SACHS, CURT

SACHS, CURT (1881–1959), German musicologist. Born in Berlin, Sachs became director of the Berlin state collection of instruments in 1919. The same year he began to lecture at the University of Berlin, and from 1933 to 1937 was adviser to the museum of musical instruments at the Musée de Trocadéro in Paris. He supervised the production of two series of historical recordings, 2,000 Jahre Musik (Berlin) and L'Anthologie Sonore (Paris). In 1937 he emigrated to the U.S., where he lectured at New York University until 1957 and at Columbia from 1953. The wide scope of his research included an inquiry into the creative origins and evolution of musical instruments which led him, with E.M. von Hornbostel, to compose a classification system which bears their names. Sachs was a pioneer in the comparative study of musical instruments and embodied his researches on this subject in his History of Musical Instruments (1940). He published Eine Weltgeschichte des Tanzes (1933; A World History of the Dance, 1937, 19632); The Rise of Music in the Ancient World – East and West (1943); and Rhythm and Tempo (1953), on the relationship of rhythmic expression and musical styles. In The Commonwealth of Art (1946) Sachs gave expression to his personal philosophy of the unity of the arts. His other works include Our Musical Heritage (1948, 19552), a short history of music; and The Wellsprings of Music (1962, ed. posthumously by Jaap Kunst). -BIBLIOGRAPHY: G. Reese and R. Brandel (eds.), The Commonwealth of Music: in Honor of Curt Sachs (1965), 1–25; E. Hertzmann, in: Musical Quarterly, 27 (1941), 263–9, 275–7; K. Hahn, in: Acta Musicologica, 29 (1957), 94–106, a bibliography of Sachs's writings; E. Gerson-Kiwi, in: Taẓlil, no. 5 (1965), 96–98 (Heb.), incl. bibl. (Edith Gerson-Kiwi)