It is with real sadness that we report the death of Glenn E. Watkins on 19 June 2021.

Watkins was born in McPherson, Kansas in 1927, and enlisted in the army at seventeen, later serving as a Japanese translator and interpreter in MacArthur's Tokyo headquarters. Following discharge, he earned his A.B. (1948) and M.Mus. (1949) degrees from the University of Michigan and his Ph.D. degree in musicology from the Eastman School of Music (1953). He taught at Southern Illinois University (1954-58) and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1958-1963), before joining the University of Michigan faculty in 1963, where he held the title of Earl V. Moore Professor of Music from 1984 until his retirement in 1996.

Known for both his Italian Renaissance scholarship and his work on music of the 20th century, Watkins’s publications encompassed multiple genres including musical editions, biography, and cultural studies. His survey, Soundings: Music in the Twentieth Century (1988) found widespread adoption as a textbook. His critical study, Gesualdo: The Man and His Music (1973) remains the defining text on that composer, and he served as the co-editor of the complete works of both Gesualdo and Sigismondo d’India. When Igor Stravinsky became fascinated with Gesualdo's music he sought out Watkins, initiating a long-lasting friendship and providing an impetus for Watkins’s engagement with contemporary concert music of his time, resulting in Pyramids at the Louvre: Music, Culture, and Collage from Stravinsky to the Postmodernists (1994). He remained extraordinarily active in his retirement, producing Proof Through the Night: Music and the Great War (2003), probably his greatest achievement, and The Gesualdo Hex: Music, Myth, and History (2010), a project that took him back to his beginnings now shaped by changes within the field of musicology. He identified his working method as sustained writing in the morning, with a break enhanced by watching his favorite soap opera, The Young and the Restless, and an afternoon spent reading across intellectual fields.

Highly regarded as a teacher, Watkins’s survey of twentieth-century music was especially popular. He was known for his quiet, even hands-off mentorship, encouraging his doctoral advisees to find and follow their own passions, ask challenging questions, and to interrogate previous presumptions.

Watkins was a skilled performer on both the organ and piano, having studied organ with Jean Langlais in Paris in 1956 and analysis at Fontainebleau with Nadia Boulanger. In retirement, he resumed his regular piano practice with a focus on J. S. Bach. He was awarded the Premio Internazionale Carlo Gesualdo (2005), the Rochester Distinguished Scholar Award (2012) and elected as an Honorary Member of this Society (2005).

Watkins endowed the bi-annual Watkins lecture at Eastman in 2003, and two generous gifts from him to the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance assisted with the renovation of the Music Library and the creation of the Glenn Watkins Seminar Room in 2007, and in 2015 Glenn E. Watkins Lecture Hall. He asked that any memorials be made to support his beloved Music Library.

Susan C. Cook
Tara Browner