In Memoriam: Eleanor McCrickard

Professor Emerita Eleanor McCrickard, a member of the School of Music’s faculty for thirty years and chair of the Composition, History, and Theory Division for twelve, passed away on Wednesday, January 18th at the age of 82.
 
A native of Nashville, Tennessee, Eleanor McCrickard attended Birmingham-Southern College where she earned a BA in Music and a BM in Organ, graduating as valedictorian and being inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. She subsequently earned a MM in Organ at the University of Michigan and a PhD in Musicology at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill with a dissertation on the Italian composer Alessandro Stradella. Her dissertation included a critical edition of the twenty-seven known independent instrumental compositions of Stradella. It was at North Carolina that she met her future husband, Donald, in a German language class. They married in June 1968 and both taught at UNCG. She also held a number of positions as organist at churches in North Carolina and Alabama.
 
Dr. McCrickard specialized in music history, with a focus on seventeenth-century Italian music. She was one of the foremost experts on the music of Alessandro Stradella. She edited the complete instrumental works of Stradella in the series Concentus Musicus and, with a colleague in Italy, published the thematic catalogue of Stradella’s works. For many years, she was a member of the editorial board for the critical edition of Stradella’s music, for which she edited several volumes. Dr. McCrickard published articles in Analecta Musicologica, Chigiana, Early Music, the International Journal of Musicology, the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, among others. She won the Teaching Award in the School of Music in 2001 and was a member of the honorary societies Phi Beta Kappa (Executive Secretary of the Epsilon Chapter at UNCG), Pi Kappa Lambda, and Phi Theta Kappa. 
 
A service to celebrate her life was held at Christ United Methodist Church on Friday, January 27, at 2:00 pm. The family will receive friends following the service in the Fellowship Hall of the Church. An obituary of Dr. McCrickard appears at <https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/greensboro-nc/eleanor-fowler-mccrickard–11112355>.