Nancy Bassen Reich (July 3, 1924 in New York City - January 31, 2019 in Ossining, NY) was an American musicologist, most renowned for her 1985 biography of Clara Schumann.
While at Manhattanville, she discovered the first four pages of a Franz Liszt composition (Introduction and Variations on a March from Rossini's Siege of Corinth) previously thought lost, and subsequently researched its provenance.
Joan Tower, who joined the faculty of Bard College in 1972, credits Reich's course on the history of women in music with changing her life.
This book established Clara as an important musical figure independent of her husband, the composer Robert Schumann.
[12] The success of the book, which was translated into several languages, is credited with significantly increasing and re-evaluating female subjects in musicology.