PASSINGS

Karen Monson, Music Critic and Author

Karen Monson, 42, a music critic and author whose work appeared in the Baltimore Sun, the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. She was the author of two books: “Alban Berg” in 1979 and “Alma Mahler: Muse to Genius” in 1983. She received a Peabody Award for her radio series on Igor Stravinsky that aired in Chicago in 1976 and also won a Deems Taylor Award for criticism. In Long Branch, N.J., on Saturday of complications arising from cirrhosis of the liver.