Philip Brett, 1937-2002

Philip Brett, musician and musicologist, was well known and well loved both within and outside the academy.  Born in Edwinstowe, Nottinghamshire, he studied piano as a young boy.  Once in school, first as a choirboy at Southwell Minster Grammar School, in Nottinghamshire, and then at King’s College Cambridge, he excelled in music.  As a student at King’s, under the tutelage of Thurston Dart, he was singled out for his historical acuity and his scholarly precision; and even as a graduate student he began editorial projects that would continue throughout his whole career.  His interest in the music of William Byrd and other English Renaissance polyphonists led to early publications, both editions of works like Tallis’s Lamentations of Jeremiah, and critical studies such as “Word-Setting in the Songs of William Byrd,” which brought him international attention.  In 1966, he was invited to assume a tenure-track position at the University of California, Berkeley.  At the same time, he agreed to become the general editor of the Works of William Byrd (The Byrd Edition), which was completed just at the time of his death.

In addition to working in the field of Renaissance musicology, he also studied the operas of twentieth-century composers, especially those of Benjamin Britten.  This work led him to inaugurate, almost single-handedly, gay studies in music. His early publications, both critical analyses of Britten’s Peter Grimes and collections of essays like the recently reprinted Queering the Pitch: Essays in the New Musicology (1994), changed the field of musicology and challenged the status quo.  His Cambridge Opera Handbook on Peter Grimes (1983) is still in print.

Philip Brett was a performer as well as a musicologist.  From 1966-1991, he was conductor of the Chamber chorus at UC Berkeley, with which he recorded many Renaissance and eighteenth-century works, especially with Nicholas McGeegan’s Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra.  For these performances, he was awarded the Noah Greenberg Award in 1980, and in 1991 he was nominated for a Grammy Award.  He also made recordings of Lou Harrison’s La Koro Sutro (1988) and Elliot Feldman’s Rothko Chapel (1991).  The latter was number 8 in Allan Ulrich’s  1993 San Francisco Examiner list of the 25 best compact discs of serious music composed in the past 25 years.

In 1996, the Gay and Lesbian Study Group of the American Musicological Society instituted the Philip Brett Award “to honor each year exceptional musicological work in the field of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender/transsexual studies . . . in any country and in any language.”  This award affirms Philip Brett’s importance in the field of musicology and how deeply loved he was by those who worked with him.

Philip Brett was a professor in the Music Department at UC Riverside from 1991 to 2001.  He came to UCR to join his partner, George Haggerty, a professor in the English Department.  At UCR, he worked tirelessly for the Music Department.  He strengthened the department, and his plan for its future was considered a visionary document. 

He was instrumental in moving music into the Arts Building, and it is fitting that a garden in his honor should be constructed at this site.  Philip was an artist who loved gardening, and the Philip Brett Memorial Peace Garden is a place that he would himself have loved.  Here, his legacy will be honored and the garden will serve as a living testimony to his accomplishments and his exemplary service to music, musicology, and the University of California.  It would honor him greatly if this garden were to serve as an inspiration to others to uphold his standard of aesthetic and intellectual service and contribution.