From the Summer 2005 MT
In memoriam
Stanley Sadie
For four decades, from the mid-1960s to his death in March this year, Stanley Sadie was at the centre of music criticism and scholarship in Great Britain [writes Barry Millington]. His editorship of the New Grove dictionaries (from 1970, emeritus editor from 1999) ensured that his was one of the most influential presences in scholarly writing on music in that period.
Born in London, he was educated at St Paul’s School, London, and at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he studied under Thurston Dart, Charles Cudworth and Patrick Hadley. For a few years (1957–65) he taught at Trinity College of Music, London, but he soon discovered his métier as a writer, contributing concurrently to The Times (1964–81), The Gramophone (from 1965) and The Musical Times, of which he was editor from 1967 to 1987.
Stanley reviewed for The Times in an era when profound musical knowledge and the ability to write with style and discernment were not considered limitations. His prose was crisp and waspish, but balanced and well informed, and he was able to deliver an authoritative opinion on a wide range of musical events. I remember thinking, as I read yet another polished critique of a B Minor Mass we had both attended, that I would never be able to emulate the fusion of musical judgment, literary skills and awareness of performing practice issues that Stanley managed to encapsulate in those 500 words. Perhaps I never have, but he gave me the confidence to believe I could, and passed on many a trick of the trade in the process.
It was Stanley who engineered my début for The Times in 1977, just as he had given me my first journalistic opportunity in MT a year or two earlier, at John Tyrrell’s suggestion. Previous to that he had given me my first real job, as a proof-reader, when I arrived, with a music degree but little besides, on the doorstep of the Grove offices in Holborn one summer’s day in 1974. I mention all this because it was entirely typical of Stanley: indeed, one sometimes wonders whether there are any musicologists or writers active today whose lives have not been touched in some way by his multitudinous and far-reaching endeavours.
The transfer of editorship of MT from Andrew Porter to Stanley Sadie in 1967 was a smooth one. Stanley had joined the journal the previous year as an assistant editor and he was to inherit an impressive stable of contributors. In the editorial of his first issue (July 1967) he characteristically promised that ‘any changes will be more a matter of evolution than revolution’ – characteristic in that the formula embodied a philosophy of life as well.That first editorial also delivered some pungent views on subjects such as music on television (he introduced a regular column on the topic), the proposed site for the Queen Elizabeth Hall and Purcell Room and more besides. (Three years earlier, a heartfelt plea in the same journal was to ring down the decades: ‘Cannot something be done about the Festival Hall’s acoustics during its coming close season?’)
The inherited roster of writers was soon to be fertilised by rising talent, however, and a glance at the pages of MT in the 1970s and 1980s is sufficient to ascertain the calibre of contributors covering a wide range of specialisms.
But Stanley’s most monumental achievement, and the work for which he will be remembered longest, remains New Grove. The two editions he masterminded, the 20-volume edition of 1980 and the 29-volume edition of 2001 (with John Tyrrell as Executive Editor), spawned multiple offspring – indeed, an extended family. The dictionaries of American music, opera, musical instruments, jazz and women composers constituted the major projects, but there was also a series of handbooks, composer biographies and a handful of other spinoffs.
To New Grove Stanley brought a zeal that could more accurately be described as ‘revolutionary’ than ‘evolutionary’. Backed, in the early days at least, by a far-sighted, philanthropic publisher, and harnessing the possibilities afforded by new technology as they became available, he brought musicology into the modern era. Subject areas were progressively expanded to embrace the burgeoning disciplines of ethnomusicology, electronics, performing practice, gender studies and much more besides. Many felt that the publishing decision to include non-classical topics in the 2001 edition was misguided – a search for the entry on Jeremiah Clarke could all too easily be hindered by the surely supererogatory one on Petula Clark – and one senses here a straining at the limits of editorial tolerance.
Stanley was far more at home with his twin passions of Handel and Mozart, which were indulged in countless books, articles, reviews, programme notes and broadcasts (listed in an appendix to the 75th-birthday tribute edited by Dorothea Link and Judith Nagley, Words about Mozart: essays in honour of Stanley Sadie, published earlier this year). With his second wife, Julie Anne, Stanley helped to establish the Handel House Trust, laying the foundations for the commemorative museum on the site of the composer’s residence in Brook Street. The couple developed their interest in composer museums in a series of visits to innumerable establishments across Europe, the fruits of which are published this year in Calling on the composer.
A larger project – a two-volume study of Mozart and his works – remains unfinished. Two major series, of which Stanley was general editor, should be mentioned: the Master Musicians and Man and Music, as well as the considerable repertoire of 18th-century instrumental music which he also edited. In 1982 he was made a CBE, and he was president of the Royal Musical Association (1989–94) and the International Musicological Society (1992–97).
Several generations of scholars have good reason to be grateful to Stanley. He assisted countless people at all stages of their careers, giving them opportunities in the empires over which he ruled, or recommending warmly in neighbouring domains. He had, too, the rare ability to put even the most junior member of staff at ease with a well-chosen compliment. One did not have to agree with every view he held to realise that his vision and wisdom were extraordinary. Whether as employer, colleague, mentor or friend, he was astute, gracious and magnanimous. The full extent of his legacy is incalculable, but those 29 blue-bound volumes on the wall behind me are an enduring reminder of his inspiring presence.
Stanley Sadie: born 30 October 1930; died 21 March 2005.
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