Stravinsky’s later years have been lined exhaustively in Dr. Taruskin’s “The Oxford Historical past of Western Music” (2005), a six-volume (together with the index), 1.25-million phrase research of classical music from 800 AD via the tip of the Twentieth century that additionally contained hundreds of different names and figures.
Dr. Taruskin had many admirers. Alex Ross of the New Yorker known as him “a very powerful dwelling author on classical music, both in academia or in journalism” in a current interview with musicologist William Robin.
“If you wish to know the way good Richard Taruskin’s ‘Oxford Historical past of Western Music’ is, simply open the primary of its 5 lengthy volumes, and begin studying proper from web page one,” the critic and composer Greg Sandow wrote within the Wall Road Journal. “I discovered myself on the sting of my seat.”
That first quantity, “Music From the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century,” was usually judged essentially the most profitable of the collection. In storytelling each authoritative and transporting, Dr. Taruskin wove info and impressions from histories, visible artwork and structure collectively right into a constantly engrossing narrative that will nonetheless be the perfect total introduction to “early music” accessible.
Certainly, Dr. Taruskin made his title via his research within the Renaissance, with revelatory performances within the Nineteen Seventies of the music of the then-obscure composer Johannes Ockeghem. In a evaluate of the “Historical past” for the New Criterion, the critic and editor Patrick J. Smith fondly recalled some Manhattan concert events of Renaissance music by the choral group Cappella Nova, led by Dr. Taruskin, including that “his notes on the concert events bumped into the handfuls of pages, meant to be learn at leisure a lot later.”
As a PhD pupil at Columbia College, Dr. Taruskin labored with Paul Henry Lang, whose personal historical past, “Music in Western Civilization,” with its then-pioneering efforts to put music inside a broader sociocultural context, had a profound impact on him.
Dr. Taruskin revealed his first ebook, “Opera and Drama in Russia as Preached and Practiced within the 1860s,” in 1981. He additionally labored with musicologist Piero Weiss on “Music within the Western World: A Historical past in Paperwork.”
Within the mid-Eighties, Dr. Taruskin grew to become a contributor to the New York Instances, the place he was given unusually free rein and shortly grew to become a determine of controversy. He reminded some readers of the late drama and movie critic John Simon, who was equally identified for critiques that have been vigorous, erudite, fiercely articulate — and generally unnervingly brutal. Dr. Taruskin attacked composers Carl Orff, Arnold Schoenberg and Sergei Prokofiev in addition to up to date American composers reminiscent of Milton Babbitt, Donald Martino and Elliott Carter.
After the terrorist assaults of Sept. 11, 2001, Dr. Taruskin wrote a column within the Instances concerning the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s choice to cancel performances of some choruses from “The Loss of life of Klinghoffer,” an opera by John Adams with a libretto by Alice Goodman concerning the homicide of a disabled Jewish American by Palestinian terrorists.
“Censorship is all the time deplorable, however the train of forbearance may be noble,” Dr. Taruskin wrote. “Not to have the ability to distinguish the noble from the deplorable is morally obtuse. Within the wake of Sept. 11, we’d need, lastly, to get past sentimental complacency about artwork. Artwork isn’t innocent. Artwork can inflict hurt. The Taliban know that. It’s about time we realized.”
In reply, Adams stated he discerned two modes of writing in Dr. Taruskin’s output — his formal musicological work and his “pop” items for the Instances.
“Within the latter he has made a specialty of character assassination,” Adams instructed the British newspaper the Impartial in 2002. “This makes good copy. It’s form of like watching these cheesy ‘true crime’ reveals on tv: there should all the time be a physique depend on the finish, whether or not the goal is Prokofiev, Shostakovich students, or anybody else he decides to humiliate.”
Dr. Taruskin was at his strongest in Russian music, and he returned largely to that research after the publication of his historical past, which he known as “the Ox.” Certainly, he appeared at one thing of a loss in most Twentieth-century music with no Russian connection.
In his historical past, for instance, there have been no mentions of Edward Elgar, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Duke Ellington, Ruth Crawford Seeger or Stephen Sondheim. The title of Finnish composer Jean Sibelius, as soon as voted the most well-liked composer on the earth in a New York Philharmonic radio ballot and the topic of an enormous revival within the final twenty years of the Twentieth century, appeared 5 occasions in 4,560 pages, after which solely in passing.
Richard Filler Taruskin was born in New York on April 2, 1945. His father was a lawyer and newbie violinist, and his mom had taught piano in her youth. Dr. Taruskin took up the cello when he was 11 and as soon as stated jokingly that he knew he would change into a cellist in order that the household would possibly play piano trios. Later, the instrument he performed most frequently in public was the viola da gamba, from which the cello is partially derived.
He attended what was then known as the Excessive Faculty of Music & Artwork in Manhattan and later claimed to have learn each ebook of music historical past within the New York Public Library. He was a 1965 graduate of Columbia’s undergraduate faculty and received a Fulbright-Hays fellowship, which permitted him to journey to Moscow in 1971 and 1972.
After receiving a grasp’s diploma in 1968 and a doctorate in musicology in 1975 from Columbia, he taught within the college’s music division till 1987, when he joined Berkeley’s college. He was named a full professor in 1989 and retired in 2014.
Along with his spouse of 38 years, of El Cerrito, Calif., Dr. Taruskin’s survivors embody two youngsters, Paul Roebuck Taruskin and Tessa Roebuck Taruskin; a sister; a brother; and two grandchildren.
Dr. Taruskin was stated to have grown gentler in his later years and he befriended many younger critics and students, the identical kinds of individuals he used to deride in public assaults and personal postcards. He obtained quite a few honors, and in 2012 a convention in his honor was held at Princeton College.
The convention was known as “After the Finish of Music Historical past” and several other talks have been dedicated to Dr. Taruskin’s life and work. This happy him enormously.
“So long as Taruskin is the one to beat,” he instructed the San Francisco Chronicle, “Taruskin is joyful.”
Tim Web page is professor emeritus of musicology on the College of Southern California and received the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for criticism for his writings on music at The Washington Submit.
