Sydney Beck (2 September 1906 – 7 April 2001) was an American musicologist, music educator, violinist and viol player.
[4] He was an expert in historically informed performance on the viol, and published numerous journal articles related to that topic.
[5] Beck was the long-time head of the Music Division of the Rare Book and Manuscripts Collections at the New York Public Library (NYPL).
One of his violin and viola pupils was violist Samuel Rhodes of the Juilliard String Quartet.
Rhodes named Beck as one of the two most influential people in his formative years as a young musician.