Gloria Rose

Gloria Donington (née Rose) (b.1933-d.1974, aged 40) was an American musicologist of the early modern Italian cantata (primarily 17th century). Biography Rose attended Hunter College in New York, graduating magna cum laude in 1953. She was nominated by her classmates for a citation of achievement as an outstanding graduate. Rose was also successful in attaining a number of awards while a university student, including the Italian Government Scholarship, a scholarship from the AAUW (American Association of University Women), a Fulbright scholarship, the Donald Tovey Memorial Prize from the University of Oxford for her potential in musicology, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), and Howard Foundation Fellowship. It was during her studies at Yale when Rose also worked as research assistant to musicologist Leo Schrade, as well as music librarian at Wellesley College from 1958 to 1960. They moved together to New York in 1972, shortly before her death, after Rose and Donington both attained teaching positions at SUNY (now the University of Buffalo), Rose holding a visiting lectureship.

Rose died suddenly in 1974 at 40 years old in Buffalo, New York.

Music career Rose specialised in the chamber cantatas of Giacomo Carissimi and is still considered a “leading scholar on the cantata form”. She also wrote on Bach, Purcell, thorough-bass and the book trade. Rose married Robert Donington, a British musicologist of early music and gambist, in 1963.

Published works The Cantatas of Carissimi (diss., Yale U., 1960) ‘The Cantatas of Giacomo Carissimi’, MQ, 48 (1962), 204–15 ‘Agazarri and the Improvising Orchestra’, JAMS, 18 (1965), 382–93 ‘Pietro Reggio, a Wandering Musician’, ML, 46 (1965), 207–16 Giacomo Carissimi (1605–1674), WECIS, 5 (1966) ‘Purcell, Michelangelo Rossi and J.S. Bach: Problems of Authorship’, AcM, 40 (1968), 203–19 ‘Two Operas by Scarlatti Recovered’, MQ, 68 (1972), 420–35 ‘Cantata, La’, RicordiE ‘The Italian Cantata of the Baroque Period’, Gattungen der Musik in Einzeldarstellungen: Gedenkschrift Leo Schrade, ed. W. Arlt and others (Berne, 1973), 655–77