Oscar G T Sonneck

Oscar George Theodore Sonneck (Lafayette, now part of Jersey City, New Jersey, 1873 – New York, 1928) was one of the founding figures of American musicology. His training, largely German, shaped a career that combined historical research, librarianship and music publishing in the United States in the early twentieth century.

As a child he was sent to Germany, where he studied piano with James Kwast between 1883 and 1893. He then took courses at the universities of Heidelberg and Munich, where he developed an interest in philosophy and, above all, in musicology. He completed his preparation in composition, orchestration and conducting with teachers including Melchior Ernst Sachs, Iwan Knorr and Carl Schröder. He returned to his country in 1899 and for three years travelled the Atlantic seaboard, from New England to South Carolina, gathering references on American musical life before 1800, chiefly in newspapers.

In 1902 the librarian Herbert Putnam placed him in charge of the newly created music division at the Library of Congress in Washington. There he organised a collection that became one of the most complete in the world in scores, manuscripts and books on music, and assembled an exceptional archive of opera scores and librettos. In 1908 he acquired the collection of Albert Schatz, comprising some 12,500 librettos and additional documentation.

In 1917 he left the library, disillusioned by the scant recognition of his American studies and by pressure from the government, which questioned his German training and his opposition to the war. He then took over the editorial department of G. Schirmer, where he promoted the publication of contemporary American composers such as Ernest Bloch, John Alden Carpenter, Charles Tomlinson Griffes and Charles Martin Loeffler. He also edited the journal The Musical Quarterly from its first issue in 1915.

His fundamental work, A Bibliography of Early Secular American Music, was published in 1905 in an abridged version and at his own expense, while Early Concert-Life in America (1731–1800) appeared in 1907 with Breitkopf & Härtel. During his lifetime his work was little valued, but his books established a model of objective, documentary historiography which, apparently, was not matched again until after the Second World War. In 1975 the Sonneck Society was founded in his honour; it is today the Society for American Music.

His musical classification system of 1904, which underpinned the organisation of the Library of Congress collections, and his studies of opera librettos before 1800 remain works of reference. Besides these studies, he wrote Beethoven Letters in America and numerous articles, as well as a few compositions, chiefly songs.