Coopersmith, Jacob Maurice

Jacob Maurice Coopersmith (20 November 1903 - 12 May 1968) was a musicologist, Handel scholar, performer, conductor, teacher, and music librarian. He was educated at New York University, Columbia, and Harvard, where he completed his dissertation in 1932, a twelve volume thematic catalogue of Handel's works, "An Investigation of George Friedrich Händel's Orchestral Style." Coopersmith published many articles on Handel and other musical topics and, in 1947, a critical edition of Handel's Messiah, which incorporated all known variants of text and music. He was a member of the American Musicological Society (AMS), for which he served as Treasurer (1950-1953), Vice-President (1954-1955), and at various times was a Member-at-Large and served on the Editorial Board of the Journal of the AMS. Coopersmith held the post of Senior Music Cataloguer at the Library of Congress from 1949 until his death.

From the guide to the Jacob M. Coopersmith Collection, 1709-1967, 1930-1967, (Special Collections in Performing Arts)