Born in Edwinstowe, Nottinghamshire, Brett received his academic degrees from King's College, Cambridge. His doctoral dissertation (1965) on the songs of William Byrd prepared him for his later role as general editor of Byrd's complete works, in 20 volumes. This was both a lifelong labor of love (he was working on the final volumes three weeks before his death) and a monument of traditional musicological scholarship.
He devoted much energy to William Byrd and Benjamin Britten's music - he perceived a link between the two composers: both had been victims of oppression. In 16th-century Anglican England, Byrd was a Catholic whose friends were fined, harrassed, arrested, imprisoned, or executed. In 20th-century England, Britten was homosexual at a time when this could mean being fined, harrassed, arrested, or imprisoned. Discrimination and injustice were among the few things that could make Philip really angry.
He spent his entire teaching career in the University of California system: at Berkeley from 1966 to 1991, at Riverside from 1991 to 2001, and at UCLA only for one extraordinary year during which he touched the minds and hearts of everyone who met him.
Berkeley had a liberating effect on him. He was always willing to speak in public at gay events on campus, "to show gay students and colleagues that they need not be afraid to be honest about their sexuality." After meeting George Haggerty in 1974, his life changed. Their relationship provided Brett with the strength, over the next 28 years, to undertake a new scholarly journey, starting with the article "Britten and Grimes".
Brett excelled in many areas of specialization, including the performance of early music (for which he received the Noah Greenberg Award in 1980 and a Grammy nomination in 1991), and the operas of Benjamin Britten.
After two years as chair of the Department of Music (1988-90), he left Berkeley for UC Riverside to join his partner, now chair of the English department there. The move made it possible for them to work on the same campus, an administrative rarity for gay couples ten years ago. During his years at Riverside he became chair of the music department (1992-99).
At the peak of his career, Brett courageously and single-handedly initiated the field of gay and lesbian musicology, now a thriving subdiscipline. In 1996, the Gay and Lesbian Study Group of the American Musicology 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 was the first time an openly gay musicologist had discussed in public a gay subject in such a scholarly context. At the time, it was a courageous act, and opened the door for many others who had been hesitating to take such a public step. When an eminent colleague asked him whether "gay musicology" existed, he replied "No, but don't you think it should?" Younger scholars happily followed his lead, eventually collaborating with him to produce a sparkling collection of iconoclastic essays, "Queering the Pitch" (1994).
From then on, Philip's attention moved inexorably towards a deeper study of the mechanisms of oppression. He was particularly concerned with the effects that active oppression, as well as passive accommodation to that pressure, can have on artistic creativity and performance. His article "Piano Four Hands: Schubert and the Performance of Gay Male Desire" (1997) provoked the expected antiphonal choruses of admiration and dismay.
Distinguished Professor of Musicology (from 1998), and Associate Dean in the College of Humanities (2000-01). In 2001 he moved to UCLA because of his close friendship with the scholars in that department.
Philip Brett had just received a Guggenheim Fellowship, which would have allowed him to finish his long-awaited book on Britten's operas, when he died of cancer on the day before his 65th birthday. He is survived by his registered domestic partner, Professor George Haggerty, Chair of the Department of English at University of California, Riverside.
