APEL, WILLI

APEL, WILLI (1893–1988), musicologist. Born in Konitz, Germany, Apel studied mathematics at the universities of Bonn and Munich (1912–14) and at the University of Berlin (1918–22). From 1925 he devoted himself to musicology and received his doctorate in Berlin in 1936 for a dissertation on 15th- and 16th-century tonality. In that year (1936) he immigrated to the United States. He was a lecturer at Harvard University (1938–42) and professor of musicology at the University of Indiana, Bloomington (1950–70). Apel's main field of research was medieval and Renaissance music. His publications include reference works such as the Harvard Dictionary of Music (1944; 196012); The Notation of Polyphonic Music 900–1600 (1942, 19535), which has served since it was first published as an essential tool for young scholars; and Historical Anthology of Music, edited with A.T. Davison, two volumes (1946, 19505). These three contributions were major agents in changing higher music education in the U.S. and abroad. His other works include French Secular Music of the Late Fourteenth Century (1950), Gregorian Chant (1958), Geschichte der Orgel- und Klaviermusik (1967), where Apel reviewed the entire body of keyboard music up to 1700. He was also the general editor of the Corpus of Early Keyboard Music and in 1983 published his last major study, a collection of essays on violin music and composers of 17th-century Italy. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: H. Tischler (ed.), Essays in Musicology: A Birthday Offering for Willi Apel (1968), incl. C.G. Rayner, "Willi Apel: A Complete Bibliography," 185–91. (Israela Stein (2nd ed.)