Werner Icking founded the GMD Music Archive of scores, software, email, and other music-related items, and diligently maintained it for the benefit of any internet traveler who might happen by. Some visitors returned again and again, over time forming a coherent little community with Werner as patriarch, a community bound together by common interest in creating beautifully typeset pages of music. The group was devastated on February 13, 2001, to learn from an email posting that five days earlier, Werner had died while cycling home from work. The mailing list suddenly became a memorial service, where dozens of his friends stood and tried to make sense of this tragedy. Hardly anyone had met him in person, but everyone had stories about how Werner had personally and unselfishly inspired them to do something a little better. And everyone realized clearly, from the number and sincerity of those elegies, that Werner's true gift was his ability to make all his correspondents feel like personal friends, though they may be thousands of miles away, and their question might be one he had answered for others many times before.
It is altogether fitting that this continuation of the GMD archive now be dedicated to Werner Icking. His spirit runs through every part of it, and will continue to do so as long as it stands. His contributions to the archive include his wonderful scores of the complete unaccompanied violin works of Bach, in which he captured Bach's intentions by meticulously following Bach's page layouts. His good natured postings to the mailing list are archived at the GMD site for all to see. And while he didn't serve as principal developer of any of the software packages, he did contribute significant pieces of coding to MusiXTeX, and served tirelessly as motivator, beta tester, and peerless bug-finder for PMX. Those who knew him were privileged, and all who visit here owe him a debt of gratitude.
