Guido Adler facts for kids
Guido Adler (born November 1, 1855, died February 15, 1941) was an important music historian and writer from Austria. He is known for helping to create the study of music as a serious academic subject. This field is called musicology, which is the scientific study of music.
Contents
Biography
Early Life and Learning
Guido Adler was born in 1855 in a place called Eibenschütz, which is now part of the Czech Republic. When he was nine years old, his family moved to Vienna, Austria. His father, Joachim, was a doctor who sadly passed away when Guido was very young.
Guido studied at the University of Vienna and also at the Vienna Conservatory of Music. At the conservatory, he learned to play the piano. He also studied music theory and how to compose music with famous teachers like Anton Bruckner. He earned a diploma in music in 1874. Later, he also earned degrees in law and philosophy from the University of Vienna.
Becoming a Musicology Pioneer
In 1883, Guido Adler became a lecturer in musicology at the University of Vienna. This was a big step in his career.
In 1884, he helped start a new journal called Vierteljahresschrift für Musikwissenschaft (which means Musicology Quarterly). In the very first issue, Adler wrote an important article. It was called "The Scope, Method, and Aim of Musicology." This article was the first to try and fully describe how to study music. He divided music study into two main parts:
- Historical musicology: This looks at the history of music.
- Systematic musicology: This explores the science and structure of music.
He also included "comparative musicology" in his ideas, which later became its own field called ethnomusicology. These ideas helped shape how music is studied even today.
In 1885, Adler became a professor at the German University of Prague. Then, in 1898, he returned to the University of Vienna. There, he created the Musicological Institute. Many students who became famous musicians and scholars studied with him. Some of his students included composers Anton Webern and Egon Wellesz.
From 1894 to 1938, he was the editor of Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich. This was a very important series of publications about music history in Austria. Adler was one of the first music historians to focus on understanding the style of music in his research. He also edited the Handbuch der Musikgeschichte (Handbook of Music History) in 1924.
Challenges During the Nazi Era
After Austria was taken over in 1938, Guido Adler was forced to leave his job as editor of Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich. When he passed away in 1941, his large collection of books and music was taken from his daughter. After World War II ended, most of his library was returned to his son. Today, parts of his collection are kept at the University of Georgia and Harvard University.
His Impact on Music Study
Guido Adler is considered one of the main founders of musicology as a proper academic subject. He was also one of the first scholars to understand that social and cultural things affect music. He believed that studying music should be based on facts and evidence.
Adler especially focused on the music of Austria. He was very interested in the music of the First Viennese School. This group included famous composers like Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
See also
In Spanish: Guido Adler para niños
