Subject: Fw: Ellsworth Snyder, esteemed leader in the arts, dies at 74 - msg#00019

Ellsworth Snyder, esteemed leader in the arts, dies at 74

By Jacob Stockinger
August 12, 2005

Ellsworth Snyder, a longtime dean of classical music and the visual arts in Madison, has died.

The urbane and modest Snyder, who always used lowercase letters to spell his name, was 74 when he died late Thursday morning at University Hospital. According to his caregivers, he had been admitted Wednesday after suffering an apparent heart attack at his apartment in the Meriter Retirement Home near the Square.

Snyder had been in failing health for several years due to cancer and then a deteriorating lung condition. Doctors said the condition was worsened by the thick smoke of the recent fire at St. Raphael Cathedral.

A memorial service is tentatively set for Sunday, Aug. 28, at 4 p.m. at the First Unitarian Society, 900 University Bay Drive. Snyder's remains will be cremated and his ashes will be interred at Grace Episcopal Church beside those of Nathan Samuel Blount, his longtime partner who preceded him in death more than decade ago.

Snyder was known to friends as a sociable man of grace and good humor who lent charm and a smiling face to the sometimes stridently serious avant-garde that he championed.

"He was one of a kind," said the Rev. Michael Schuler, director of the First Unitarian Society, who worked with Snyder as the society's music director for 12 years. "He was not really a true church musician, but instead someone who created a unique musical program for a faith community that raised the profile of both the institution and its congregation.

"I found him to be incredibly intelligent and knowledgeable," Schuler said. "But he also worked extraordinarily well with people at all different levels of talent. He created a sense of community."

"Ellsworth was a man of very generous spirit," said Stephen Fleischman, director of the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, formerly the Madison Art Center. Snyder left much of his extensive art collection to the center.

"Not only was he a talented musician, but he had an excellent eye as a painter and a collector," Fleischman, said. "He has been exceedingly generous to us. And he was very important on a number of levels - as an enthusiast and a collector who gave encouragement to artists around him and as an artist who pursued his own work.

"This was a man who made the most of every day. There was a strong will there. The man was blessed with amazing amounts of energy and enthusiasm and talent."

There was a less well known traditional side to Snyder, who performed mainstream classics by Mozart and Schubert in concerts and who collected African, Asian, Chinese, American Indian and Eskimo art as well as works by contemporary artists.

But he was best known for his taste for the cutting edge. He was a member of the national avant-garde group Fluxus and personally knew titans of modern American art like composer John Cage, choreographer Merce Cunningham and painter Robert Rauschenberg.

"He was an artist of unusual intelligence," said Grace Chosy, a retired art dealer and gallery owner who first started showing and selling Snyder's minimalist paintings and drawings in the early 1980s.

"He had looked at lots and lots of work and knew so much about making and appreciating art. As a person, he was a wonderful, wonderful human being. I'll miss him, and so will a large number of people in Madison. He had a huge circle of very loyal friends."

Snyder embodied the tolerant and cultured humanist. Born in Ohio and educated first at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music and then at the UW-Madison, where he received his doctorate, he influenced the entire music scene in Madison.

"I was aware of Ellsworth as soon as I got to Madison," said pianist Howard Karp, a retired artist-in-residence at the UW who spoke from a vacation spot in Colorado. "He was always doing avant-garde things that were very stimulating. But he also knew the classical literature inside and out.

"He was a devoted teacher who was inspiring to his students. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of the great singers and great pianists of the past, yet he also knew everything about contemporary music. He had a unique way of playing and was an all-round musician I admired greatly."

Others agreed.

"Ellsworth was a remarkable person and a close personal friend, said Max Gaebler, retired pastor of First Unitarian Society, where Snyder served as music director from 1971 until he retired in 2000. "He took over our music program when it had been weak, and then it was off and flying. He was a tremendously innovative person. He had ideas about music and the arts in general that appeared novel to some of us at the time, but he made them happen."

Snyder started the society's special All-Music Sundays, Friday Noon Musicales and the annual summer music series, which ended just this year after 31 seasons.

"He was always fun," added Carolyn Gaebler, Max's wife, who sang in the choir under Snyder's direction for many years. "He kept us in the choir laughing and together. Aside from his many talents, we all had a good time with him."

Snyder is survived by three nephews and several grandnieces and grandnephews. He was preceded in death by his parents and a sister.

E-mail: jstockinger@xxxxxxxxxxx
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