In Saturday’s (10/15) New York Times, James R. Oestreich writes, “Piero Weiss, a former concert pianist and recording artist who turned to musicology, becoming an author and co-author of books in the field, including a widely used textbook, and founding the music history department at the Peabody Conservatory, died on Sunday in Baltimore. He was 83. … Dr. Weiss performed in Europe and America from the age of 16 into his 30s and recorded works by Schubert, Schumann, Debussy and Ravel. … His scholarly bent eventually won out, leading him away from the concert stage and into an academic career. He enrolled at Columbia University, earning a B.A. in 1950 and a Ph.D. in musicology in 1970. Dr. Weiss was the author of four books, including, with Richard Taruskin, Music in the Western World: A History in Documents, an anthology of source readings that has been adopted as a college textbook throughout the United States and Canada. … Dr. Weiss taught at Columbia from 1964 to 1985, when he joined the faculty at the prestigious Peabody Conservatory, part of Johns Hopkins University, where he remained until his death. He also taught performance at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia.”
Posted October 17, 2011
