Gilbert Chase

Gilbert Chase (4 September 1906, Havana, Cuba - 22 February 1992, Chapel Hill, North Carolina [ [http://www.nypl.org/research/lpa/mus/pdf/muschase.pdf The Gilbert Chase Papers] ] ) was an American music historian, critic and author, and a "seminal figure in the field of musicology and ethnomusicology.

His "America's Music, from the Pilgrims to the Present" was the first major work to examine the music of the entire United States, and recognize folk traditions as more culturally significant than music for the concert hall. Chase's analysis of a diverse American musical identity has remained the dominant view among the academic establishment. [Crawford, pg. x] He also "was the first to treat the music of Charles Ives and Carl Ruggles as important additions to the 20th-century repertory". Along with Robert Stevenson, he was among the first American scholars to study the music of the Americas, and his "The Music of Spain" and "A Guide to the Music of Latin America" were major works in the study of Spanish and Latin American music. [http://www.tulane.edu/~jleonweb/chase.htm Tulane University] ] "The Music of Spain" remains a seminal and much-used text.

Chase served as the cultural attache in Lima (1950-53), Buenos Aires (1953-55) and Brussels (1960-63).

Chase taught at Tulane University and the University of Oklahoma. After retiring in 1979, he moved to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and died there, of pneumonia, in 1992. [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE6D8133AF934A15751C0A964958260 New York Times] ]

References

* cite book
author = Crawford, Richard
id = ISBN 0-393-04810-1
publisher = W. W. Norton & Company
title = America's Musical Life: A History
year = 2001

Notes