Richard Toop (1 August 1945 – 19 June 2017) was a British-Australian

musicologist Musicology is the academic, research-based study of music, as opposed to musical composition or performance. Musicology research combines and intersects with many fields, including psychology, sociology, acoustics, neurology, natural sciences, f ...

. Toop was born in Chichester, England, in 1945. He studied at

Hull University The University of Hull is a public research university in Kingston upon Hull, a city in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It was founded in 1927 as University College Hull. The main university campus is located in Hull and is home to the Hu ...

, where his teachers included Denis Arnold. In 1973 he became

Karlheinz Stockhausen Karlheinz Stockhausen (; 22 August 1928 – 5 December 2007) was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. He is known for his groun ...

's teaching assistant at the Staatliche Hochschule fur Musik in Cologne. In 1975 he moved to Sydney, Australia, where he was head of musicology at the

Sydney Conservatorium The Sydney Conservatorium of Music (SCM) — formerly the New South Wales State Conservatorium of Music, and known by the moniker "The Con" — is the music school of the University of Sydney. It is one of the oldest and most prestigious music ...

(University of Sydney). His publications include a monograph on

György Ligeti György Sándor Ligeti (; ; 28 May 1923 – 12 June 2006) was a Hungarian-Austrian composer of contemporary classical music. He has been described as "one of the most important avant-garde music, avant-garde composers in the latter half of the ...

, and the '' New Grove'' entries on Stockhausen and

Brian Ferneyhough Brian John Peter Ferneyhough (; born 16 January 1943) is an English composer. Ferneyhough is typically considered the central figure of the New Complexity movement. Ferneyhough has taught composition at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg and ...

. As a young pianist in 1967, he gave in a 24-hour marathon in London the first documented solo performance of ''

Vexations ''Vexations'' is a musical work by Erik Satie. Apparently conceived for keyboard (although the single page of manuscript does not specify an instrument), it consists of a short theme in the bass whose four presentations are heard alternatingly ...

'' by

Erik Satie Eric Alfred Leslie Satie (born 17 May 18661 July 1925), better known as Erik Satie, was a French composer and pianist. The son of a French father and a British mother, he studied at the Conservatoire de Paris, Paris Conservatoire but was an undi ...

. Toop died on 19 June 2017 at the age of 71."Richard Toop (1945–2017)"

Australian Music Centre The Australian Music Centre (AMC), founded as Australia Music Centre in 1974 and known as Sounds Australian in the 1990s, is a national organisation promoting and supporting art music in Australia. It operates mainly as a service organisation, a ...

, 20 June 2017

References

1945 births 2017 deaths Alumni of the University of Hull English musicologists Australian musicologists Academic staff of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music Ligeti scholars Stockhausen scholars {{UK-music-bio-stub