Marvin Blickenstaff, long-time music professor and piano instructor, dies at 90

The Frances Clark Center will host an online Celebration of Life honoring Blickenstaff on Friday, February 6 at 11 a.m.

Blickenstaff’s memorial service will be Saturday, Feb. 21 at 1 p.m. The service will be held at Blooming Glen Mennonite Church, 713 Blooming Glen Rd., Blooming Glen, PA 18911. It will also be livestreamed on BGMC’s website.

Marvin Blickenstaff, former professor of music at Goshen College, died on Friday, January 23, at his home in Pennsylvania. He was 90 years old.

With a deep belief in the transformative power of music, Blickenstaff taught piano and pedagogy at GC for 21 years, from 1978 until his retirement in 1999. He was known nationwide and beyond for his piano teaching, performing and publishing, and was as comfortable working with beginning and advanced pianists.

“Professor Blickenstaff was a luminary in piano pedagogy, and held his students to the highest standards,” said President Rebecca Stoltzfus. “One of those students was me, and he has had a lifelong impact on my understanding of what it means to play the piano.”

Born on May 19, 1935, Blickenstaff earned his bachelor’s degree from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in 1959 and a master’s degree in music from Indiana University in 1961.

In 2009, he was awarded the Music Teachers National Association Foundation’s highest honor, a Lifetime Achievement Award; in 2007, he was named Fellow of the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto; and in 2022, the Frances Clark Center created The Marvin Blickenstaff Institute for Teaching Excellence, which was created to uplift and educate piano teachers while “amplify[ing] the extraordinary lifework of world-renowned educator and pianist Mr. Marvin Blickenstaff.”

Beverly Lapp, who took piano lessons from Blickenstaff as well as serving as his colleague in the Goshen College Music Department, said, “One of the distinctives that Marvin brought to his work at Goshen College was his embrace of teaching piano at all levels. He engaged with a group piano classroom of second graders with the same joy and reverence that he brought to a studio class of advanced college pianists, or to a teaching demonstration at a summer piano workshop.

“In addition to an enduring influence on the ethos of music at Goshen College,” she continued, “Marvin’s passion for musical development at all ages and stages has had an enormous impact on the broader piano-teaching community.”

Last year, Blickenstaff fulfilled a lifelong dream by celebrating his 90th birthday with a piano performance in Carnegie Hall. Additionally, he returned to the college as a guest at the Music Center’s 2025 Piano Summer Camp, where he hosted a pedagogy workshop and gave a solo recital. At the end of the performance, he told the audience that they had witnessed his final recital — he wanted to end his illustrious performing career at Goshen College. Read President Stoltzfus’ blog post about the recital and her former teacher.

Prior to teaching at Goshen College, Blickenstaff served as the chair of the piano department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he taught for nearly a decade. After his retirement from GC, he served as president of the Frances Clark Center for Keyboard Pedagogy from 2000-2013.

Blickenstaff was a prolific publisher and performer. In 2024, he published Inspired Piano Teaching, a guide for piano instructors that draws on decades of pedagogical experience and wisdom. Before that, he co-authored Celebration Series: A Handbook for Teachers and a 36-book instructional series, Music Pathways. He served on the editorial board of The American Music Teacher; as an associate editor of the periodical Keyboard Companion; and as a piano editor for the Frederick Harris Music Company.

Blickenstaff was preceded in death by his wife, Sara Faye.