Harold Spivacke (July 18, 1904 – May 9, 1977) was an American music librarian and administrator. He was Chief of the Music Division of the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The librar ...

from 1937 to 1972. In 1940 he co-founded the

National Music Council The National Music Council of the United States is an organization listed under Title 36 of the United States Code, founded in 1940 and chartered by the 84th Congress in 1956. The Council is composed of organizations of national scope interested ...

with Julia Ober, Franklin Dunham, and Edwin Hughes.

Life

Spivacke was born and grew up in New York City. He studied economics and philosophy at New York University, receiving a BA in 1923 and an MA the following year, and at the same time studied piano privately. Finding the business world uncongenial, he decided to turn to music as a profession. He soon found performing and coaching were not enough and, wishing to explore the philosophy and history of music more deeply, he enrolled at the University of Berlin in 1929, where he studied with Karl Erich Schumann,

Arnold Schering Arnold Schering (2 April 1877 in Breslau, German Empire – 7 March 1941 in Berlin) was a German musicologist. He grew up in Dresden as the son of an art publisher. He learned violin at the from which he graduated in 1896. Thereafter he studied ...

, and

Curt Sachs Curt Sachs (; 29 June 1881 – 5 February 1959) was a German musicologist. He was one of the founders of modern organology (the study of musical instruments). Among his contributions was the Hornbostel–Sachs system, which he created with Eric ...

. At the same time, he studied piano privately with

Eugen d'Albert Eugen (originally Eugène) Francis Charles d'Albert (10 April 1864 – 3 March 1932) was a Scottish-born pianist and composer. Educated in Britain, d'Albert showed early musical talent and, at the age of seventeen, he won a scholarship to stud ...

and composition with

Hugo Leichtentritt Hugo Leichtentritt (1 January 1874, Pleschen, , nearby Posen, Province of Posen13 November 1951, Cambridge, Massachusetts) was a German-Jewish musicologist and composer who spent much of his life in the USA. His pupils include composers Leroy Ro ...

. After receiving a PhD in musicology in 1933, with a dissertation on the objective and subjective aspects of tonal intensity, he returned to New York. After working for a short time as a research assistant to

Olin Downes Edwin Olin Downes, better known as Olin Downes (January 27, 1886 – August 22, 1955), was an American music critic, known as "Sibelius's Apostle" for his championship of the music of Jean Sibelius. As critic of ''The New York Times'', he ex ...

at ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', as well as in the Music division of the

New York Public Library The New York Public Library (NYPL) is a public library system in New York City. With nearly 53 million items and 92 locations, the New York Public Library is the second largest public library in the United States (behind the Library of Congress) ...

, late in 1934 he was appointed Assistant Chief of the Music Division at the

in Washington, D. C. In 1937 he was promoted to Chief of the division, and remained in that post until he retired in 1972. As Chief of the Music Division, Spivacke was active with a number of other governmental agencies and departments, as well as with professional organizations such as the

Music Library Association The Music Library Association (MLA) of the United States is the main professional organization for music libraries and librarians (including those whose music materials form only part of their responsibilities and collections). It also serves corpo ...

(of which he was president from 1951 to 1953), the

, the

International Association of Music Libraries The International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres (IAML), also known as ''Association Internationale des Bibliothèques, Archives et Centres de Documentation Musicaux'' (AIBM) and ''Internationale Vereinigung der ...

, and the

American Musicological Society The American Musicological Society (AMS) is a musicological organization which researches, promotes and produces publications on music. Founded in 1934, the AMS was begun by leading American musicologists of the time, and was crucial in legiti ...

. In collaboration with the

Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation Elizabeth or Elisabeth may refer to: People * Elizabeth (given name), a female given name (including people with that name) * Elizabeth (biblical figure), mother of John the Baptist Ships * HMS ''Elizabeth'', several ships * ''Elisabeth'' (sc ...

, the Gertrud Clark Whittall Foundation, and the Koussevitsky Foundation, the Music Division under Spivacke's leadership sponsored hundreds of concerts of

chamber music Chamber music is a form of classical music that is composed for a small group of instruments—traditionally a group that could fit in a palace chamber or a large room. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small num ...

and commissioned new works from composers such as

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Paul Hindemith Paul Hindemith (; 16 November 189528 December 1963) was a German composer, music theorist, teacher, violist and conductor. He founded the Amar Quartet in 1921, touring extensively in Europe. As a composer, he became a major advocate of the '' ...

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Walter Piston Walter Hamor Piston, Jr. (January 20, 1894 – November 12, 1976), was an American composer of classical music, music theorist, and professor of music at Harvard University. Life Piston was born in Rockland, Maine at 15 Ocean Street to Walter ...

, and

William Schuman William Howard Schuman (August 4, 1910February 15, 1992) was an American composer and arts administrator. Life Schuman was born into a Jewish family in Manhattan, New York City, son of Samuel and Rachel Schuman. He was named after the 27th U.S. ...

. He was married twice, first in 1927 to the violinist Carolyn Le Fevre. They divorced in 1953, and two years later Spivacke married the conductor and University of Maryland professor Rose Marie Grentzer.

Footnotes

Sources * *

External links

The Library of Virginia website (accessed July 14, 2017). * Archives
Harold Spivacke collection, 1923–1984Rose Marie and Harold Spivacke Fund collection, 1615–1994

{{DEFAULTSORT:Spivacke, Harold 1904 births 1977 deaths Librarians at the Library of Congress People from New York City New York University alumni Humboldt University of Berlin alumni New York Public Library people Music librarians

Life

Footnotes

Further reading

External links