Garrett H. Bowles

Visiting Assistant Professor

E-mail: gbowles1@san.rr.com
Phone: (951) 827-6097
Office: ARTS 142

M.L.S., UC Berkeley (Librarianship)
Ph.D., Stanford University (Musicology)
Emeritus Music Librarian, UC San Diego

Garrett Bowles served as Music Librarian at the University of California, San Diego, from 1979 to 2000. During his tenure, he taught seminars in music bibliography and the history of music printing.  He has been an active advocate of computer applications in music library operations.  He worked on the development of the ANSI X3V1.8M Standard Music Description Language (SMDL).  In 1992, he received the Music Library Association's Eva Judd O'Meara Award, annually awarded for the best review published in Notes for “Music Notation Software for the IBM-PC.”  He edited Deta S. Davis's Computer Applications in Music, Supplement I (1992).  His final technology project at San Diego was the development and installation of a streaming system for music course reserves.

From 1965 to 1979, Dr. Bowles was employed as Head Music Cataloger and Assistant Music Librarian at Stanford University.  While studying for his Ph.D., he developed his interests in computer and technological applications in music.  Those interests were piqued by his association with Stanford's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) and included chairmanship of the Music Library Association/Library of Congress committee to develop the MARC Music Format (the basis of music library computer catalogs) and chairmanship of the Association Audio Archives (a consortium of the six largest sound archives in America, and their development of an innovative computer and microfilm catalog to more than 600,000 recordings).  His dissertation explored the use of a computer in organizing and presenting a thematic catalog of the viola da gamba music of Marin Marais.

Throughout his career, Dr. Bowles has had a continued interest in music of the twentieth century based on his interest in composition (his Festklang for Ernst K. was first performed in 1985 and subsequently published in Perspectives of New Music).  While the Curator of the Ernst Krenek Archive at UC San Diego, he published the book, Ernst Krenek; A Bio-Bibliography (1989), produced and directed the video, Changing; The Music of Ernst Krenek, edited the Ernst Krenek Newsletter, and has written numerous articles on the composer.  He is the currently President of the Ernst Krenek Society.

Dr. Bowles has been professionally active, serving on working committees and elected to the executive boards of the Music Library Association, Association for Recorded Sound Collections, and International Association for Music Libraries.  He has had articles and reviews published in the ARSC Journal, Notes, Opera Quarterly, Fontis Artis Musicae, Österreichische Musikzeitschrift, Choral Journal, and others.  He has also contributed articles to The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2d ed., and Music Printing and Publishing (A Norton/Grove Handbook).  He edited The Collected Writings of Will Ogdon and A Festschrift for Will Ogdon (2003).

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