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Nancy B. Reich

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Nancy Bassen Reich (July 3, 1924 in New York City - January 31, 2019 in Ossining, NY) was an American musicologist, most renowned for her 1985 biography of Clara Schumann.

Biography

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She attended the High School of Music and Art, where she played viola and violin. She obtained a bachelor's degree in music in 1945 at Queens College, and a master's degree in 1947 at Columbia University's Teachers College. She received her PhD in 1972 from New York University.[1]

In the 1960s she studied application of computers to music making, music reading, and music pedagogy. At NYU she worked at the Institute for Computer Research in the Humanities, and released an early catalog of composer William Jay Sydeman's compositions (Sydeman lived until 2021); this was a notable early effort in creating a machine-readable document. A 2nd edition was released in 1968.[2] 35 years later, in 2001, she would write the Grove Dictionary of Music's entry for Sydeman.[3] She investigated music notation digitization and replay on early IBM 1130 computers.[4]

Reich taught at NYU, Queens College, and Manhattanville College. While at Manhattanville, she discovered the first four pages of a Franz Liszt composition (Introduction and Variations on a March from Rossini's Siege of Corinth) previously thought lost, and subsequently researched its provenance.[5][6]

She was a visiting professor at Bard and Williams,[1] and was a visiting scholar at the Center for Research on Women at Stanford University.[7] She was heavily involved in advancing feminist musicology studies, including chairing the College Music Society's Committee on the Status of Women in Music, and editing its major bibliographic report CMS Report No. 5: Women's Studies/Women's Status.[8][9] She contributed the chapter European composers and musicians, ca. 1800-1890 to the college textbook Women & Music, A History. Joan Tower, who joined the faculty of Bard College in 1972, credits Reich's course on the history of women in music with changing her life.[10]

In 1985 she published her seminal biography Clara Schumann: The Artist and the Woman, the first scholarly biography of a woman composer.[11] The first half of the book is a straightforward chronological treatment; the second half a thematic treatment. This book established Clara as an important musical figure independent of her husband, the composer Robert Schumann. Her research in the early 1980s took her behind the Iron Curtain. She also collaborated with psychoanalyst Anna Burton, who had been analyzing Clara Schumann since 1968.[12] The success of the book, which was translated into several languages, is credited with significantly increasing and re-evaluating female subjects in musicology.[1][13] A revised 2nd edition was published in 2001.[14] She was asked to review others' works about or inspired by Clara Schumann, and authored the New Grove Dictionary of Music's Clara Schumann entry.[15]

Further areas of study included Fanny Hensel,[16] Ernst Rudorff,[17] Juliane Reichardt,[17] Luise Reichardt,[18][19] Helene Liebmann,[20] Maria Carolina Wolf,[21] and Rebecca Clarke.[22]

In June 2019, a few months after her death, the Women's Philharmonic Advocacy established the Nancy B. Reich fund to support orchestras in the performance of major works by women composers.[11]

She is the dedicatee of John C. Tibbetts' book Composers in the Movies: Studies in Musical Biography.[23]

Prizes and awards

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Essays and books

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  • Catalog of the works of William Sydeman; a machine-readable pilot project in information retrieval (1966, 2nd edition 1968) published by New York University Division of Music Education
  • The Rudorff Collection, in Notes: The Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association, volume 31 (1974), p. 247–261
  • Louise Reichardt, in Ars musica, musica scientia. Festschrift Heinrich Hüschen zum fünfundsechzigsten Geburtstag am 2. März 1980, published by Detlef Altenburg, Cologne 1980, p. 369–377
  • Die schöpferische Partnerschaft Clara und Robert Schumanns, in 9. Robert-Schumann-Tage, 1984, p. 43–52
  • Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms, in Brahms and his World, Princeton University Press, 1990, p. 37–47
  • Die Lieder von Clara Schumann, in Brahms-Studien, volume 11 (1997), p. 97–106
  • Clara Schumann: The Artist and the Woman, revised edition, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2001
  • Robert Schumann's Music in New York City, 1848–1898, in Schumanniana nova. Festschrift Gerd Nauhaus zum 60. Geburtstag, Sinzig 2002, p. 569–595
  • The Power of Class: Fanny Hensel and the Mendelssohn Family, in Women's Voices Across Musical Worlds, ed. Jane A. Bernstein, Northeastern University Press, 2004, p. 18-35.

