Boston Globe Music Critic Richard Dyer has Died, Aged 82

Dyer first served as assistant critic at the Boston Globe before becoming its chief music critic

One of the nation’s leading classical music reviewers in his time, Richard Morgan Dyer was chief music critic for the Boston Globe from 1976 to 2006; he recently passed away in hospital due to a series of strokes, according to his brother.

Born in Texas in 1941, Dyer was raised in Oklahoma and Ohio by his parents who were both educators. His interest in music was piqued when his grandparents took him to opera performances as a child. 

In 1963, Dyer graduated from Hiram College in English and French studies and went on to Paris for music studies with Jacqueline Eymar, plus attended the final masterclasses of pianist Alfred Cortot.

He earned his master’s in English at Harvard University in 1968 and was completing his PhD there until he was hired at the Boston Globe by musicologist and Globe critic Michael Steinberg. 

Then nearing retirement, Steinberg made Dyer his assistant immediately upon reading a review Dyer had written on the celebrated soprano Renata Tebaldi, published by the New York Times in 1973. Dyer would hold the assistant critic role for the next three years. 

“No matter that she displayed all the faults that critics have long mourned,” Dyer wrote of Tebaldi’s performance. “No matter that some high notes were only pitched yells; no matter that she sometimes tugged a little flat; no matter that cackle and croak invaded even the simplest bits of coloratura … ‘No matter,’ I say, because after all this was not a musical occasion,” he continued. “The public came to adore; she came to be Tebaldi and to be adored.” 

Dyer also wrote about film and literature and was esteemed for his extensive musical knowledge in the fields of piano and opera; he was twice presented the American Society of Composers and Performers’s Deems Taylor Award for distinguished music criticism. 

In the 1980s, the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Ned Rorem once introduced Dyer to a New York friend saying, “This is Richard Dyer. He runs Boston.”

Following his tenure in daily journalism, Dyer taught at the Tanglewood Music Center and held seminars at the New England Conservatory, Boston University, and the Aspen Music Festival. He also served as a music juror in contests, including at four Van Cliburn International Piano Competitions.

“The history of music is among other things a history of difficult moments that visionary figures have found new and unexpected ways to get through,” Dyer wrote in his Global farewell column in 2006. “...If the message and the performance are human, compelling, craftsmanlike, and honest, they will reach the public. ‘From the heart,’ Beethoven wrote on the score of the Missa Solemnis, ‘may it go to the heart.’”

Mr. Dyer is survived by his brother and Philip Sweeney, his longtime companion. Our condolences to his family, friends, students, and colleagues.