Claude Victor Palisca (24 November 1921 – 11 January 2001) was an American musicologist.^[1] An internationally recognized authority onearly music, especiallyopera of theRenaissance andBaroque periods, he was the Henry L. and Lucy G. Moses Professor Emeritus of Music atYale University. Palisca is best known for co-writing (withDonald Jay Grout) the standard textbookA History of Western Music (3rd–6th editions, 1980–2001), as well as for his substantial body of work on the history ofmusic theory in the Renaissance, reflected in his editorship of the Yale Music Theory in Translation series and in the bookHumanism in Italian Renaissance Musical Thought (1985). In particular, he was the leading expert on theFlorentine Camerata. His 1968 bookBaroque Music in thePrentice Hallhistory of music series ran to three editions.

Palisca was born in Fiume, (in what is nowRijeka, Croatia) in 1921. He studied atQueens College, New York, andHarvard, where he achieved a doctorate in 1954. From 1953 to 1959, he taught at theUniversity of Illinois, whence he moved toYale University. From 1969 to 1975 (and again in 1992), he chaired the Faculty of Music at Yale. He lectured throughout the US and Europe and held visiting appointments at theUniversity of Michigan, theUniversity of California, Berkeley, theUniversity of Zagreb and theUniversity of Barcelona. On retirement, he was appointed Henry L. and Lucy G. Moses Professor Emeritus of Music at Yale.^[1][2]

From 1970 to 1972, Palisca was president of theAmerican Musicological Society. In addition to directing the Yale music curriculum, he consulted for the U.S. Office of Education and theNational Endowment for the Humanities.^[1][2]

His musicological writings included numerous publications in the academic musical press and a number of books, some co-authored withDonald Jay Grout and others. He editedThe Norton Anthology of Western Music: Ancient to Baroque.^[1] In 1994,Clarendon Press republished a series of his most-cited papers, stating:

Claude V. Palisca has long been acknowledged as a leading authority on Italian music of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. These nineteen essays, originally published between 1956 and 1989, draw together a body of significant research into Italian music and music theory, and make readily available papers widely scattered and most now out-of-print. They have further been selected because of their relevance to current research, as evidenced by their continued citation in publications and dissertations.^[3]

• Baroque Music, Prentice Hall 1968 (1991 3rd ed.)ISBN 0-13-058496-7
• A History of Western Music, W. W. Norton & Co; 7th rev. ed. (10 August 2005)ISBN 0-393-97991-1
• Studies in the History of Italian Music and Music Theory, Clarendon Press, March 1994,ISBN 978-0-19-816167-7
• Aria Types in the Earliest Operas, Palisca's last completed paper for theJournal of 17th Century Music.
• Humanism in Italian Renaissance Musical Thought, Yale University 1985ISBN 0-300-03302-8
• —— (2001). "Guido of Arezzo [Aretinus]".Grove Music Online. Revised by Dolores Pesce (8th ed.).Oxford University Press.doi:10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.11968.ISBN 978-1-56159-263-0.(subscription required)
• —— (2001). "Johannes Cotto [Johannes Affligemensis]".Grove Music Online (8th ed.).Oxford University Press.doi:10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.14349.ISBN 978-1-56159-263-0.(subscription required)

• Yale Bulletin
• Mathiesen, Thomas J. (May 2001). "Claude V. Palisca (1921–2001)".Early Music.29 (2):328–329.JSTOR 3519172.

• 1921 births
• 2001 deaths
• Italian emigrants to the United States
• Harvard University alumni
• University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign faculty
• University of Michigan faculty
• Yale University faculty
• University of California, Berkeley faculty
• Academic staff of the University of Zagreb
• Academic staff of the University of Barcelona
• 20th-century American musicologists
• Scholars of Baroque music

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