Antonia Banducci

Antonia Banducci died of Alzheimer’s Disease on November 4, 2024. A professor of musicology at the University of Denver for 27 years before her retirement in 2021, she was beloved by students and colleagues for her tireless efforts on her students’ behalf and will be remembered for her high standards, enthusiasm, unflagging energy, great sense of humor, and her joie de vivre, as well as a strong dedication to social justice issues, bicycling, and a love of nature. She was devoted to her cats, Harry Braveheart and Gabriella Gatti.

 Tony, as she was known in childhood, entered the world on April 3, 1945. The eldest of three children born to Fred Amato Banducci (1906-1975) and Elva Baumgartner (1914-2014), she is survived by her sister Bonita Banducci and brother Don Banducci. Tony was a tomboy who loved baseball and animals, with an early ambition to become a dog trainer. Her brother remembers her as “a passionate, vigorous, opinionated and independent persona” in formation, recalling that she was in constant motion. “Hers was an inquiring, curious, restless spirit looking to grab onto something and wrestle it to the ground, then moving on to the next thing that caught her eye or presented a challenge.” As a student at Neil Cummings Elementary in Corte Madera, Marin County, she composed the school’s rally song. She edited her high school’s newspaper, the Redwood Bark; was one of a few students to complete Redwood High’s Kennedy March, a fifty-mile walk for fitness instigated by President John F. Kennedy; and graduated as Valedictorian. Next she moved to Colorado where she completed a BA in Humanities at CU-Boulder in 1967. Two years later she secured her standard teaching credential at the University of California-Berkeley and began teaching elementary school, first in California and then in New Mexico, where she moved with her first husband, David Best.

 Antonia’s family instilled a love of music in her as a child. Her mother was a singer and the whole family attended musical theater productions in San Francisco together. Her sister Bonita remembers how their father wired every room of the house with a speaker from which to play popular music of the 1940s and 50s, musicals, Italian songs, Christmas carols, and when the kids had control, rock and roll. She recalls Antonia “practicing the accordion, mornings in our shared bedroom, … her first big step into music when we were in elementary school.” 

 From those humble beginnings Antonia went on to receive an MA in Music at Adams State College in Alamosa, CO, in 1976, followed by her PhD in Musicology at Washington University, St Louis, MO, in 1990. There she wrote her dissertation on the performance history and reception of the opera Tancrède by Antoine Danchet and André Campra, for which she received the “Best Dissertation on an Operatic Topic” award from the National Opera Association. She taught at the University of Southern California, University of Iowa, and Kenyon College before she joined the faculty of the Lamont School of Music at the University of Denver in 1994. Dr. Banducci was promoted to Associate Professor in 2000, Full Professor in 2019, and Professor Emerita upon retirement.

 Dr. Antonia Banducci was a scholar of seventeenth-century opera and received accolades for her work on the music of Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687). She was active in the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music, serving as its secretary from 2009-12. She was also a member of Phi Beta Kappa, the American Handel Society, the Fulbright Association, and the American Musicological Society, giving papers and lectures in France, England, and throughout the U.S. While doing research in Paris she met her second husband, Christian Roche.

 She taught undergraduate and graduate students many eras of music history from medieval to modern, inspiring former student Danielle Reutter-Harrah to write: “Because of Professor Banducci, I became a baroque singer. … She opened a whole world for me, and I am forever indebted to her for sending me down this niche for the past 20 years.” Another student, Veronica Wiley, posted on Facebook: "More than any professor I’ve ever had, her teaching style taught me how to learn anything…to really study and thoroughly understand a subject. I’m so grateful for all the classes I had with her (including my freshman orientation) and the passion she brought to the material she taught.” Dr. Banducci also taught music history for a term in Bologna where she met Luca Salvucci, with whom she shared a passion for bicycling. She learned the Italian language and returned many times to Italy, where she was a member of the Monte Sole Bike Group.

 Antonia embraced causes all her life, from the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s in which she marched as a college student, to environmental concerns that inspired her to join annual Colorado trail repair crews, recycle and compost, advocate for a green university, serve on the Denver Mayor’s Bicycle Advisory Committee, and most recently, add solar panels to her house. She was far more likely to jump on her bike or walk to get where she needed to go than she was to drive her car. She also spent much time hiking and camping in the mountains with friends and loved to discuss books with her book group. The diagnosis of Alzheimer’s in 2022 was a devastating blow, but Antonia rallied her many friends to help her fight to the end. She will be greatly missed.