist retreat in New Hampshire, USA and "Farfar" for piano solo, a piece for Trumpet and metronome, and others.

In addition to composing, he is an active explorer of Musical acoustics and Music archaeology. Among numerous publications are substantial entries on ancient music for the latest editions of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, and Encyclopædia Iranica.

In Encyclopædia Iranica, he wrote the first encyclopedic article on the history of Iranian music before Islam. Lately, he has focused on Chinese string instruments between 500 B.C. and 500 A.D. and brought to light a new class of luxury trumpets used north of Afghanistan 4000 years ago.

References

[http://www.ph.hunter.cuny.edu/faculty/lawergren/bo_pub.htm Publications]