Donna Jackson, scholar of early Italian music

A graduate school professor turned Donna Cardamone Jackson on to the music of 16th-century Italy, a topic on which she later became a revered scholar.

For more than 38 years, she shared her knowledge and passion for Neopolitan music traditions with students at the University of Minnesota School of Music, all the while winning numerous scholarships, grants and fellowships and writing articles for publications such as the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Journal of American Musicological Society, along with her two-volume seminal book, "The Canzone Villanesca and Related Italian Vocal Part-Music, 1537-1570."

"She was a scholar at the highest level," said David Grayson, a U professor of musicology. And, he added, "She was just as happy teaching the Beatles."

Jackson, of Falcon Heights, had struggled with ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease) since 2006. She died of heart failure Oct. 17 at New Millennium Health Care Center in Brooklyn Park. She was 71.

She graduated from Wells College in New York in 1959, and earned her master's degree and doctorate from Harvard. She was a lecturer at Smith College in Northampton, Mass., for one year before she arrived at the University of Minnesota in 1969. She retired in 2007, said her husband, David.

While at the U, Jackson developed and taught 15 courses for majors and nonmajors. Among them was a popular class on 20th-century music that looked at everything from John Philip Sousa marches to the Beatles, and a seminar that focused on the life of Igor Stravinsky.

"She was a music lover and developed a way to get students to listen critically," her husband said.

Jackson was extremely popular with graduate students, who often wanted her on their final examination committees, Grayson said.

"When they were done, she'd find some unusual publication the student might not know about and give it to them as a way to say job well done and to stimulate them to future work."

She delivered a series of talks about a variety of topics to the St. Paul Piano Teachers Association, and presented research papers at meetings of the Midwest American Musicological Society and participated in forums put on by the International Musicological Society.

She also published three books of 16th-century compositions, wrote album liner notes and served as a consultant for several recordings helping to bring the music of 400 years ago to life, her husband said.

Jackson was an active member of the American Musicology Society and was co-chair of the Local Arrangement Committee when the group held national meetings in Minneapolis in 1978 and 1994.

In addition to her husband, she is survived by a daughter, Anna Lee of Chicago; two sisters, Barbara Shaw of Durham, N.C., and Linda Schmidt of New Hartford, N.Y.; and a brother, Frank Cardamone of Wilmington, N.C.