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Gordon (Kay) Greene, musicologist, teacher (born 27 December 1927 in Cardston, Alberta; died 23 September 2018 in Kitchener, ON).
Career Highlights
Gordon Greene taught at the University of Alberta (1955–63), then studied musicology with Willi Apel at Indiana University (1963–66). He joined the University of Western Ontario in 1966 and was chairman of the music history department (1966–75). He then began teaching in 1978 at Wilfrid Laurier University, where he served as dean of the Faculty of Music (1979–89).
In June 1974 Greene gave a series of lectures and workshops at the Schola Cantorum in Basel, Switzerland, and for six months in 1985 he was a visiting professor in Australia at Sydney University and Melbourne University. He presented papers on medieval and renaissance topics at universities and conferences in Canada, the United States, Europe, and Australia.
He directed choirs at the University of Alberta, the University of Western Ontario, and Wilfrid Laurier University. From 1985 to 1987 Greene served as president of Canadian University Music Society (CUMS). He contributed to The New Grove Dictionary, the Dictionary of the Middle Ages, and the Encyclopedia of Music in Canada.
Honours
Gordon Greene received, among other awards, Canada Council for the Arts fellowships (1964–66, 1972) and seven research grants (1968–84) from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council to study French secular polyphonic music in European libraries.
Selected Writings
“Fit for treasons,” Pleasures of Learning, vol. 9, December 1962.
“The work of art as a symbol,” MA thesis, University of Alberta, 1962.
“Musical homesteading in Alberta,” PfAC, vol. 2, Winter 1963.
“The secular music of Chantilly Ms. Musée Condé 564,” PhD thesis, Indiana University, 1971.
“From mistress to master: the origins of polyphonic music as a visible language,” Visible Language, vol. 6, Spring 1972.
“For whom and why does the composer prepare a score,” J of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 32, Summer 1974.
“Incipient Ars Nova in the Brussels Rotulus,” Studies in Music from the University of Western Ontario, vol. 1, 1976.
“The schools of minstrelsy and the choir-school tradition,” Studies in Music from the University of Western Ontario, vol. 2, 1977.
“Reconstruction of Montserrat manuscript 823,” L'Ars Nova Italiano del Trecento, Certaldo, Italy, 1989.
