Piero Weiss was an Italian-American pianist

Piano

The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...

 and musicologist. Born in Trieste

Trieste

Trieste is a city and seaport in northeastern Italy. It is situated towards the end of a narrow strip of land lying between the Adriatic Sea and Italy's border with Slovenia, which lies almost immediately south and east of the city...

, his mother was a symphony violinist and the niece of novelist Italo Svevo

Italo Svevo

Aron Ettore Schmitz , better known by the pseudonym Italo Svevo, was an Italian writer and businessman, author of novels, plays, and short stories.- Biography :...

. In 1938, at the age of 10, he fled Fascist Italy

Fascist Italy

"Fascist Italy" refers to Italy under the rule of Benito Mussolini and Italian Fascism. The Fascists led two polities:*The Kingdom of Italy , under the National Fascist Party, and,...

 with his family, ultimately ending up in New York City in 1940. In New York he studied piano with Isabella Vengerova and Rudolf Serkin

Rudolf Serkin

Rudolf Serkin , was a Bohemian-born pianist.-Life and early career:Serkin was born in Eger, Bohemia, Austro-Hungarian Empire to a Russian-Jewish family....

, music theory and composition with Karl Weigl

Karl Weigl

Karl Ignaz Weigl was an Austrian composer. He was born in Vienna, being the son of a bank official who was also a keen amateur musician. Alexander Zemlinsky took him as a private pupil in 1896. Weigl went to school at the Franz-Joseph-Gymnasium and graduated from there in 1899...

, and chamber music with Adolf Busch

Adolf Busch

Adolf Georg Wilhelm Busch was a German-born violinist and composer.Busch was born in Siegen in Westphalia. He studied at the Cologne Conservatory with Willy Hess and Bram Eldering...

. In 1944, at the age of 16, he began his career as a concert pianist. He performed throughout the United States and Europe up into the 1960s, and also performed for radio broadcasts. He recorded works by Debussy. Ravel, Schubert, and Schumann, and was a contemporary of pianists Gary Graffman

Gary Graffman

Gary Graffman is an American classical pianist, teacher of piano and music administrator.Graffman was born in New York City to Russian-Jewish parents. Having started piano at age 3, Graffman entered the Curtis Institute of Music at age 7 in 1936 as a piano student of Isabelle Vengerova...

, Claude Frank

Claude Frank

Claude Frank is a German-born, American Jewish pianist whose career has included appearances with highly reputed orchestras, at major festivals, and in major recital halls around the world...

, Jacob Lateiner

Jacob Lateiner

Jacob Lateiner, was a Cuban-American pianist. He was actually born on March 31, 1928, but his father did not get around to registering his birth until May 31 the same year.He was the brother of violinist Isidor Lateiner....

, Leon Fleisher

Leon Fleisher

Leon Fleisher is an American pianist and conductor.-Early life and studies:Fleisher was born in San Francisco, where he started studying the piano at age four...

 and Seymour Lipkin.

Academia

Although he had a substantial career as a pianist, Weiss is chiefly remembered for his work as a scholar and college professor. A specialist in the history of Italian opera, the last of his four books was dedicated to a detailed history of 18th-century Italian opera and is scheudled for release by the Turin publishing house EDT in 2012. He authored three other books, including a widely used college text book, “Music in the Western World: A History in Documents” (with co-author Richard Taruskin

Richard Taruskin

Richard Taruskin is an American-Russian musicologist, music historian, and critic who has written about the theory of performance, Russian music, fifteenth-century music, twentieth-century music, nationalism, the theory of modernism, and analysis. As a choral conductor he directed the Columbia...

).

Weiss earned a B.A. in Music from Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

 in 1950 and a Ph.D. in musicology from Columbia in 1970. He taught on the music faculty at Columbia from 1964 to 1985. He then joined the faculty of the Peabody Conservatory at Johns Hopkins University

Johns Hopkins University

The Johns Hopkins University, commonly referred to as Johns Hopkins, JHU, or simply Hopkins, is a private research university based in Baltimore, Maryland, United States...

 where he founded the music history department in the Fall of 1985. He remained at Peabody until his death 26 years later. He also concurrently taught piano performance at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia.

Family

He died in Baltimore

Baltimore

Baltimore is the largest independent city in the United States and the largest city and cultural center of the US state of Maryland. The city is located in central Maryland along the tidal portion of the Patapsco River, an arm of the Chesapeake Bay. Baltimore is sometimes referred to as Baltimore...

 in 2011 at the age of 83 due to complications of pneumonia

Pneumonia

Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung—especially affecting the microscopic air sacs —associated with fever, chest symptoms, and a lack of air space on a chest X-ray. Pneumonia is typically caused by an infection but there are a number of other causes...

. Weiss is survived by Carole Severson Weiss (wife), Maria Leandri (daughter), Antonio Weiss (son), Carlo Weiss (brother), and six grandchildren.