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Bruno Nettl

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"Nettl" redirects here. For other uses, see Nettl (disambiguation).
Bruno Nettl
Nettl before 2014
Born(1930-03-14)March 14, 1930
Prague, Czechoslovakia
DiedJanuary 15, 2020(2020-01-15) (aged 89)
Urbana, Illinois, US
Academic background
Alma mater
ThesisAmerican Indian Music North of Mexico: Its Styles and Areas (1953)
Doctoral advisorGeorge Herzog
Academic work
InstitutionsUniversity of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Bruno Nettl (March 14, 1930 – January 15, 2020) was an American ethnomusicologist of Czech birth.[1] A leading music researcher, Nettl was central in founding modern ethnomusicology.[2] His research focused on folk and traditional music, specifically Native American music, the music of Iran and numerous topics surrounding ethnomusicology as a discipline.[3]

Early life and education

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Bruno Nettl was born on March 14, 1930 in Prague, then in Czechoslovakia, to a musical family.[4] His father was Paul Nettl [de] (1889–1972), a well-known musicologist who researched Mozart as well as the connections between Czech, German and Jewish musical traditions.[5] Among the elder Nettl's work was the Handbuch der Musikgeschichte (1930) with Guido Adler, and the Beethoven Encyclopedia (1956).[6] His mother, Gertrude (née Hutter) Nettl (1905–1952), was both a pianist and piano teacher.[5][7] Bruno played violin in his youth, at one point in an orchestra under Kurt Weill.[5] The Nettl family, of Jewish descent, fled Europe in 1939 amid Nazi Germany's occupation of Czechoslovakia.[4]

Nettl and his parents settled in the Princeton, New Jersey, US, while other family members fled worldwide; numerous Nettl relatives died during the Holocaust.[7] His father taught at Princeton's Westminster Choir College,[4] and the family became American citizens in 1945.[8] After attending high school in Princeton, the family moved to Bloomington, Indiana, where Nettl attended the Indiana University Bloomington (UIUC).[8] From UIUC he would receive a Bachelor of Arts (1950), Master of Arts (1951) and PhD (1953).[1] The latter PhD was in musicology, for which his thesis concerned the music of the Blackfeet people, under the advisement of George Herzog.[9][10] This dissertation " marked the first ever doctorate in the nascent field of ethnomusicology".[9] He later received a second Masters in library science from University of Michigan.[8]

Career

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He taught from 1964 at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he eventually was named Professor Emeritus of Music and Anthropology. Active principally in the field of ethnomusicology, he did field research with Native American peoples (1960s and 1980s, see Blackfoot music), in Iran (1966, 1968–69, 1972, 1974), and in South India (1981–82). Nettl introduced and expanded the ethnomusicology department at the University of Illinois, which became one of the national leaders in the field.[11] Several of Nettl's students became important music scholars, Samuel Araujo, Carol Babiracki, Gérard Béhague, Virginia Danielson, Victoria Lindsay Levine, Ali Jihad Racy, Melinda Russell, Margaret Sarkissian, Stephen Slawek, Ted Solis, Christopher Waterman, and notably, Stephen Blum and Philip Bohlman.[12]

Nettl served as president of the Society for Ethnomusicology and as editor of its journal, Ethnomusicology. He held honorary doctorates from the University of Illinois, Carleton College, Kenyon College, and the University of Chicago. He was a recipient of the Fumio Koizumi Prize for ethnomusicology, and was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The Sousa Archives and Center for American Music holds the Bruno Nettl Papers (1966–1988), which consists of administrative and personal correspondence while Nettl was a professor and head of the Musicology Division for the University of Illinois School of Music.[1] Nettl received the first Taichi Traditional Music Award in 2012 from the China Conservatory of Music,[13] and was named the 2014 Charles Homer Haskins Prize Lecturer by the American Council of Learned Societies.[14]

Nettl retired in 1992, although continued research and part-time teaching.[15] He continued to publish prolifically until his death on January 15, 2020 in Urbana, Illinois, US.[1]

Legacy

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Musicologist Jeffrey Sposato, a colleague of Nettl, remarked that "To describe Bruno as a giant in the field of ethnomusicology hardly does him justice. His work was seminal in establishing the discipline in the United States, both through his research and via the army of ethnomusicologists he has trained over the years".[16]

