Austin Clarkson

Clarkson, Austin

(George) Austin (Elliott) Clarkson. Musicologist, administrator, b London 9 Aug 1932, naturalized Canadian 1940; BA science (Toronto) 1953, MA (ESM Rochester) 1955, PH D (Columbia) 1970. While studying science at the University of Toronto, Clarkson had private lessons from Oskar Morawetz and Richard Johnston (harmony and composition) and from Greta Kraus and Alberto Guerrero (piano). Other teachers were Louis Mennini at the ESM, Paul Henry Lang and Erich Hertzmann at Columbia U (Clarkson's doctoral thesis was 'On the nature of the medieval song'), and Stefan Wolpe privately in New York. Clarkson taught at the University of Saskatchewan 1955-8, Columbia U 1964-7, and Yale U 1967-72, and in 1972 he joined the faculty of York University, where he was chairman of the Music Dept until 1975 and continued to teach in 1991. Founding editor of and contributor 1965-7 to Columbia University's Current Musicology, he also has contributed articles and reviews to such publications as American Music, the Journal of Music Theory, Musical Quarterly, Musicanada, Music Magazine, Notes, Quadrant, Sonus, The Structurist, and the Yale Journal of Music Theory, and has written biographies of several US composers for The New Grove Dictionary of Music and The New Grove Dictionary of American Music. He was one of the editors of Hans Tischler's A Complete Edition of the Earliest Motets ca. 1190-1297 for Yale U Press. Appointed coordinating editor for the Stefan Wolpe Society in 1981, Clarkson has produced critical editions of Wolpe's works published by Peer-Southern (New York) and Peer Musikverlag (Hamburg). He has contributed essays to Music and Civilization (New York 1984), Ethnomusicology in Canada, CanMus Documents 5 (Toronto, 1990) and Music Theory and the Exploration of the Past (Chicago 1991). He is co-author with Reginald Godden of Reginald Godden Plays (Toronto 1990). In 1991, Clarkson was continuing research on aesthetic cognition in the tertiary sign process, and the construction of gender in the musical dramaturgy of opera.