Nancy B. Reich (1924–2019)

Nancy B. Reich was born in the Bronx, New York. Her parents were Hyman Bassen, a writer and labor activist, and his wife Ida Orland Bassen. After her father's death in 1931, the family moved to Ithaca, N.Y., where Nancy’s mother ran a boardinghouse for Jewish and black students who were not welcome in college dorms. Later, the family moved back to New York City, and Nancy attended the High School of Music and Art, where she played the violin and viola. In 1945, she earned a bachelor’s degree in music at Queens College and married Haskell Aaron Reich, who later became a physicist. She completed a master’s degree at Columbia University’s Teachers College two years later, but was unable to obtain admission to the doctoral program at Columbia because she was a married woman. It was not until 1972, at age 47, that she she obtained a Ph.D. from New York University. She wrote a groundbreaking biography, Clara Schumann: The Artist and the Woman (1985), doing extensive research in what was then behind the Iron Curtain in East Germany. Critics said the book established Clara Schumann as an important figure in music in her own right, independent of her husband Robert Schumann, revising previous scholars' views of her; and helped focus new attention on female composers. Prof. Reich taught at New York University and Queens and Manhattanville Colleges and was a visiting professor at Bard and Williams. Her daughter Susanna Reich is an author of fiction and nonfiction for children and young adults.