16 Facts About Richard Taruskin

Richard Filler Taruskin was an American musicologist and music critic who was among the leading and most prominent music historians of his generation.

Richard Taruskin regularly wrote music criticism for newspapers including The New York Times.

Richard Taruskin researched a wide variety of areas, but a central topic was Russian music from the 18th century to the present day.

Richard Taruskin is best known for his monumental survey of Western classical music, the six-volume Oxford History of Western Music.

Richard Taruskin's awards include the first Noah Greenberg Award from the American Musicological Society in 1978 and the Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy in 2017.

Richard Filler Taruskin was born on April 2,1945, in New York.

Richard Taruskin played the viola da gamba with the Aulos Ensemble from the late 1970s to the late 1980s.

Richard Taruskin went to Moscow for a year on a Fulbright Scholarship, where he was interested not only in the language and music, but in the way music connects to social and political history.

Richard Taruskin was on the faculty of Columbia University from 1975 until 1986.

Richard Taruskin then moved to California as a professor of musicology at the University of California, Berkeley, where he held the Class of 1955 Chair.

Richard Taruskin retired from Berkeley at the end of 2014.

Richard Taruskin published his first book in 1981, Opera and Drama in Russia as Preached and Practiced in the 1860s.

Richard Taruskin wrote extensively for lay readers, including numerous articles in The New York Times beginning in the mid-1980s.

Richard Taruskin died from esophageal cancer at a hospital in Oakland, California, on July 1,2022, aged 77.

Richard Taruskin received the Alfred Einstein Award from the AMS and the Dent Medal from the Royal Musical Association.

Richard Taruskin received the Otto Kinkeldey Award from the AMS twice, in 1997 and 2006.