Harold Stone Powers was an American musicologist.

Powers attended Stanford University

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

 and then Syracuse University

Syracuse University

Syracuse University is a private research university located in Syracuse, New York, United States. Its roots can be traced back to Genesee Wesleyan Seminary, founded by the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1832, which also later founded Genesee College...

, where he received a BMus in 1950. He obtained his Ph.D. from Princeton University

Princeton University

Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

 in 1959 after studying music theory

Music theory

Music theory is the study of how music works. It examines the language and notation of music. It seeks to identify patterns and structures in composers' techniques across or within genres, styles, or historical periods...

 under Milton Babbitt

Milton Babbitt

Milton Byron Babbitt was an American composer, music theorist, and teacher. He is particularly noted for his serial and electronic music.-Biography:...

 and Edward T. Cone

Edward T. Cone

Edward Toner Cone was an American composer, music theorist, pianist, and philanthropist.Cone studied composition under Roger Sessions at Princeton University, receiving his bachelor's in 1939...

, and musicology

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...

 under Oliver Strunk

Oliver Strunk

William Oliver Strunk was an American musicologist.Strunk was the son of Professor William Strunk, Jr. . He attended Cornell University from 1917 to 1919 and again in 1927, studying under Otto Kinkeldey...

 and Arthur Mendel

Arthur Mendel

Arthur Mendel was an American musicologist.- Literary works :* music critics on the "Nation" * editor of "The Bach Reader", 1945...

. After teaching at Princeton (1955–1958) and Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

 (1958–1960) he taught at the University of Pennsylvania

University of Pennsylvania

The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...

; from 1973 he was full professor at Princeton.

Powers's dissertation was on raga

Raga

A raga is one of the melodic modes used in Indian classical music.It is a series of five or more musical notes upon which a melody is made...

 music; he studied in India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

 in 1952–1954, 1960–1961 and 1967–1968. He also made contributions in the field of Italian baroque opera. Powers's interest in music theory

Music theory

Music theory is the study of how music works. It examines the language and notation of music. It seeks to identify patterns and structures in composers' techniques across or within genres, styles, or historical periods...

 led him to publish extensively on the concept of mode; his exhaustive study published in the 1980 edition of The New Grove was a landmark work of scholarship on the subject.

Books

• The Background of the South Indian Rāga-System (dissertation, Princeton U., 1959)
• (ed.) Studies in Music History: Essays for Oliver Strunk (Princeton, NJ, 1968)
• William Ashbrook and Harold Powers, "Puccini's Turandot: The End of the Great Tradition" (Princeton, NJ, 1991)