Cuthbert Morton Girdlestone (born Bovey Tracey

Bovey Tracey

Bovey Tracey is a small town in Devon, England, on the edge of Dartmoor, its proximity to which gives rise to the "slogan" used on the town's boundary signs, "The Gateway to the Moor". The locals just call the town "Bovey" ....

, Devon

Devon

Devon is a large county in southwestern England. The county is sometimes referred to as Devonshire, although the term is rarely used inside the county itself as the county has never been officially "shired", it often indicates a traditional or historical context.The county shares borders with...

, 17 September 1895; died December 1975) was a British musicologist

Musicology

Musicology is the scholarly study of music. The word is used in narrow, broad and intermediate senses. In the narrow sense, musicology is confined to the music history of Western culture...

 and literary scholar. He was educated at Cambridge

University of Cambridge

The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...

 and the Sorbonne

Sorbonne

The Sorbonne is an edifice of the Latin Quarter, in Paris, France, which has been the historical house of the former University of Paris...

, and thereafter took up the chair in French in Armstrong College, later to be King's College in Newcastle

Newcastle upon Tyne

Newcastle upon Tyne is a city and metropolitan borough of Tyne and Wear, in North East England. Historically a part of Northumberland, it is situated on the north bank of the River Tyne...

 in 1926, a position he held until 1960. His most famous publications were his much reprinted study of the Mozart Piano Concertos

Mozart piano concertos

The Mozart piano concertos refer to the 27 concertos for piano and orchestra written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. These works, many of which Mozart composed for himself to play in the Vienna concert series of 1784–86, held a special place for him; indeed, Mozart's father apparently interrupted him...

 (1939, published originally in French) and on Jean-Philippe Rameau

Jean-Philippe Rameau

Jean-Philippe Rameau was one of the most important French composers and music theorists of the Baroque era. He replaced Jean-Baptiste Lully as the dominant composer of French opera and is also considered the leading French composer for the harpsichord of his time, alongside François...

 (1957).

Books written

• Girdlestone, Cuthbert. Mozart et ses concertos pour piano. Paris, Fischbacher. 1939.
  • Girdlestone, Cuthbert. Mozart and His Piano Concertos. New York: Dover Publications, 1964. "An unabridged and corrected republication of the second (1958) edition of the work first published in 1948 by Cassell & Company, Ltd., London, under the title Mozart’s Piano Concertos." A translation of Mozart et ses concertos pour piano. ISBN 0-486-21271-8 (pbk.) (3rd edition published London: Cassell, 1978. ISBN 0-304-30043-8.)
• Girdlestone, Cuthbert. Jean-Philippe Rameau, His Life and Work. London: Cassell. 1957. (2nd Edition: Paris: Lettres modernes, 1968, and in English: New York: Dover Publications
  Dover Publications
  Dover Publications is an American book publisher founded in 1941 by Hayward Cirker and his wife, Blanche. It publishes primarily reissues, books no longer published by their original publishers. These are often, but not always, books in the public domain. The original published editions may be...
  
  , 1969. ISBN 0-486-21416-8.)
  • Girdlestone, Cuthbert. Jean-Philippe Rameau: sa vie, son œuvre. Desclée de Brouwer, 1983, ©1962. ISBN 2-220-02439-3.
• Girdlestone, Cuthbert. La tragédie en musique, considéré comme genre littéraire. Droz, Geneva. 1972. OCoLC 772775.