Erich Katz

Erich Katz (Posen, now Poznań, 1900 – Santa Barbara, California, 1973) was a German composer and music educator who ended his days as an American citizen. He combined teaching, choral conducting and editorial work, with a focus on early music and on the music of his own time.

He trained in Berlin, at the Hochschule für Musik, and in Freiburg im Breisgau, where he took his doctorate in musicology between 1922 and 1926. In 1928 he founded the Freiburg Courses in Music Theory there, which later gave way to the Freiburg Music Seminar, and he co-directed the institution. He also worked as a choral conductor, organist and music critic, and edited Das neue Chorbuch (Mainz, 1931).

In 1939 he took refuge in England, where he taught at Bunce Court School. From 1943 he lived in the United States, where he headed the composition department at the New York College of Music, later absorbed into New York University, and at the New School for Social Research. He presided over the American Recorder Society, which he helped reorganise in 1947, and directed the Musicians' Workshop.

Influenced by the Gebrauchsmusik movement, he wrote for recorder, other instruments and voices, and produced numerous transcriptions of early music. After retiring to California in 1959, he taught at Santa Barbara City College and directed a Collegium Musicum. His legacy rests above all on his teaching and on the promotion of early music in North America.