Democracy Dies in Darkness

Richard Taruskin, provocative scholar of classical music, dies at 77

He published a six-volume history of Western music and was known for his strong opinions of composers

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Musicologist Richard Taruskin, author of the six-volume “Oxford History of Western Music.” (Kyoto Prize/Inamori Foundation)
7 min

Richard Taruskin, a music scholar and historian of wide influence and spectacular fecundity who wrote the gigantic “Oxford History of Western Music,” died July 1 at a hospital in Oakland, Calif. He was 77.

The cause was esophageal cancer, said his wife, Cathy Roebuck Taruskin.

Dr. Taruskin, a longtime professor of musicology at the University of California at Berkeley, was best known for his writings about Russian music and particularly about Igor Stravinsky, whom he venerated. His “Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions: A Biography of the Works Through ‘Mavra’ ” (1996) combined in-depth technical analysis of the composer’s scores with an exhilarating overview of Russian musical life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries — two volumes and 1,800 pages that took the composer only to the age of 40.