Wilburn "Scott" Goldthwaite (1901-1981) was born in Melrose, Massachusetts on June 18, 1901. The son of James Wilburn and Emma (Chandler) Goldthwaite, Goldthwaite began his music studies at Yale University under David Stanley Smith and Bruce Simonds. While an undergraduate, he served for two years as a correspondent for The Musical Digest. After receiving his bachelor's degree, he taught for one year (1926- 27) at Kent School in Kent, Connecticut. He spent the following year, studying at Harvard under Dr. Archibald T. Davison and Edward Burlingame Hill.
In the fall of 1928, Godthwaite was hired at the University of Missouri as head of the theory department, beginning as Assistant Professor of music, he was quickly promoted to Associate Professor. In 1932 he studied composition with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. Four years later, he began working at the Parisian publishing house, Revue Internationale de Musique. After returning to the States in the summer of 1937, he was hired to conduct the chorus of one of Ford Motor Company's radio shows in New York. In that same year, he married Mildred Susan Bryant. He returned to Yale in 1938, earning his masters degree in music. In 1938, joined the faculty of the University of Chicago as instructor and Curator of the Music Library. He was promoted to Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago in 1943, and served as acting chairman of its Department of Music in 1947.
Between 1942 and 1944, he served as an assistant music critic for the Chicago Daily Tribune, assuming a similar post with the Chicago Sun Times from 1944 to 1946. During his career as a musicologist, conductor, librarian, and critic, he published book reviews, pamphlets, and many concert reviews, serving as the supervising editor for the revision of music articles within the Encyclopaedia Britannica. He was a member of the Music Library Association, serving first as Chairman of Committee on Music Library Training and later as President of the organization.
In 1956, he earned a PhD in musicology at Harvard, studying with Otto Gombosi and writing a dissertation on the 15th-century chanson. From 1955 to 1970, he served as a professor of musicology at the University of Illinois. His musical interests were wide-ranging and represented by articles on the chanson, keyboard ornamentation, Hungarian music, Anton Webern, and historicism. Throughout the 1960s, Goldthwaite directed the graduate program of the School of Music (UIUC) until he retired in 1970. He died on December 29, 1981 in Urbana, Illinois.
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