Death of US musicology publisher
RIPWe have been notified of the death of Bob Kessler, managing editor of Pendragon Press.
Bob died on Friday. He was 87.
He founded Pendragon with his sister and brother-in-law in 1977.
More here.
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I knew him casually in the early ’80s. If I remember correctly, he was the brother-in-law of noted musicologist, Barry S. Brook.
He published my book, Authenticity Problems in Joseph Haydn’s Early Instrumental Works: A Stylistic Investigation. I enjoyed working with him. He was Claire Brook’s brother.
And why is this so important? More information, including his age, would have been nice if this story was noteworthy.
If you click on https://pendragonpress.com/all-titles/ you can see hundreds of titles this renowned house published. Almost anyone with even a slight interest in music history and/or musicology over the last 40+ years will have come across books that had passed through this gentleman’s editorial hands. Across more than four decades he ensured that sometimes obscure, sometimes important, titles, but all of them useful to someone working in music – and sometimes to many people – went into print. That alone is surely noteworthy.
Add to that his earlier songwriting career – documented at https://bobkesslersongwriter.com/about-bob-kessler – and here is the other aspect of a remarkable life in music.
I was one of Barry Brook’s research assistants in the ’70s…worked on the iconography project (first person hired to
get the project off the ground), but also did some editing for RILM Abstracts and proofreading for Thematic Catalogs in Music (check out the acknowledgments paragraph for the latter – you’ll find me there).
What sad news! I knew Bob very well. He was 86, I believe. He was a very sweet and wonderful man, a model for how to live a productive and meaningful life to an advanced age.
PS. Bob was not an observant Jew, but he told me when I first met him that he was a direct descendant of the Baal Shem Tov.
Can we purchase the business?