NYT: Richard Taruskin, Vigorously Polemical Musicologist, Dies at 77

[Mark Stryker]

A giant has passed. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/01/arts/music/richard-taruskin-dead.html

[Larry Kart]

A pest has passed.

[Rooster_Ties]

10 minutes ago, Larry Kart said:

A pest has passed.

I was about to say, can you please expound on that?

But then I read the obit. No explanation necessary! 

[T.D.]

RIP with due respect.

But his writing always had a really strong "fingernails on a blackboard" effect on me, so I never read much of his work. A number of starts, but always failed to finish.

[riddlemay]

4 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

A pest has passed.

Just curious why you say that. I've never read him, and wasn't even aware of him until reading his obituary this morning, but his basic tenets as I understand them--that no music can be reduced simply to the notes, and that making music speak to the audience for whom it is played is more important than recreating the music as it would have been performed for the audience of its time ("historically informed performance")--are sound enough.
 

[HutchFan]

riddlemay - Taruskin was sorta like Stanley Crouch. Always argumentative. Never willing to consider that others might have a different perspective. Always absolutely certain -- even when certainty was impossible. 

Even when I agreed with him -- and he was incredibly knowledgeable -- he turned me off.  It wasn't what he said that made him a pest; it's the way that he said it.

 

Edited July 2, 2022 by HutchFan

[T.D.]

17 minutes ago, HutchFan said:

riddlemay - Taruskin was sorta like Stanley Crouch. Always argumentative. Never willing to consider that others might have a different perspective. Always absolutely certain -- even when certainty was impossible. 

Even when I agreed with him -- and he was incredibly knowledgeable -- he turned me off.  It wasn't what he said that made him a pest; it's the way that he said it.

 

Well said.

[mjzee]

https://dunnandbrown.com/richard-taruskin-vigorously-polemical-musicologist-dies-at-77/

For those who can't open the Times article, this appears to be the same thing.

 

[Peter Friedman]

Was unfamiliar with him until reading the obit in the NY Times.

Based upon his views, as referred to in the obit, it seems that I would tend to agree with him on many of his positions on music.

It seems to made a lot of people angry  in the way he interacted with people.

[sgcim]

6 hours ago, mjzee said:

https://dunnandbrown.com/richard-taruskin-vigorously-polemical-musicologist-dies-at-77/

For those who can't open the Times article, this appears to be the same thing.

 

Thanks for the link!