STANLEY Sadie, the great musicologist, editor, critic and broadcaster, who lived in Hampstead for more than 18 years, died last week at his home in Cossington, Somerset. He was 74.
Mr Sadie, a man of incomparable learning and scholarship, made a major impact on the world of music in the second half of the 20th century and was honoured internationally, in particular for his passion and love of the works of Handel and Mozart.
His remarkable legacy is his editorship of the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians in 1979.
The fifth edition of Grove, in 1954, ran to nine volumes. With a small army of helpers to support him, Sadie’s amazing intellect, erudition, wit and wide interests produced a 20-volume dictionary, followed by a 29-volume edition in 2001.
He came to live in Lyndhurst Road, Hampstead, in 1982 with his American-born musician wife Julie Anne when he was still editor of the Musical Times, a post he held for 20 years.
While there, he produced other books and guides that expand everyone’s knowledge and appreciation of music.
They included Grove-related projects such as dictionaries of musical instruments, of American music, women composers, jazz and, with Arthur Jacobs, the vital New Grove Dictionary of Opera, which was later enlarged into the Pan Book of Opera.
Though music encompassed his life, he played an influential role in Thurlow Road Neighbourhood Association during his Hampstead years, and with his wife founded the Handel House Trust for the creation of a museum and recital room at Handel’s former home in Brook Street, Mayfair.
February saw the publication of Words about Mozart, a collection of essays in his honour. Its co-editor, Dorothea Link, said of him: “With his popular writings, in which he mediates between the scholarly world and the musical public, Sadie takes his place among the great educators in English musical life.”
Despite suffering from motor neurone disease for the past 18 months, he managed by sheer determination to complete the first volume of an important new book on Mozart, covering 1756 to 1781, which will be published at the end of this year. A memorial concert in London is planned to mark what would have been his 75th birthday in October.
GERALD ISAAMAN