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Werner Icking founded the GMD Music
Archive of scores, software, email, and other music-related
items, and diligently maintained it for the benefit of any
internet traveler who might happen by. Some visitors returned
again and again, over time forming a coherent little
community with Werner as patriarch, a community bound
together by common interest in creating beautifully typeset
pages of music. The group was devastated on February 13,
2001, to learn from an email posting that five days earlier,
Werner had died while cycling home from work. The mailing
list suddenly became a memorial service, where dozens of his
friends stood and tried to make sense of this tragedy. Hardly
anyone had met him in person, but everyone had stories about
how Werner had personally and unselfishly inspired them to do
something a little better. And everyone realized clearly,
from the number and sincerity of those elegies, that Werner's
true gift was his ability to make all his correspondents feel
like personal friends, though they may be thousands of miles
away, and their question might be one he had answered for
others many times before.
It is altogether fitting that this
continuation of the GMD archive now be dedicated to Werner
Icking. His spirit runs through every part of it, and will
continue to do so as long as it stands. In his wonderful
scores of the complete unaccompanied violin works of Bach, he
captured Bach's intentions by meticulously following Bach's
page layouts. His good-natured postings to the mailing list
are here for all to see. And while he didn't serve as
principal developer of any of the software packages, he did
contribute significant pieces of coding to MusiXTeX, and
served tirelessly as motivator, beta tester, and peerless
bug-finder for PMX. Those who knew him were privileged, and
all who visit here owe him a debt of gratitude. |
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