Alfred Mann (April 28, 1917 – September 21, 2006), was an American

musicologist Musicology (from Greek μουσική ''mousikē'' 'music' and -λογια ''-logia'', 'domain of study') is the scholarly analysis and research-based study of music. Musicology departments traditionally belong to the humanities, although some m ...

who specialized in the history of Western

musical theory Music theory is the study of the practices and possibilities of music. ''The Oxford Companion to Music'' describes three interrelated uses of the term "music theory". The first is the " rudiments", that are needed to understand music notation (k ...

. He was a professor of

Musicology Musicology (from Greek μουσική ''mousikē'' 'music' and -λογια ''-logia'', 'domain of study') is the scholarly analysis and research-based study of music. Musicology departments traditionally belong to the humanities, although some m ...

at the

Eastman School of Music The Eastman School of Music is the music school of the University of Rochester, a private research university in Rochester, New York. It was established in 1921 by industrialist and philanthropist George Eastman. It offers Bachelor of Music ...

University of Rochester The University of Rochester (U of R, UR, or U of Rochester) is a private research university in Rochester, New York. The university grants undergraduate and graduate degrees, including doctoral and professional degrees. The University of ...

. His parents were the portrait painter Wilhelm Mann and the well-known harpsichordist and musicologist Edith Weiss-Mann.

Biography

Alfred Mann left Germany before

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

and moved to Italy where he only could stay shortly. In 1938, Mann had to leave Italy, because of a

Mussolini Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini (; 29 July 188328 April 1945) was an Italian politician and journalist who founded and led the National Fascist Party. He was Prime Minister of Italy from the March on Rome in 1922 until Fall of the Fascist re ...

mandate, and Mann moved to the USA. After a long career, Mann became Professor of Musicology at the Eastman School in 1980, retiring and becoming

Professor Emeritus ''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...

in 1987.

Important Writings

In 1938, Mann published his German translation of

Johann Joseph Fux Johann Joseph Fux (; – 13 February 1741) was an Austrian composer, music theorist and pedagogue of the late Baroque era. His most enduring work is not a musical composition but his treatise on counterpoint, '' Gradus ad Parnassum'', which has ...

's ''

Gradus ad Parnassum The Latin phrase ''gradus ad Parnassum'' means "steps to Parnassus". It is sometimes shortened to ''gradus''. The name ''Parnassus'' was used to denote the loftiest part of a mountain range in central Greece, a few kilometres north of Delphi, of wh ...

'' next to the first one by Lorenz Christoph Mizler in 1742. In 1943, Mann made the first real translation of ''

'' into English next to the one with paraphrases by an anonymous translator. The translation contained the preface, pages 41 – 139 and page 279 of the original work, based on his German translation version. In 1958, Mann translated into English, the part of ''Gradus ad Parnassum'' that concerned the composition of a

fugue In music, a fugue () is a contrapuntal compositional technique in two or more voices, built on a subject (a musical theme) that is introduced at the beginning in imitation (repetition at different pitches) and which recurs frequently in the co ...

, pages 140 – 217 of the original work.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mann, Alfred 1917 births 2006 deaths People from Hamburg Prussian Academy of Arts alumni 20th-century American musicologists German emigrants to the United States