As a scholarly discipline and doctoral-level univ. course, musicology (the academic study of music in its historical and anthropological contexts) is about a century old. This is the first full-scale portrait of one of musicology's most distinguished practitioners. Nino Pirrotta (1908-98) was educated in Palermo and Florence, but was not able to study music history systematically, so he created his own distinctive vision of the discipline. After appointments at the conservatories of Palermo and Rome, Pirrotta was named head of the music library and Prof. of Music at Harvard (1956-71) and thereafter Prof. of Music History at the Univ. of Rome (1972-78). Cummings analyzes and interprets Pirrotta's writings and identifies the features that characterize the celebrated humanist. Illus.