William J(ohn) Mitchell
born New York, November 21, 1906; died Binghamton, NY, August 17, 1971
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American musicologist and music theorist.
Career Summary
Mitchell studied at the Institute for Musical Art (1925‒29) and at Columbia University (1926‒30), winning the Joseph H. Bearns Prize in composition. After two years in Vienna (1930‒32), he joined the faculty of Columbia, becoming associate professor in 1937, full professor in 1952, and serving as department chair 1962‒67, initiating the founding of the Columbia graduate student journal Current Musicology (1965). He established an academic program in music theory and was the originator, with Douglas Moore, of the undergraduate Music Humanities course. He concurrently taught advanced analysis at Mannes College 1957‒68, and lectured at various universities. In 1968 he became chair of the SUNY Binghamton music department's graduate program. An active member of music societies, he was president of the Society for Music in Liberal Arts Colleges (1954-55), one of the precursors of the College Music Society of which he was a founding member, as well as holding several offices in the American Musicological Society (including president, 1965-66). He was co-founder and joint editor with Felix Salzer of The Music Forum from 1967 to his death.
Mitchell and Schenkerian Theory
While in Vienna in 1930‒32, Mitchell studied with Hans Weisse. His Elementary Harmony (1939) was the first American textbook to draw explicitly on Schenker's ideas. He published a series of significant articles that employed Schenker's ideas, methods, and terminology, as did his lectures and his teaching of theory and analysis.
Bibliography
- Elementary Harmony (New York: Prentice Hall, 1939)
- "Heinrich Schenker's Approach to Detail," Musicology 1/2 (1946), 117‒28; repr. Theory and Practice 10/1‒2 (1985), 51–62
- "C. P. E. Bach's Essay: An Introduction," The Musical Quarterly 33/4 (1947), 460‒80
- Eng. transl., C. P. E. Bach, Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments (New York: W. W. Norton, 1949)
- Review of Heinrich Schenker, Harmony, transl. Elisabeth Mann Borgese, ed. Oswald Jonas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954) in The Musical Quarterly 41/2 (1955), 256–60
- "The Survival of the Species," Proceedings of the Second Annual Meeting, College Music Society (1959), 5-23
- "The Study of Chromaticism," Journal of Music Theory 6 (1962), 2‒31
- "Chord and Context in 18th-Century Theory," Journal of the American Musicological Society 16/2 (1963), 221-39
- "The Tristan Prelude: Techniques and Structure," The Music Forum 1 (1967), 162‒203
- "Giuseppe Sarti and Mozart's Quartet, K. 421," Current Musicology 9 (1969), 147–53
- "The Prologue to Orlando di Lasso's Prophetiae Sibyllarum," The Music Forum 2 (1970), 264‒73
- "Modulation in C.P.E. Bach's Versuch," in Studies in Eighteenth-Century Music: a Tribute to Karl Geiringer, ed. H. C. Robbins Landon and Roger E. Chapman (London: Allen & Unwin, 1970), 333–42
- "Beethoven's La Malinconia from the String Quartet, Opus 18, No. 6: Techniques and Structure," The Music Forum, 3 (1973), 269‒80
Sources
- Berry, David Carson, "Schenker's First 'Americanization': George Wedge, the Institute of Musical Art, and the 'Appreciation Racket,'" Festschrift for Allen Forte, Part 3, Gamut 4/1 (2011)
- Lang, Paul Henry, "William J. Mitchell (1906-1971)," Journal of the American Musicological Society 24/ 3 (1971), 503-504
- Nelson, Philip F., "William J. Mitchell (1906-1971)," College Music Symposium 11 (1971)
- New Grove Dictionary of Music (1980) "Mitchell, William John" (David Scott)
Contributors
- Ian Bent and Hedi Siegel