Kenneth Levy

Kenneth Jay Levy was born on February 26, 1927, in New York, New York.{{cite encyclopedia |last=Morgan |first=Paula |year=2001 |encyclopedia=Grove Music Online |title=Levy, Kenneth |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=Oxford |doi=10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.16525 |isbn=978-1-56159-263-0 |url-access=subscription |url=https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000016525 }} {{Grove Music subscription}} After service in World War II, Levy attended Queens College, City University of New York, and received a Bachelor of Arts in 1947, having studied music history under Curt Sachs and music theory under the composer Karol Rathaus.{{cite web |title=Kenneth Levy Fund Supporting Publications on Medieval Music |publisher=American Institute of Musicology |url=https://www.amsmusicology.org/page/kenneth_levy |access-date=September 3, 2022 }} He received both a Master of Fine Arts and PhD at Princeton University, studying under Oliver Strunk and Erich Hertzmann. After a brief stint teaching at Princeton from 1952 to 1954, Levy taught at Brandeis University for over a decade. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1954.{{cite web |title=Kenneth Jay Levy |publisher=Guggenheim Fellowship |url=https://www.gf.org/fellows/kenneth-jay-levy/ |access-date=December 11, 2024 }} In 1966 he returned to Princeton, teaching there until his retirement in 1995. Levy died on August 15, 2013, in Skillman, New Jersey, US. Following his death, the American Institute of Musicology set up the 'Kenneth Levy Fund' to fund studies relating to medieval music.

Levy specialized in a variety of topics concerning Medieval, Renaissance and Byzantine music. In particular, an obituary from Princeton described him as "among the world’s authorities on early Christian and Byzantine music". In Grove Music Online, Paula Higgins notes that he "investigated Byzantine and Western chant, including the Old Roman, Ambrosian, Beneventan and Ravennate repertories, and by careful comparison he has been able to draw tentative conclusions regarding the relationships of certain Western chants to Byzantine models and between modal patterns and performing practices common to East and West." He also wrote on the chanson in the 16th century.

He was the dedicatee of a festschrift in 2001, The Study of Medieval Chant: Paths and Bridges, East and West.{{cite book |editor-last=Jeffery |editor-first=Peter |editor-link=Peter Jeffery |year= |title=The Study of Medieval Chant: Paths and Bridges, East and West : in Honor of Kenneth Levy |publisher=Boydell Press |location=Woodbridge |isbn=978-0-85115-800-6 }}

;Books

• {{cite book |last=Levy |first=Kenneth |year=1983 |title=Music: a Listener's Introduction |publisher=Harper & Row |location=New York |ref=no }}
• {{cite book |last=Levy |first=Kenneth |year=1998 |title=Gregorian Chant and the Carolingians |publisher=Princeton University Press |location=Princeton |author-mask=2 |ref=no }}

;Articles

• {{cite encyclopedia |last=Levy |first=Kenneth |author-link=Kenneth Levy |others=Revised by Christian Troelsgård |editor-first1=Christian |editor-last1=Troelsgård |year=2016 |orig-year=2001 |encyclopedia=Grove Music Online |title=Byzantine Chant |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=Oxford |doi=10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.04494 |isbn=978-1-56159-263-0 |url-access=subscription |url=https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000004494 |ref=no }} {{Grove Music subscription}}

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Category:1927 births

Category:2013 deaths

Category:20th-century American musicologists

Category:21st-century American musicologists