Ebook: Selected Musical Terms of Non-Western Cultures: A Notebook-Glossary

This volume represents the last completed research of the musicologist, composer, and conductor Walter Kaufmann, who spent the last 27 years of his distinguished, multi-faceted, and world-circling career on the musicology faculty of the School of Music of Indiana University, a colleague and teacher beloved by all who had the privilege of working with him.
Walter Kaufmann was born on 1 April 1907 in Karlsbad, Bohemia (now Czechoslovakia). After attending public schools there, he enrolled at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Berlin and later at the German University in Prague. His teachers included Franz Schreker in composition, and Curt Sachs, Georg Schünemann, and Paul Nettl in musicology. He wrote his doctoral dissertation, a study of the symphonies of Gustav Mahler, in 1933. While still a student, Kaufmann was appointed conductor at the Stadttheater in Karlsbad, beginning a career that he pursued world-wide.
Rather than defend his thesis before a faculty increasingly influenced by Nazism, Kaufmann chose to leave his native country in 1934. Settling in Bombay, he became Director of European Music for All-India Radio and dove eagerly into the study of the musics and cultures of his new home. His interest took many forms. He composed scores incorporating Indian musical material, wrote music for Indian films, became familiar with many Indian musical traditions, and began the career for which he is most famous, that of scholarship in Asian art-musics. His research first resulted in a 1944 study entitled The Art-Music of Hindusthan, which, though unpublished, is held in manuscript at the New York Public Library. This initial study was to be followed by many publications that earned him world-wide recognition. His interests were not limited to India, but extended to Tibet, Nepal, China, and Indo-China, and developed a breadth and depth that flabbergasted experts of both East and West.
Even more significant than his encyclopedic knowledge of many diverse musics was his deep conviction that the arts were meant to serve life, rather than the other way around. An important part of his daily schedule was spent not in his study, the library, or the archives, but in administrative offices engaged in animated and extended conversation with his many close friends on the secretarial and clerical staff of the University. He knew that good music sustained life, but do did good food, good drink, and good friends.
Walter Kaufmann completed this dictionary and placed it in the hands of the publisher before his death in the fall of 1984.