Einstein, Alfred

Einstein, Alfred (1880–1952) musicologist; born in Munich, Germany. He was a newspaper music critic in Munich and Berlin before he left Germany in 1933. Arriving in the U.S.A. in 1938, he taught at Smith College, Columbia University, the University of Michigan, and Hartt College. He was an influential writer on music, his books including Greatness in Music (1941), Music in the Romantic Era (1947), and Schubert (1951).

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Einstein, Alfred 

Born Dec. 30,1880, in Munich; died Feb. 13,1952, in El Cerrito, Calif. German musicologist.

A music critic in Munich and Berlin, Einstein published the journal Zeitschrift für Musikwissenschaft from 1918 to 1933. After the fascists came to power, he lived in Great Britain and Italy, eventually taking up residence in the USA in 1939. An important part of Einstein’s work was his bibliographies and dictionaries. He edited and wrote several articles for the ninth, tenth, and 11th editions of H. Riemann’s Dictionary of Music (1919,1922, and 1929) and translated and revised A. Eaglefield-Hull’s Dictionary of Modern Music and Musicians, which he published under the title New Dictionary of Music (1926).

Particularly valuable are Einstein’s works The Italian Madrigal (vols. 1–3,1939), Greatness in Music (1941), and Music in the Romantic Era (1947) and his monographs on various composers, including H. Schütz (1928), C. W. Gluck, (1936), W. A. Mozart (1945), and F. Schubert (1951).