Remembering Ronald Cross
0 Comments Published by AMSGNY President on Sunday, April 28, 2013 at 12:17 AM.
This is the text of the tribute given at the April 27th meeting by Chapter President Jeff Dailey:
The Greater New York Chapter of the American
Musicological Society mourns the loss of one of its long time members, Ronald
Cross, who died this past February 22nd, several days after his 84th
birthday. In remembering Ron, let us
examine his accomplishments as a scholar, as a teacher, and as a performer.
Nor was he attracted solely to Renaissance
music. He had wide ranging interests in
musics of all times and places. A great
lover of Bach, he liked to explore the number symbolism the Baroque master’s
works. In recent years, he expanded his
horizons into American music and opera.
In addition to being a member of the AMS, he also held membership in the
Society for Ethnomusicology, and loved to listen to and study non-Western
musics of different cultures.
As a teacher, Ron was an inspiration to
generations of students. He started
teaching in 1958 at Notre Dame College –
a school that is now the Staten Island campus of St. John’s University. Ten years later he moved down the road to
Wagner College, where -- first as associate professor, then professor, then
holder of the college’s first endowed professorship -- he remained until his death. He taught a wide range of courses over the
years –music history and theory, appreciation, rudiments – and started the
Collegium Musicum there, providing opportunities for the performance of early
music for twenty years. When Wagner
embraced a new interdisciplinary curriculum, Ron eagerly joined in,
team-teaching courses with colleagues from other departments. He was also an early exponent of online
learning, and had a tremendous facility for instructional technology. He had the wonderful ability to make the
complexities of music interesting to the uninitiated, and interspersed theory
and analysis with amusing anecdotes about composers, as well as his personal
experiences as a performer.
Ron was an amazing performer. Early in his career, he earned an associate
rating from the American Guild of Organists, and performed as organist at St.
Paul’s – St. Luke’s Lutheran Church on Staten Island for over forty years. The parishioners there got to hear his
virtuosic performances on a weekly basis, which others got to hear only
infrequently, although he did give occasional recitals at other churches. Between 1986 and 1991, the Staten Island
Council on the Arts awarded him six grants to give harpsichord recitals, the
programs of which ranged from Renaissance and baroque masters to modern works (he
also received grants from Meet the Composer), with the occasional addition of novelty
pieces by composers such as Leroy Anderson and John Philip Sousa. It often seemed like he did not realize how
good he was at the keyboard. Sometimes,
he would look at a very complicated piece of music, say “Oh, that’s easy,” and
then sit down and play it perfectly.
Conversely, he would look at an equally challenging piece, say “Oh,
that’s hard,” and then again sit down and play it perfectly.
Although primarily a keyboard player, he also had
a great love of stringed instruments. He
played the viola da gamba, and, through his efforts, arranged for the New York
Consort of Viols to give annual summer workshops at Wagner College for some
years. As director of the Collegium
Musicum at Wagner, he also performed on other early instruments. As a conductor, he directed works ranging
from plainsong to Stravinsky, and also composed music for choirs and the organ.
But apart from his technical and scholarly
abilities, Ron was an advocate of seeing music as a way of understanding people
and civilization. He was a great lover
of nature and animals, and encouraged the preservation of both the environment
and human culture. He will be sorely
missed.
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