Martin Bernstein

Martin Bernstein (New York, 1904 – 1999) was an American writer on music and music educator whose reputation rests above all on university teaching. He was educated at New York University, graduating in science in 1925 and in music in 1927 with Stoessel as his teacher, and he began teaching there in 1926.

During the Second World War he worked as an intelligence officer. He was appointed professor in 1947 and became chair of the music department in 1955. After retiring in 1972, he was visiting professor at Harvard in 1986, and throughout his career he gave lectures as a guest at numerous American universities, among them Yale, Rutgers and Indiana. As a performer he played double bass in the New York Symphony Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic. He also founded and conducted the Washington Square Chorus and Orchestra, which introduced New York audiences to rarely performed works by Purcell, Bach and Handel.

His legacy lies in teaching. He led graduate seminars on Baroque performance practice, Bach and Wagner, and for more than thirty years taught the survey course in Western music. He wrote textbooks such as Score Reading and Introduction to Music, and assembled an archive of musical iconography of more than 5,000 slides. In 1977 a collection of essays was published in his honour.