Longtime Post Music Critic Joseph D. McLellan Dies

He was a foreign news editor for Religion News Service in New York City from 1967 to 1970 and an editor for A.D. magazine, affiliated with Notre Dame University, in 1970.

The publication, an outgrowth of the 105-year-old devotional magazine Ave Maria, was becoming increasingly politicized as a result of the Vietnam War and tumultuous social change. Garreau, who also worked at the magazine before coming to The Post, recalled that it was "a roaring success journalistically and a total failure commercially."

Mr. McLellan, he recalled, "was writing terrific, erudite reviews on the Beatles' 'White Album,' for example. That wasn't all that common for a 40-year-old at the time."

Mr. McLellan joined The Post as an assistant editor of Book World in 1972. In 1982, after stints as an arts reporter and a columnist, he became music critic. He also taught literature at American University and journalism at George Washington University and was music critic for classical radio station WETA-FM. He retired from The Post in 1995.

He told Washingtonian in 2000 that his best experiences as a critic were the operatic performances of Gian Carlo Menotti, whose strength, he said "is based, above all, on a deep sense of humanity."

His worst, in addition to "the sunny banality of John Denver or the mindless violence of heavy-metal rock," was the audience disdain exhibited by Luciano Pavarotti in a 1992 appearance at Capital Centre.

He was a member of the National Book Critics Circle, the Association of U.S. Chess Journalists Clubs and Mensa. He was also an amateur classical guitar player.

Mr. McLellan's first wife, Estelle McLellan, died in 2002.

Survivors include his wife of three years, Patricia McLellan of the District; four children from his first marriage, Joseph McLellan Jr., Laura McLellan and Sandra Ciarlone, all of Arlington, Mass., and Andree McLellan of Woburn, Mass.; four stepchildren; one brother; seven sisters; and two grandchildren.