William Oliver Strunk (1901–1980) was an American musicologist who, at the beginning of his career, worked as a librarian in the Music Division of the Library of Congress (1928–37). He became head of the Music Division in 1934. In 1937, he became a faculty member at Princeton University and taught there until 1950. He served as president of the Music Library Association and was a founding member of the American Musicological Society.

August 14, 1935

My dear Strunk:

Mr. Copley has informed me of the date for the broadcast of the “Musical Offering.” I wonder if you could tell me anything about the form in which the work is to be given. Although I have no score here, being about to order one, I remember a fugue written on two staves. Do you intend it to be performed on the harpsichord? What about the canons? For the Trio Sonata I am writing out a new realization for the first two and last movements, which I discover after all not to have been done by Kirnberger, much to my gratification after always having disliked and distrusted what was given in the Peters edition. I hope you can entrust me with the preparation of the parts, especially for the Trio, as I have my own set already brought into what seems to me a far more fitting and trustworthy scheme of phrasing and dynamics than exists in most editions.

What do you think of the possibility of interesting Columbia or Victor in recording this performance? It seems a first-rate opportunity.

Lately I have been talking with several people about beginning a series of re-publications of eighteenth-century musical books and even have a publisher who is much interested in doing a translation of C. P. E. Bach's Versuch. Have you any ideas about compiling a tentative list of people and institutions who would be likely to subscribe?