Philip Gossett *70

Philip Gossett, professor of music at the University of Chicago and a noted musicologist, died June 13, 2017, after having endured progressive supranuclear palsy. He was 75.

Gossett graduated from Amherst College in 1963 and earned a Ph.D. in music from Princeton in 1970. He had joined the University of Chicago faculty in 1968 and remained there for the rest of his academic career.

According to his bylined obituary in The New York Times, “Gossett made it his life’s work to recover scores that had disappeared or become messy … and to return them to something close to what their composers had intended.”

Gossett pioneered the creation of scholarly critical editions of opera scores, in addition to his distinguished academic career as a professor of music. He was the general editor of new editions of the works of Verdi and Rossini. Performances using Gossett’s recovery of original scores were very successful. He worked with eminent opera houses, singers, and conductors to bring back his and others’ discoveries.

He is survived by his wife, Suzanne S. Gossett *68, professor of English emerita at Loyola University of Chicago; two sons (including Jeffrey ’93); and five granddaughters.

Graduate memorials are prepared by the APGA.