Dear list-members,

I regret to inform you, that Prof. Ursula Guenther died November 21  
this year in Hamburg.
As author of the Grove-Articel I can give you these informations:

After studying piano with D. Kraus and H.E. Riebensahm and music  
theory with H. Stahmer she qualified 1947 in Hamburg as a private  
music teacher. From 1947, officially from 1948, she studied  
musicology with H. Husmann at Hamburg University with many subsidiary  
subjects as art history, german and romanist literature, philosophy,  
and finally psychology and phonetics. She took the doctorate at  
Hamburg in 1957 with H. Husmann, influenced also by H. Besseler, who  
acted as a correferent, with a dissertation on stylistic change in  
French song in the second half of the 14th century, mainly based on  
the estate of F. Ludwig. After a long period of research, morally  
fortified by Gilbert Reaney and Armen Carapetyan and supported by her  
husband and only 1962 by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, she  
accepted a post as school teacher in Ahrensburg in 1968, because her  
wish to complete the Habilitation had been refused by some german  
professors. Encouraged by french colleagues and O. Strunk, she joint  
in 1969 the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris as  
attaché de recherche, subsequently (until 1975) as chargé de  
recherche, with J. Chailley, supported by N. Bridgeman, where she  
taught also (1969-71) as assistant lecturer at the Sorbonne, in order  
to prepare her "doctorat d'état" on Verdi's French years. After  
completing her Habilitation in musicology at Göttingen in 1972 with  
an edition of 14th-century motets (published 1965 by A. Carapetayan  
in CMM 39), she taught only one term as Privatdozentin in Göttingen,  
continuing her work as "chargé de recherche" in Paris. In spring term  
1973 she was visiting professor at New York University and also  
invited to lectures at many American universities: Princeton,  
Harvard, Brandeis, Philadelphia, Maryland, Bloomington, UC Davis, and  
Los Angeles. Then she was appointed as "chargé de cours" at the Free  
University, Brussels, for "Histoire de la notation musicale et  
transciption". In 1973 she refused to come to Brandeis Univ., and in  
1975 she accepted a post as Dozentin at Göttingen, 1977 as Professor,  
and gave up her post with the CNRS, while continuing to teach in  
Brussels. By application of the new law for Universities in  
Niedersachsen, she has been for some periods director of the  
Institute of musicology in Göttingen. In 1977 she gave a summer  
course on Verdi research at the Northwestern University at Evenston  
IL. In 1992 she retired from her posts in Göttingen and Brussels. In  
1982 she was honoured by France as "Chevalier des Palmes  
académiques", and since 1992, she is professeur honoraire at the  
Université libre de Bruxelles. In 1994 she was elected corresponding  
member of the AMS. Since 1976 she is member of the editorial board of  
the new critical edition of Verdi's operas and in the advisory board  
of the American Verdi Institute, since 1982 member of the editorial  
board of the Journal of musicology and since 1989 of Musica  
Disciplina. Since 1994 she wass General editor of Musicological  
Studies and Documents. She has published many valuable articles on  
the composers, sources, datable compositions, notation and style of  
Ars Nova and what she has called 'Ars Subtilior', and on Verdi's  
French operas. Her piano vocal score of Don Carlos, published only in  
1980, was already used since 1974 by Claudio Abbado and others.

Christian Berger

o.Univ.-Prof. Dr. Christian Berger
Musikwissenschaftliches Seminar
der Universität Freiburg
Werthmannplatz 3
79085 Freiburg
Tel.: +761/203-3090
Fax: +761/203-3091
http://www.muwi.uni-freiburg.de/