The Society for Seventeenth-Century Music

The Society for Seventeenth-Century Music

SSCM Statement on the Passing of Bob Judd

Bob Judd With deep sadness, the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music mourns the sudden loss of Bob Judd.  While Bob is perhaps best known for his long and brilliant tenure as the executive director of the American Musicological Society, he was also a member of our own Society and contributed vitally to its goals.

Bob received an undergraduate degree in organ performance from Kent State University; a master’s degree in musicology from Rice University; and a doctorate in musicology from the University of Oxford.  He taught at Oxford, the University of Melbourne, California State University, Fresno, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Bob’s principal research interest was in early keyboard music, its notation and its practice.  In his Oxford dissertation he examined the contents of several hundred Italian and Spanish treatises from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.  He determined that the nature of the instruction these scores offered players changed gradually over time, from an early emphasis on composition and improvisation to a later one on reading and playing from fully notated scores.  Because of this detailed analysis, his dissertation has also served many scholars as a valuable compendium of early writings on Italian and Spanish keyboard practice.  His other publications in this area include keyboard works of Claudio Merulo (American Institute of Musicology, 1991) and the chapter on Italy in Keyboard Music Before 1700 (Routledge, 2003).

Bob also played a central role in the launching of the Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music.  When the Society began considering publications, he was one of three members (along with John Howard and Kerala Snyder) to step forward with a proposal to produce a prototype for an electronic journal.  In particular, Bob contributed his skills with HTML markup, honed at the recently established Music Theory Online.  At that time, such work involved manually inserting code for every aspect of formatting.  He went on to serve as Technical Editor of JSCM from 1995 to 1997 and then as Technical Consultant for two more years.  It is hard to imagine the later success of our beloved and innovative Journal without Bob’s foresight and dedication at the start.  Even in his recent reimagining of the AMS Newsletter as electronic-only, one can see a link to his early ideas for JSCM.

Bob Judd was enormously committed to our discipline and to scholarship in general.  He produced brilliant work, and he supported and mentored the work of countless others.  His combination of leadership, patience, and affability are rare enough in this world and will be sorely missed.  I know I speak for all members of the SSCM when I express our deepest condolences to his family.  In lieu of flowers, they request contributions to the American Musicological Society (“Robert Judd Fund”) or the charity of your choice.

Roger Freitas, president of the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music
(with thanks to Bruce Gustafson, Lex Silbiger, Kerala Snyder, and Jeffrey Kurtzman for recollections and information)