References

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  1. ^ a b c da Fonseca-Wollheim, Corinna (11 Feb 2019). "Nancy B. Reich, Scholarly Champion of Clara Schumann, Dies at 94". New York Times. Retrieved 1 July 2019.
  2. ^ Lincoln, Harry B. (March 1969). "Reviewed Work: Catalog of the Works of William Sydeman by Nancy B. Reich". Notes. 25 (3). Music Library Association: 503. doi:10.2307/895368. JSTOR 895368.
  3. ^ Reich, Nancy B. (2001). "Sydeman, William". Grove Music Online. doi:10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.27230. ISBN 978-1-56159-263-0. Retrieved 2022-10-24.
  4. ^ Reich, Nancy B. (February 1969). "The Subject is Computers". Music Educators Journal. 55 (6): 47–118. doi:10.2307/3392420. JSTOR 3392420. S2CID 144209621.
  5. ^ REICH, NANCY B. (1976). "Liszt's Variations on the March from Rossini's Siège de Corinthe". Fontes Artis Musicae. 23 (3): 102–106. ISSN 0015-6191. JSTOR 23506355.
  6. ^ Benton, Rita; Reich, Nancy B.; Köhler, Karl-Heinz (1979). "Communiqués/Mitteilungen/Communications". Fontes Artis Musicae. 26 (3): 235–238. ISSN 0015-6191. JSTOR 23505431.
  7. ^ Smith, David Kenneth. "A Revised Biography of Clara Schumann". Retrieved 2022-10-23.
  8. ^ Cook, Susan C. (1989). "Women, Women's Studies, Music and Musicology: Issues of Pedagogy and Scholarship". College Music Symposium. 29: 93–100. ISSN 0069-5696. JSTOR 40373951.
  9. ^ Block, Adrienne Fried; College Music Society, eds. (1988). Women's studies/women's status. CMS report. Boulder, CO: College Music Society.
  10. ^ Rubsam, Robert (2020-01-21). "The Bard Professor Who Was Named Composer of the Year". Hudson Valley Magazine. Retrieved 2022-10-24.
  11. ^ a b c "Remembering Dr. Nancy B. Reich | Women's Philharmonic Advocacy". Retrieved 2022-10-24.
  12. ^ Feder, Stuart; Karmel, Richard L.; Pollock, George H. (1990). Psychoanalytic Explorations in Music. International Universities Press. ISBN 978-0-8236-4407-0.
  13. ^ Wood, Elizabeth (1985). Reich, Nancy B.; Ostwald, Peter; Chissell, Joan (eds.). "A Classical Trio". The Women's Review of Books. 3 (1): 7–8. doi:10.2307/4019758. ISSN 0738-1433. JSTOR 4019758.
  14. ^ Reich, Nancy B. (2001). Clara Schumann: the artist and the woman (Rev. ed.). Ithaca, NY. ISBN 0-8014-6830-2. OCLC 856430972.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  15. ^ Reich, Nancy B. (2021). Loges, Natasha (ed.). "Schumann [née Wieck], Clara". Grove Music Online. doi:10.1093/omo/9781561592630.013.90000380188. ISBN 9781561592630. Retrieved 2022-10-24.
  16. ^ Reich, Nancy B. (November 2007). "The Diaries of Fanny Hensel and Clara Schumann: A Study in Contrasts". Nineteenth-Century Music Review. 4 (2): 21–36. doi:10.1017/S1479409800000860. ISSN 2044-8414. S2CID 191395111.
  17. ^ a b Reich, Nancy B. (1974). "The Rudorff Collection". Notes. 31 (2): 247–261. doi:10.2307/897122. ISSN 0027-4380. JSTOR 897122.
  18. ^ Reichardt, Luise (1981). Songs. Nancy B. Reich. New York. ISBN 0-306-79552-3. OCLC 8329375.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  19. ^ Reichardt, Luise (1998). Reich, Nancy B. (ed.). Five Lieder. Bryn Mawr, PA: Hildegard Pub. Co. OCLC 39777037.
  20. ^ Reich, Nancy B. (2018-01-31), "Liebmann [née Riese], Helene", Oxford Music Online, Oxford University Press, doi:10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.2020207, retrieved 2022-10-24
  21. ^ Reich, Nancy B. (2001), "Benda [Wolf], Maria Carolina", Oxford Music Online, Oxford University Press, doi:10.1093/omo/9781561592630.013.60000200204, ISBN 978-1-56159-263-0, retrieved 2022-10-24
  22. ^ Liane Curtis, ed. (2004). A Rebecca Clarke reader. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-34395-X. OCLC 53144495.
  23. ^ Tibbetts, John C. (2005). Composers in the movies: studies in musical biography. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-12803-1. OCLC 123125259.
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