The Guido Adler Library in Georgia

The Guido Adler Library in Georgia

The Acquisition of the Guido Adler Library for the University of Georgia

In this article written in the Summer 1957 edition of the Georgia Review, a literary journal started at the University of Georgia in 1947, Hugh Hodgson outlines the process and importance of the acquisition of the Guido Adler library for the University of Georgia. The library contains almost all of the letters and works of Guido Adler, a Viennese music critic and a man widely considered to be the father of musicology. According to Erica Mugglestone in her 1981 commentary in the Yearbook for Traditional Music on Adler’s “The Scope, Method, and Aim of Musicology (1885)”, the framework that Adler developed in his writings is still the framework that musicologists use to define the scope and methodology of the discipline. Adler, along with two other contemporaries, founded the first ever journal of musicology and devoted his life to the scientific study of music until his eventual retirement in the late 1920’s. His library and works were mostly scattered by the Nazis, but most of the works were recollected and given to Adler’s heirs, who then allowed for the sale of the collection to the Music Department. A donor provided the money for the sale, which brought the current extent of the Adler Library to Athens. Getting this library into the hands of eager musical students was a great decision, as UGA music students have since analyzed and researched the library to an extent that allows us a better insight into the life and work of the father of musicology. Although the scholarship over the library has died down in the intervening decades, Hugh Hodgson’s efforts to acquire the Guido Adler library were a monumental boon to a fledgling University of Georgia Music Department.

Works Cited:

Hodgson, Hugh. “The Guido Adler Library.” The Georgia Review, XI, no. 2, 1957, pp. 211–213.


Mugglestone, Erica, and Guido Adler. “Guido Adler's ‘The Scope, Method, and Aim of Musicology’ (1885): An English Translation with an Historico-Analytical Commentary.” Yearbook for Traditional Music, vol. 13, 1981, pp. 1–21. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/768355.

Hugh Hodgson

The Georgia Review, Summer 1957 Edition

The Georgia Review

Summer 1957

Guido Adler's "The Scope, Method, and Aim of Musicology" (1885): An English Translation with an Historico-Analytical Commentary

Article

English

Journal Article

The Guido Adler Library in Georgia

Article