Anthony A. Newcomb *70

Anthony Newcomb, professor of music, emeritus, at the University of California, Berkeley, died peacefully Nov. 18, 2018, at the age of 77.

Newcomb earned a bachelor’s degree from University of California, Berkeley, in 1962. After studying under the noted Dutch musician and scholar Gustav Leonhardt, he returned to the United States and earned a Ph.D. in music from Princeton in 1970. He had joined the faculty at Harvard in 1968, and returned to Berkeley in 1973.

At Berkeley Newcomb was a professor of music and Italian studies. He was also chair of the music department, as well as dean of arts and humanities in the College of Letters and Sciences from 1990 to 1998.

He was a widely respected music scholar whose research focused on vocal music of the Renaissance and early Baroque eras, and later the ontological connections between Wagner and 18th- and 19th-century instrumental works. Newcomb’s research also centered on Italian secular music and poetry.

In 1981 he was awarded the Dent Medal by the Royal Musical Association, a prestigious honor for exceptional research. From 1986 to 1990, he was editor of the Journal of the American Musicological Society, and he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1992.

Graduate memorials are written by the APGA.