Reinhold Brinkmann
Reinhold Brinkmann, a distinguished scholar whose writings on music of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries made an indelible mark on musicology in Germany and the United States, taught in the Department of Music at Harvard University from 1985 until his retirement in 2003, serving, after 1990, as James Edward Ditson Professor of Music and, from 1991-1994, as department Chair. His commitment to teaching and high standards for performance from students was clear in the way he ran his Core course, “The Symphonic Century.” He told students that he assumed they could read music and had considerable experience with the repertory already. But just in case there were students who felt that a little brushing up might help, he came an hour early to every class to give a sort of shadow course to anyone wise enough to realize what a gift they were being given. In his Core course on fin-de-siècle...