We regret to inform that on 10 February 2019, professor Jerzy Stanisław Gołos, musicologist and organologist, has passed away at the age of 87.
In the years 1951-60 Jerzy Gołos studied Russian and Polish philology at Columbia University in New York and musicology at the New York University with P. Lang and G. Reese. In 1961 he obtained a PhD at the University of Warsaw based on the work "WTM tablature as a monument of organ music", written under the direction of H. Feicht. In 1971 was habilitated at the Institute of the History of Material Culture of the Polish Academy of Sciences. In 1962-64 he taught Russian language and literature at the City University of New York, and in 1973-76 he was the head of the music iconography center and consultant at RILM. He studied liturgical songs of Russian Old Believers. In 1975 he conducted research and field recordings in Alaska.
He cooperated with the Monuments Documentation Center in Warsaw (currently the National Heritage Institute) as a consultant for historic musical instruments, he was also an expert in this area at the Ministry of Culture and Arts. For many years he lectured at the Department of Musicology at the University of Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski in Warsaw (in 1978-99 Catholic Theological Academy) and at the Warsaw Academy of Music (currently the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music), where he was the head of the Department of Theory of Music. In 1993 he obtained the title of professor.
He was an expert in the history of organ and organ music. He published a number of works devoted to this subject, including: Outline of the history of organ building in Poland (1966), Polish organ and organ music (1972), Terminologicaldictionary of monuments: Keyboard instruments (1972, together with Z. Kobus and B. Vogel) , A Guide to Old Music Instruments (1988), The Polish Organ (1992), Warsaw Organ, Vol. 1-3 (2003).
Death of Professor Gołos is yet another sad news for Polish musicology in recent times. May he rest in peace.