Personal life

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Nettl met his wife, the artist Wanda Maria White, while he was a student at Indiana University and the couple married in 1952.[11] The couple founded an annual ethnomusicology lecture series aimed at a "general academic audience" in 2000: The Bruno and Wanda Nettl Distinguished Lecture in Ethnomusicology.[17] They had two children, Rebecca and Gloria.[11] His daughters continued living in Champaign in their adulthood, and Bruno Nettl was described as a devoted father and husband.[11]

Outside of music, Nettl enjoyed spending time with family, attending concerts, playing casual poker, baking and solving the The New York Times crossword.[18] He frequently wrote comedic verses for close friends and family; they were collected and published in the anthology Perverse at Eighty (2010), which included drawings by his daughter Gloria.[18][19]

Selected writings

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Books
  • Nettl, Bruno (1953). American Indian Music North of Mexico: Its Styles and Areas (Thesis). Bloomington: Indiana University Bloomington.
    • —— (1954). North American Indian Musical Styles. Philadelphia.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  • —— (1956). Music in Primitive Culture. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-59000-7.
  • —— (1960). Cheremis Musical Styles. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
  • —— (1964). Theory and Method in Ethnomusicology. Glencoe: The Free Press of Glencoe.
  • —— (1965). Folk and Traditional Music of the Western Continents. Hoboken: Prentice-Hall. ISBN 0-13-323247-6.
    • —— (1989). Folk and Traditional Music of the Western Continents. Hoboken: Prentice-Hall.
  • —— (1976). Folk Music In The U.S. An Introduction. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.
  • —— (1977). Daramad of Chahargah: A Study in the Performance Practice of Persian Music. Detroit: Information Coordinators.
  • —— (1978). Eight Urban Musical Cultures. Champaign: University of Illinois Press.
  • —— (1989). Blackfoot Musical Thought: Comparative Perspectives. Kent: Kent State University Press. ISBN 0-87338-370-2.
  • —— (1983). The Study of Ethnomusicology. Champaign: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0-252-03033-8.
  • —— (1991). Comparative Musicology And Anthropology Of Music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  • —— (1995). Heartland Excursions. Champaign: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0-252-02135-5.
  • —— (1995). Music, Culture, & Experience. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  • —— (1996). Excursions In World Music. Kent: Prentice Hall.
  • —— (1996). Musica Folklorica Y Tradicional En Los Continentes [Folkloric and Traditional Music on the Continents] (in Spanish). Madrid: Alianza.
  • —— (1998). In The Course Of Performance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  • —— (2005). Study Of Ethnomusicology. Champaign: University of Illinois Press.
  • —— (2010). Nettl's Elephant. Forward by Anthony Seeger. Champaign: University of Illinois Press.
  • —— (2010). Perverse at Eighty, for Family and Friends. Drawings by Gloria Roubal. Champaign: Elephant & Cat.
  • —— (2013). Becoming an Ethnomusicologist: A Miscellany of Influences. Lanham: The Scarecrow Press. ISBN 0-8108-8697-9.
Articles

References

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Citations

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  1. ^ a b c d Bohlman 2020, § para. 1.
  2. ^ Beckerman 2020, p. 704.
  3. ^ Bohlman 2020, § para. 2.
  4. ^ a b c Stuempfle 2020, § para. 2.
  5. ^ a b c Beckerman 2020, p. 705.
  6. ^ Keller 2020, p. 225.
  7. ^ a b AMS 2020, § para. 1.
  8. ^ a b c AMS 2020, § para. 2.
  9. ^ a b McDonald 2020, § para. 2.
  10. ^ Nettl 1953.
  11. ^ a b c d AMS 2020.
  12. ^ Keller 2020, p. 223.
  13. ^ Rhodes 2012b.
  14. ^ Rhodes 2012a, § para. 1.
  15. ^ Rhodes 2012a, § para. 5.
  16. ^ Sposato 2020.
  17. ^ Rhodes 2012a, § para. 6.
  18. ^ a b AMS 2020, § para. 6.
  19. ^ Nettl 2010.

Sources

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