Norman Gentieu, 94, adman who felt allure of the arcane

Norman P. Gentieu had a taste for the obscure.

In 1982, Inquirer critic Daniel Webster reviewed a flute quintet by Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji at the Old Pine Street Church, commissioned by Mr. Gentieu.

The 18-minute work "illustrates Sorabji's characteristically gnarled complexity," Webster wrote. "This is music so convoluted that its riches tend to cancel themselves."

On Oct. 12, Mr. Gentieu, 94, a former Philadelphia advertising executive, died of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease at the home of his daughter Eve on Sullivan's Island, S.C., where he had lived for the last year.

"He kind of went in for the exotic," his daughter said.

In 1994, The Inquirer reported that, as a member of the Geographical Society of Philadelphia, founded in 1891, Mr. Gentieu had for years "toiled on its as-yet-unpublished (for want of a sponsor) centennial history."

The society was filling only 25 percent of the Academy of Music for its occasional showing of travel films.

In 1995, the Atwater Kent Museum published a summary of the centennial history in its 1,364-page Invisible Philadelphia.

Perhaps the prime example of Mr. Gentieu's interests was Sorabji, born Leon Dudley in England in 1892, whose music, critic Webster wrote, depended on his own performances of difficult piano parts.

"When, in 1950, he announced that he was forbidding further public performance of his music," Webster wrote, "the world scrupulously obeyed."

But Mr. Gentieu, the critic wrote, "made it possible for Sorabji himself to record some of his own music."

In 1982, Mr. Gentieu contributed to Syracuse University two linear feet of original music scores by Sorabji.

"I would conjecture," his daughter said, "that the length and difficulty of the compositions and Sorabji's personality all combined to attract my father."

Mr. Gentieu began his career as a technical writer, from 1946 to 1956, at the American Chemical Paint Co. in Ambler.

He was named advertising and publicity manager for Foote Mineral Co. in 1961 and an account executive at the Michener Co., an ad agency, in 1962.

After he retired in the late 1970s, his daughter said, Mr. Gentieu edited Foote Prints, the Foote Mineral magazine.

A 1932 graduate of Penns Grove (N.J.) Regional High School, she said, he worked three years in the Burnside Laboratory at the DuPont Co. smokeless powder plant in Carneys Point, N.J.; attended the University of North Carolina; and earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy and history from Temple University in 1940.

Because it was the Great Depression, earning enough money for college tuition took him eight years.

"A jazz pianist since the 1920s," his daughter said, Mr. Gentieu "earned part of his college expenses by playing in dance orchestras" from the Shore to Philadelphia, including the roof garden of the former Walton Hotel, on the southeast corner of Broad and Locust Streets.

Later, she said, "he composed nonsense songs for children and put excerpts of children's stories to music."

In the summers of 1932 and 1933, Mr. Gentieu attended Citizens' Military Training Camps, which the Army operated nationally from 1921 to 1940. The camps did not require future active duty.

Because of poor eyesight, during World War II he worked as a civilian ammunition specialist for the Naval Ammunition Depot at Fort Mifflin in South Philadelphia, testing explosives and supervising loading of ordnance onto warships.

Besides his daughter Eve, Mr. Gentieu is survived by a son, Norman P. Jr.; another daughter, Mary Meloscia; stepdaughters Diane Vaux and Robin Huebner; and seven grandchildren. His wife, Frances, died in 1995. He is survived by his previous wife, Elisabeth.

A funeral Eucharist was set for 10 a.m. Nov. 23 at St. Mark's Church, 1625 Locust St. Burial will be in Woodlands Cemetery, West Philadelphia.