In Memoriam

I should have written something about this when it happened but did not. Musicology has recently lost two of its eminent colleagues, whom I feel I should mention. First, in Great Britain, Stanley Sadie has died. The New York Times ran an obituary by Allan Kozinn, from which Terry Teachout at About Last Night beat me in quoting the most moving part: the Chilingirian String Quartet (reviewed at a Washington performance here) went to Prof. Sadie's home after he had struggled to attend half of their concert. On his last night on earth, in his bedroom, they played the slow movement from the op. 135 quartet of Beethoven. That's a great tribute for this giant among scholars, the architect and editor of the greatest music reference work ever conceived and completed in English, the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. There are several more tributes to Prof. Sadie from Google News.

Here in Washington, Doris Evans McGinty, professor of musicology at Howard University, died on April 5. She was that rare creature, a native Washingtonian, educated locally at Dunbar Senior High School and then at Howard. She went on to Radcliffe, after working in the music department at the Library of Congress, and completed a master's degree in one year. She taught at Howard and received a Fulbright to study in England, and she received a doctorate in musicology at Oxford in two years, one of the first American women to do so and all the more remarkable for the time because she was an African American. Her specialities were the history of black musicians in Washington and the black musical comedy in the 20th century. For those in this area, you probably know one of her children, the broadcaster Derek McGinty.