Don Simons, february 13 2001

 

Werner was truly a friend. If it had not been for his generous support and encouragement, you would not have PMX to help tame the MusiXTeX beast. From the very beginning he gently prodded me to make it better and better. He patiently tested every incremental release on all of his hundreds of sources. I'm still mystified how he could have detected some of the bugs and incompatibilites. And he had an uncanny ability to expose bugs that depended on 3- or 4-way interactions before coming to light.

I had the pleasure of meeting him in person when he and his wife visited the US several years ago, and stayed at my house for several days. He had not brought his violin with him, so we never got to play together any of Bach's violin pieces he loved so much. But at one point he sat down at one of my harpsichords and before I knew it, we were jamming away on 2 harpsichords on some swing tunes. He asked me many times when I would be coming to Germany. If ever there was a lesson in why not to procrastinate, this is it.

Rest in peace, my friend.

 


2001-05-09, Christian Mondrup, Werner Icking Music Archive

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