Late professor remembered fondly
A ‘profoundly musical person,’ Eleanor Stubley known for devotion to students
Eleanor Stubley was an associate professor, author, conductor and music lover. The associate dean of graduate studies at McGill’s Schulich School of Music was remembered fondly Monday as news spread of her unexpected death.
Stubley had been missing since Aug. 7. Her body was discovered during the weekend.
“She was a beloved colleague who inspired all those around her with her humanity, passion and courage,” said Brenda Ravenscroft, dean of the music school, in a statement. “She demonstrated on a daily basis profound devotion and fierce advocacy for students, learning and artistry.”
Stubley, 57, had taught music education, musicology and performance at McGill since 1989. She began a one-year sabbatical on July 1.
“I was under the impression that, like many professors who are granted that honour, she was involved in a new research project,” said John Rea, a professor of musical composition and former dean of the Schulich school.
“I found that very optimistic. I realized it was an opportunity for her to have a creative moment. When you learn what we’ve learned in the last four days, you see the life from both sides: the creative one leading to new projects and saying something important about music; and the other side, which produces the sad news of something that befell her and brought about her death.”
Stubley suffered from multiple sclerosis, which didn’t stop her from getting things done, according to Rea.
“It’s a progressive disease,” he said. “She spent the last number of years in a wheelchair, but her activities at the university, paradoxically, did not cease or diminish, or seem affected by the state of change in her health.”
Rea remembered a colleague who was very involved in the progress of her students and took a keen interest in helping them in whatever way she could. In 2016, she established the Eleanor Stubley Recording Prize recognizing innovative, excellent work by a graduate student.
“She had become an important part of graduate training and support to students,” he said. “Musically, her training was centred on music education, with regard to pedagogy and the philosophy of teaching. These currents were still active in her later research.”
Stubley specialized in contemporary Canadian composers, editing the book Compositional Crossroads: Music, McGill, Montreal (McGill-Queens University Press, 2008).
She is the author of Louis Riel 2005: the Story, written for the Schulich School of Music’s revival of the opera by Harry Somers and Mavor Moore. On June 17, she was scheduled to lead a discussion titled Louis Riel: Performing the Land at Ottawa’s National Arts Centre prior to a performance by the NAC Orchestra, but the event was cancelled amid controversy.
Stubley was the self-described “author of the creative idea” and musical director for Don Winkler’s 2005 CBC-TV performance documentary The Pines of Emily Carr; and artistic director, author and producer of the 2007 multimedia concert Living Gestures, with dancer/choreographer Jane Mappin.
In 2013, she received the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal for her outstanding contribution to the arts.
Stubley conducted the Yellow Door Choir from 1997 to 2014, and was artistic director for Chora Carmina.
“She was a very talented musician, no question,” said Yellow Door Choir member Dianne Urhammer.
“She had some quite ambitious ideas and did some remarkable things with us. … She took us to places we would not have dared to go otherwise.”
Stubley worked with several other music groups including the Massey Singers, Bach Festival Orchestra, the Molinari String Quartet and the Canadian Opera Chorus.
“Eleanor had extraordinarily expressive hands,” music critic Arthur Kaptainis said. “I think the concentration of so much creative energy in her hands explains her success as a conductor.”
Those hands were rendered in a sculpture by visual artist Joël Prévost as part of an interdisciplinary performance in 2013. The event was part of Stubley’s multimedia project Moving Words, Moving Hands, exploring the duality of her hands as both a scholar and a musician.
Kaptainis was equally impressed by Stubley’s academic pursuits, her pioneering interdisciplinary initiatives and her ongoing attempts to concretize the ineffable.
“It was natural to think of Eleanor’s achievement as heroic,” he said, “but to me her intellect was exceptional in absolute terms. That intellect was anchored by scholarship and fired by a creative spirit.
“I have never known a more profoundly musical person.”