Donald Mitchell (1925−2017) in Memoriam

Abstract

In the eloquent preface to his book, The Danger of Music (2009), a collection of essays written for daily newspapers and periodic journals of opinion, Richard Taruskin speculated on whether, in the end, there was really a difference between writing for scholars and writing for the interested “general” public. There ought not to be. Writing clearly, with limited use of jargon and with the capacity to employ analytic strategies and technical information without either blatant oversimplification or impenetrable language, ought to be a constant virtue. And to do so with wit and elegance is equally desirable. That being said, to manage to do so is no minor achievement. The tradition of influential and significant—if not eloquent—writing about music outside of narrowly defined academic venues has had a longer history in England than in the United States, where, in the disciplines of the humanities, the rhetoric and style used by writers have too often been held up as essential markers of expertise and academic sophistication. Many of the finest writers on music working in England, notably in the twentieth century, were not holders of a doctoral degree in music. One thinks, for example, of Hans Keller, Deryck Cooke, and Robert Simpson. They were, however, musicians.