Robert Stevenson (musicologist)

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Robert Murrell Stevenson (3 July 1916 in Melrose, New Mexico – 22 December 2012 in Los Angeles) was an American musicologist. He studied at the College of Mines and Metallurgy of the University of Texas at El Paso (BA 1936), the Juilliard School of Music (piano, trombone and composition; graduated 1939), Yale University (MM) and the University of Rochester (PhD in composition 1942); further study took him to Harvard University (STB 1943), Princeton Theological Seminary (ThM 1949) and Oxford University (BLitt 1954). He taught at the University of Texas and at Westminster Choir College in the 1940s. In 1949 he became a faculty member at the University of California at Los Angeles, where he taught until 1987. Stevenson is well known for having studied with Igor Stravinsky when he was young, and for later being a teacher of influential minimalist La Monte Young.

Stevenson was focused on Latin American music, and made it his mission to rediscover the music of New Spain.^[1] He contributed significantly to the historical record of Spanish, Portuguese and American music. He wrote extensively on African-American music and the music of the Protestant church within the Americas. In 1978 he became founder-editor of the Inter-American Music Review; now in its thirteenth volume. His works include nearly 30 books, a vast quantity of journal articles, and a large number of encyclopedia entries. He was coordinator of American entries for the Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart supplement and wrote over 300 articles for the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.