Margaret Vardell Sandresky

Margaret Ferrell Vardell Sandresky (born 28 April 1921) is an American composer, organist and teacher. She was still composing on her 100th birthday. She was a founding member of the Society for Music Theory (SMT) as well as its first female contributor. Sandresky’s first organ lessons were with her father. She earned a BM from Salem College in 1942 and a MM from the Eastman School of Music in 1944, then got a Fulbright scholarship to study at the Hochschule für Musik in Frankfurt, Germany in 1955. Sandresky’s teachers included Harold Gleason, Howard Hanson, Kurt Hessenberg, Bernard Rogers, and Helmut Walcha. She married Clemens Sandresky in December 1956 and they had three children. Sandresky taught at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, the University of Texas at Austin, the North Carolina School of the Arts, and the Salem Academy and College. She served as the organist at Home Moravian Church, First Baptist Church, and Centenary Methodist Church in Winston-Salem. Sandresky has received commissions from the American Guild of Organists, the National Endowment for the Arts, the North Carolina Arts Council, the North Carolina Music Teachers Association, and the Reynolda House Museum