Edward Elias Lowinsky was an American musicologist born in Stuttgart

Stuttgart

Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....

, Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

,to Leopold L. and Clara Rosenfeld.

Lowinsky studied piano, composition, and conducting in Stuttgart at the Hochschule für Musik, 1923-28. In 1933, he obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Heidelberg, studying under Heinrich Besseler

Heinrich Besseler

Heinrich Besseler was a German musicologist born in Hörde, Germany. He is particularly known for his colossal work, Die Musik des Mittelalters und der Renaissance , which provided a new perspective on historical musicology by taking a history-of-ideas approach to music history.-Life:Besseler...

. His dissertation was on Orlando di Lasso. He lived in Holland from 1933 to 1939, and in 1940 emigrated to the United States. In 1947 he became a United States citizen. He taught at Black Mountain College

Black Mountain College

Black Mountain College, a school founded in 1933 in Black Mountain, North Carolina, was a new kind of college in the United States in which the study of art was seen to be central to a liberal arts education, and in which John Dewey's principles of education played a major role...

 (1942-47), Queens College, New York (1947-56), and the University of California, Berkeley

University of California, Berkeley

The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...

 (1956-61). From 1961 he taught at the University of Chicago

University of Chicago

The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...

. He was the editor of the Monuments of Renaissance Music series from 1964 to 1977, and chaired the 1971 conference on Josquin des Prez

Josquin Des Prez

Josquin des Prez [Josquin Lebloitte dit Desprez] , often referred to simply as Josquin, was a Franco-Flemish composer of the Renaissance...

.

Lowinsky was one of the most prominent and influential musicologists in post-World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 America. His 1946 work on the "secret chromatic art" of Renaissance motets was hotly debated in its time, spurring considerable research into the issues of musica ficta

Musica ficta

Musica ficta was a term used in European music theory from the late 12th century to about 1600 to describe any pitches, whether notated or to be added by performers in accordance with their training, that lie outside the system of musica recta or musica vera as defined by the hexachord system of...

and performance practice of early music

Early music

Early music is generally understood as comprising all music from the earliest times up to the Renaissance. However, today this term has come to include "any music for which a historically appropriate style of performance must be reconstructed on the basis of surviving scores, treatises,...

. He did significant work preparing editions of Renaissance composers and was a major figure in redefining standards for critical editions of musical manuscripts. Most of his published articles were collected into the massive two-volume Music in the Culture of the Renaissance (1989), edited by his wife, musicologist Bonnie J. Blackburn

Bonnie J. Blackburn

Bonnie J. Blackburn is an American musicologist.She graduated from the University of Chicago with a PhD. She studied with Edward Lowinsky and Howard Mayer Brown. She was Lecturer at Northwestern University, and visiting faculty member at the University of Chicago in 1986, and University at...

.

Books

• Das Antwerpener Motettenbuch Orlando di Lasso’s und seine Beziehungen zum Motettenschaffen der niederländischen Zeitgenossen (dissertation, U. of Heidelberg, 1933)
• Secret Chromatic Art in the Netherlands Motet (New York, 1946)
• Tonality and Atonality in Sixteenth-Century Music (Berkeley, 1961)
• (ed. with B.J. Blackburn) Josquin des Prez: New York 1971 (proceedings of an international symposium)
• Cipriano de Rore's Venus Motet: its Poetic and Pictorial Sources (Provo, UT, 1986)
• Music in the Culture of the Renaissance and other Essays, ed. Bonnie J. Blackburn (Chicago, 1989)
• (ed. with Bonnie J. Blackburn and Clement A. Miller) A Correspondence of Renaissance Musicians (Oxford, 1990)