Stanley Sadie

Who was Stanley Sadie?

Stanley Sadie CBE was a leading British musicologist, music critic, and editor. He was editor of the sixth edition of the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, which was published as the first edition of the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.

Sadie was educated at St Paul's School, London, and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he read music under Thurston Dart. His doctoral dissertation was on mid-eighteenth-century British chamber music. After Cambridge, he taught at Trinity College of Music, London.

Sadie then turned to music journalism, becoming music critic for The Times, and contributing reviews to the Financial Times after 1981, when he had to leave his position and The Times because of his commitments to the Grove and other scholarly work. He was editor of The Musical Times 1967–1987.

From 1970 Sadie was editor of what was planned to be the sixth edition of the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Sadie oversaw major changes to the Dictionary, which grew from nine volumes to 20, and was published as the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, and is now referred to as the first edition under that name. He was also an important force behind the second edition of New Grove, which grew further to 29 volumes. Sadie also oversaw a major expansion of the Grove franchise, editing the one-volume Grove Concise Dictionary of Music, and several spinoff dictionaries, such as the New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments, the New Grove Dictionary of American Music, and the New Grove Dictionary of Opera. He also edited composer biographies based on the entries in Grove.