Oliver Strunk’s Expansive Legacy (Without ‘Needless Words’)

I basically appreciated Harrison Blackman’s tribute, even though it tends to reduce Oliver Strunk’s impressive scientific and didactical activity to the field of liturgical chant of the Eastern and Western churches, with particular reference to Byzantine notation and repertoire. This was certainly his main area of interest, and Kenneth Levy was indeed one of his most important disciples and heirs. What is missing in Blackman’s portrait, however, is all the rest, which is no small thing.

First of all, Strunk played a crucial role in the very foundation of modern musicology, not only in the U.S.A. but also in Europe. Among his students and followers one finds, in addition to Levy, equally authoritative scholars such as Harold S. Powers, Lewis Lockwood, Leo Treitler, Charles Hamm, Joseph Kerman, Charles Rosen, Don Randel, and Pierluigi Petrobelli — among many others — each of whom represents a different musicological vein, area of interest, and methodology.

Moreover, to say that “Strunk didn’t actually publish very many articles” does not do justice to the unusually wide range of subjects covered by his not so small scientific production: from Italian Ars Nova to Haydn and Beethoven, from 15th-century English polyphony and 16th-century motet to Venetian opera, Verdi, and Wagner.

Oliver’s fundamental Source Readings in Music History, a critical anthology of translated writings on music (from the ancient Greeks to Wagner), can nearly be compared — for its wide diffusion and persistent impact on generations of musicologists — to William’s Elements of Style. The elder Strunk’s main advice — “omit needless words”, or else “less is more” — was literally followed by his son, that’s for sure: not in the number of articles, but in the quantity and efficiency of words that he always carefully selected in each of his publications.

Editor’s note: The letter writer, who received his Ph.D. in musicology from Princeton, is a professor in the Department of Musicology and Cultural Heritage at Pavia University in Italy.