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Robert Marcellus, 67, noted clarinetist and professor emeritus of music performance studies, died Sunday March 31 [1996] at his home in Sister Bay, Wis., following a long illness.
Private services were held in Sister Bay. A memorial service and concert will be held next fall at Northwestern. Marcellus, a former resident of Evanston, is survived by his wife, Marion.
A member of the Northwestern School of Music faculty from 1974 until fall 1990, he had a long career as a distinguished performer and continued to conduct and teach music despite becoming blind from diabetes in 1984.
"The music world at large mourns the passing of one of its legendary clarinet virtuosos," said Bernard J. Dobroski, dean of the School of Music. "He was a courageous human being who did not let his serious illness interfere with his concern for imparting knowledge and transmitting a distinguished performance tradition."
Marcellus, who started taking clarinet lessons at 11, got his first job at 17 as a member of the Washington National Symphony Orchestra, perhaps the youngest clarinetist ever hired by a major U.S. symphony.
He played with the orchestra for a year, enlisted in the Air Force and played in the U.S. Air Force Band. After his discharge in 1949, he rejoined the Washington Symphony and within a year was appointed principal clarinetist at age 22.
In 1953, Marcellus joined the Cleveland Orchestra. He was principal clarinetist under George Szell in one of the finest orchestras in the world during the two decades that he played with it. A 1961 recording he made with that orchestra, Mozart's Concerto for Clarinet (in A Major, K. 622), is internationally acclaimed as the definitive rendition of the work.
The Cleveland Orchestra permanently endowed the principal clarinet chair in Marcellus' name.
Diagnosed with diabetic retinopathy and having suffered one retinal hemorrhage, Marcellus quit the orchestra and joined the clarinet staff of the winds and percussion department at Northwestern. Marcellus continued to teach and conduct after several operations on his retinas.
His career has included appointments as music director and principal conductor of the Interlochen (Mich.) Arts Academy Orchestra; the Peninsula Music Festival Orchestra in Door County, Wisconsin; and the Scotia Chamber Players in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He served as musical advisor to the Canton Symphony Orchestra; head of the department of Clarinet Studies at the Cleveland Institute of Music; head of the Wind Chamber Music Studies at Blossom Festival School of Kent State Univer- sity and the Cleveland Orchestra.
He was music director and conductor of the Cleveland Civic Orchestra from 1971 to 1977. He was a guest conductor of other orchestras in the U.S. and Canada, including Minnesota, Detroit and St. Louis. He was a member of Pi Kappa Lambda, honorary music society.
He was a soloist with the Festival Casals in Puerto Rico, as principal clarinetist under Pablo Casals, and with the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society. As a soloist with the Cleveland Orchestra, he performed with George Szell, Pierre Boulez and others.
