Sylvan Suskin Papers, 1984-2000, n.d. | Oberlin College Archives

Sylvan Suskin was born on April 11, 1936 in Antwerp, Belgium, where his father was in the diamond trade.  With the rise of Adolph Hitler, the family emigrated to Cuba, and then to New York City in 1946.  In 1954 Suskin became a U.S. citizen, and entered City College of New York, receiving a B.A. in music in 1959.  While at C.C.N.Y. he continued studying piano, began learning the oboe with Robert Bloom, founded a music club, was Music Director of the Gilbert and Sullivan Society, and received the music award at graduation.

Suskin then attended Yale University on scholarship for an M.A., specializing in music history, in 1961.  He returned to New York as a doctoral candidate in musicology at New York University.  Concurrently he was a teaching assistant and lecturer at C.C.N.Y. where he taught courses in music appreciation, theory and ear training, and was assistant conductor of the orchestra and chorus.  In 1963 he taught a graduate course in music history at the Yale School of Music, and the following year returned to Yale Graduate School to complete the course work and comprehensive exams for the Ph.D. in musicology.

In 1965-66 Suskin was the recipient of a Fulbright grant to pursue research in France for his dissertation on Simon Catel and the Paris Opera, and the following year he was awarded a Martha Baird Rockefeller Grant in Music to continue his research.  In 1967-68 Suskin was a full-time instructor at Yale teaching both undergraduate and graduate courses.  In the fall of 1968 he was hired as an instructor in the History of Music Department at Oberlin College.  He received his Ph.D. in musicology from Yale in 1972.

At Oberlin, Suskin assumed strong leadership roles within the Conservatory, including a long tenure as department chairman, frequent elections to the Conservatory Faculty Council, and service as Associate Dean from 1971-74.  Suskin was appointed to Research Status in 1974-75, and with a grant-in-aid from Oberlin, he went to Paris to examine Mozart’s “Les Mysteres d’Isis,” and to do research on the topic, “Musical Plagiarism on the Grand Scale: Catel and the Ballet d’Action.”  He is best remembered for his impassioned teaching, his unparalleled love of opera, and the establishment and design of the legendary Music History 101 course, a course that went far beyond its introductory nature to become a definitive Oberlin experience for generations of students.

In 1980 Suskin was promoted to full professor, and in 1986 he was awarded the Inda Howland and Frederick Artz Prize for Excellence in Teaching.  He retired in 2001.

Suskin was married to the former Malou Pain of France in 1967.  They had two children, Karine and Marc.

Sylvan Suskin died of pancreatic cancer in New York City on October 16, 2008.  A memorial concert was held at Merkin Concert Hall in New York with a eulogy by the conductor, composer and pianist Adam Glaser, a former visiting student at Oberlin.  A performance of Mozart’s “Ave Verum Corpus” followed the eulogy.

Sources Consulted

Sylvan Suskin faculty file, RG 28/3.

“Remembering Sylvan Suskin (Memorial Concert Eulogy, 2008),” Adam Glaser web site at http://www.adamglaser.com/html/notepad.php?pad=5, accessed 20 June 2014.