Brinkmann receives 2001 Ernst von Siemens Music Prize

Harvard musicologist Reinhold Brinkmann has received the 2001 Ernst von Siemens Music Prize, Germany’s most prestigious award in music. The Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts will present the award to Brinkmann at a ceremony in Munich on May 31.

Brinkmann, the James Edward Ditson Professor of Music at Harvard and director of graduate studies in the music department, is a world-renowned authority on the evolution of modern music and on the relationship between literature and music. In announcing the selection of Brinkmann for its prize, the Ernst von Siemens Foundation cited his supreme musicality, intelligence and unrelenting passion for great works of art and their history.

A leading analyst of music who also pioneered efforts to bring scholarly respectability to modern music in the 1960s, Brinkmann also is known for his interpretations of modern art, his work with music in exile and for probing the connections between German romanticism and musical modernism.

His scholarly interests span the history of music from the Middle Ages to the present, and he is the author of numerous books and articles on composers ranging from Beethoven, Brahms, and Schubert to Schoenberg and Varese. He joined Harvard’s music faculty in 1985.

The first Ernst von Siemens Music Prize was awarded in 1973, to composer Benjamin Britten. Other past recipients include Mstislav Rostropovich, Herbert von Karajan, Elliot Carter, Yehudi Menuin, Leonard Bernstein, Andres Segovia and Claudio Abbado.