The Spin Doctor Europadisc's Weekly Column

Richard Taruskin, who died last month at the age of 77, was one of the dominant figures in musicology of the last 40 years. Born on 2 April 1945 into a Jewish family of Russian heritage, in his early years he studied cello, then went on to study music at Columbia University, preparing his PhD on neglected Russian opera of the 19th century under the guidance of his mentor, Paul Henry Lang. Lang’s own magnum opus, Music in Western Civilization (1941) was among the first books to place classical music in its wider social and cultural context, a theme that became a touchstone for Taruskin himself. Early in his musical career Taruskin played viol as a founding member of the Aulos Ensemble, yet this did not preclude a typically forthright, often highly controversial attitude toward the wider ‘early music’ movement, as played out in a series of articles and counter-articles in the pages of Early Music in the mid-1980s.

Taruskin’s highly personal, often bullish take on music history characterised much of his writing, but he also wrote musical articles for less specialist journals, reaching a readership far wider than many of his colleagues. His thoughts on ‘authenticity’, performance and early music are gathered in the collection Text & Act: Essays on Music and Performance (Oxford University Press, 1995). Less divisive are his important contributions to the literature on Russian music, particularly Mussorgsky: Eight Essays and an Epilogue (Princeton University Press, 1993), and his two-volume Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions: A Biography of the Works Through Mavra (University of California Press, 1996) – especially valuable for its in-depth discussion of Stravinsky’s indebtedness to Russian folk music.

His greatest achievement, however, is arguably the monumental five-volume, 4000-page Oxford History of Western Music (OUP, 2005). This was the first such an extensive study to be produced by a single author, and even given its enormous scope, the selection of subjects is inevitably personal, though there are few glaring omissions. The 19th-century volume 3 is inevitably coloured by Taruskin’s anti-German, pro-Slavic bias, but not disastrously so, and his insights into the Russian tradition are as keen as ever. The outstanding volumes, though, are the first (Music from the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century) and the fourth (Music in the Early Twentieth Century). The ‘Earliest Notations’ volume is particularly welcome for the space given to polyphonic traditions before the development of multi-line notation, and to the ‘Golden Age’ polyphony of the Renaissance, a period for which Taruskin evidently felt great sympathy. The ‘Early Twentieth Century’ volume is just as essential, particularly for its treatment of early modernism, French, Russian and Slavic traditions, even though lovers of British music may regret some surprising absences.

Taruskin’s prickly persona may have antagonised many of his targets in the worlds of early and new music, yet he undoubtedly livened debate in a manner that few other writers can now match (certainly when combined with such a compendious knowledge of musical and cultural history). His absence will be keenly felt, but his legacy is a formidable one.


The world of opera is no stranger to controversy, but recent headlines have made for particularly depressing reading. Many Wagnerians are still reeling from the first showing of this summer’s new Bayreuth Ring cycle, a modern-dress production by Valentin Schwarz which sounds as though the director has spent rather too much time watching HBO’s Succession, together with the worst sort of post-apocalyptic movies. Certainly that’s the impression gleaned from Martin Kettle’s thoughtful review for The Guardian (see link below) which, while noting isolated moments of insight, highlights the challenges of sustaining a cogent production through some 14 hours of music, all served up in very long stretches.

As Kettle points out, Bayreuth used to be regarded as the world leader in Wagner production – and not just up to, and in the decades immediately after, the composer’s death in 1883. Even the once-notorious ‘Centenary Ring’ of 1976 directed by Patrice Chéreau was soon hailed as a contemporary classic, which shared its deeper roots with George Bernard Shaw’s allegorical commentary in The Perfect Wagnerite (1898). It’s hard to imagine that Schwarz’s production will achieve such a status, though one should perhaps ultimately reserve judgement until a video broadcast is available. Nevertheless, the stills photographs that have so far emerged suggest a product of Regieoper at its worst.

At the other extreme, Anna Netrebko’s appearance as Aida at the Arena di Verona this summer has attracted criticism, and not just because of her record of vocal support for Vladimir Putin’s regime. Photographs showed her in unmistakable blackface make-up – something questionable in Aida in any case to the extent shown, and surely out of place in any modern production, traditional or not. We are no longer living in the 1950s, let alone the 1920s, and such practices should now belong to the dustbin of history. Are there not, in any case, enough outstanding artists of various ethnicities to satisfy the visions of modern opera directors, whether or not politically discredited artists need the money?

As Russell Thomas – the first black performer to sing Otello at Covent Garden – recently commented, it is sad that we are in a situation where this is regarded as a significant moment. Why has it taken so long? If the answer is that there were not enough black singers of sufficient vocal calibre (an arguable point in any case), we need to ask ourselves, ‘Why not?’ And no amount of pleading to ‘authenticity’ can justify traditional, entrenched attitudes if opera, and the rest of the classical music world, is to attract new, younger, more diverse audiences to save it from the oblivion that otherwise surely beckons.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/jul/15/stop-pandering-to-purists-says-royal-opera-houses-first-black-otello