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Theodore Cyrus Karp

American musicologist (1926–2015)

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 11, 2026
Entity authorityQ7781747
Source-derived summary

Theodore Cyrus Karp (17 July 1926 – 5 November 2015) was an American musicologist. His principal area of study was Secular music, mainly mediaeval monophony, especially the music of the trouvères. He was a major contributor in this area to the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.

Biography

Born in New York, New York, he attended Queens College of the City University of New York, where he received his B.A. in 1947. He later attended the Juilliard School of Music and, from 1949 to 1950, the Catholic University of Leuven. He returned to New York University, where he studied under Curt Sachs and Gustave Reese. He received his PhD from New York University in 1960. In 1963 he was taken on as a faculty member by the University of California, Davis and in 1971 became a music professor. He moved to Northwestern University in 1973, where he was dean of the department until 1988 and a professor until his retirement in 1996.

Besides trouvère monophony, Karp wrote articles on the polyphony of the schools of Saint Martial, Santiago de Compostela, and Notre Dame.

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The public source identifies “Theodore Cyrus Karp” as american musicologist (1926–2015). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Theodore, Cyrus and Karp.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1926, 2015, 1947, 1949—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1926-07-17. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Theodore, Cyrus and Karp providing the first useful test.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7781747. VIAF identifies the subject as 91929916. The Library of Congress control number is n86844756. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1926, 2015, 1947 and 1949.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Theodore Cyrus Karp” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.