Music Dept. Snags German Scholar

Harvard has lured a prominent music historian from a German conservatory in a move professors predicted would soften an internal rift between composers and musicologists in the Music Department.

Speaking yesterday from Berlin. West Germany, Reinhold Brinkmann said that he would accept Harvard's recent offer of a tenured position. The department extended the offer in a decision of unusual unanimity, professors have said.

Brinkmann, a specialist in 19th and 20th century music history, cited the atmosphere at Harvard and the prominence of the professors in the department as the two main reasons for his decision to leave Germany.

"It will be an exciting experience to work with them together," he said, referring to department members. He added that he accepted Harvard's offer despite an unusual counter offer from the conservatory where he currently teaches. He refused to detail that offer.

Disputes

Brinkmann's appointment comes after long-simmering disagreements between members of the two branches of the department, which offer separate degrees and whose curricula rarely overlap. Faculty members have been described as often at odds over the department's goals, and the central administration has played an unusually strong role in recent years in tenure matters.

But professors said yesterday that Brinkmann's outstanding qualifications made him acceptable to both divisions of the department.

"The appointment will create a bridge between the two areas of the department," said David G. Hughes, Mason Professor of Music.

Department chairman Christoph J. Wolff asserted that the appointment will make Harvard "second to no other department in music history.

Wolff said that the department was not planning to make any more appointments over the course of the year, but that it could use some "fresh blood" in music theory. The last tenured appointment in the department was to Donald Martino, a composer from Brandeis University who came to Harvard this year.

The 49-year-old Brinkmann was a visiting professor at Harvard last year. Besides doing work in modern music, Brinkmann is a specialist in polyphonic music of the Middle Ages.

Brinkmann will join the faculty next spring after completing unfinished business in Germany. He said he plans to teach an undergraduate course in 19th century symphony and a graduate seminar in opera.