Willi Apel

Who was Willi Apel?

Willi Apel was a German-American musicologist and noted author of a number of books devoted to music.

Apel was born in Konitz, West Prussia. He studied mathematics from 1912 to 1914, and then again after World War I from 1918 to 1922, in various universities in Weimar Germany. Throughout his studies, he had an interest in music and taught piano lessons. He then turned to music full-time, and essentially taught himself about musicology. He received his Ph.D. in 1936 in Berlin and immigrated to the USA the same year. He taught at Harvard from 1938 to 1942, but moved on to spend twenty years at Indiana University beginning in 1950. In 1972 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the university.

Apel's work of the 1940s included books of broad scope, such as the Harvard Dictionary of Music, which he edited, and Historical Anthology of Music. His approach was to give as much attention to Medieval, Renaissance and world music as was given to familiar subjects such as Mozart and Beethoven; this influenced the higher music education in the USA. His book on the notation of early polyphonic music was also written in the 1940s, and still serves as one of the essential works on the subject.