Gustave Reese

Reese was born in New York City. He was an avid scholar and had interests in many areas outside music, including art, architecture, and literature. He is also remarkable in that he lacked formal musicological training. He studied law at New York University, graduating in 1921. Though he was admitted to the New York State Bar, he opted to re-enroll and pursue a Bachelor of Music from NYU, which he received in 1930. In 1927, however, he was already teaching classes at the university in medieval and Renaissance music. He continued teaching there intermittently until 1974, and he became Professor Emeritus in 1973. He also served as a visiting professor at a number of universities, including Harvard, Duke, UCLA, USC, Michigan, Oxford and the Juilliard School of Music. He was a founder-member of the American Musicological Society (AMS) from 1934, serving as its first secretary (1934–1946). He became vice-president in 1946 and president of the organization in 1950. He has also held positions in the International Musicological Society(IMS), the Renaissance Society of America, and the Plainsong and Medieval Music Society.

Also active in the music publishing industry, he headed the publication department of G. Schirmer (1940–1945) and was also director of publication at Carl Fischer (1945–1955). Furthermore, he was editor of The Musical Quarterly from 1944 to 1945.

Gustave Reese had a profound impact on many generations of music students through his passionate and insightful teaching. He has left a valuable legacy in Music in the Middle Ages and Music in the Renaissance. These two pillars have incited a revival of interest and scholarship in the areas of early music. He is often perceived to have 'raised the bar' of musicological scholarship with his thorough research, intellectual rigour and comprehensive bibliographies. He commissioned other people to contribute specialist sections to these books, such as Igor Buketoff's piece on Russian chant in Music in the Middle Ages.[1]

Reese married Fine Arts administrator and cookbook author and editor Carol Truax in 1974. He died, aged 77, in Berkeley, California.

• Music in the Middle Ages: With an introduction on the music of ancient times. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1940. ISBN 0-393-09750-1
• Music in the Renaissance. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1954. ISBN 0-393-09530-4
• Essays in musicology in honor of Dragan Plamenac on his 70th birthday. Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, c1969. ISBN 0-8229-1098-5
• Fourscore Classics of Music Literature: A Guide to Selected Original Sources on Theory and Other Writings on Music Not Available in English. New York, Da Capo Press, 1970. ISBN 0-306-71620-8
• A compendium of musical practice. New York, Dover Publications, 1973. ISBN 0-486-20912-1
• Aspects of Medieval and Renaissance Music. New York, Pendragon Press, 1978 (c1966). ISBN 0-918728-07-X
• The New Grove High Renaissance Masters: Josquin, Palestrina, Lassus, Byrd, Victoria. London, Macmillan, 1984. ISBN 0-333-38237-4; New York, W.W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1984. ISBN 0-393-01689-7

• The Gustave Reese Papers in the Music Division of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.