Professions: Wrote music criticism for The Atlantic Monthly; taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology until 1967, then at Smith College; in 1970, joined the faculty at Boston College, where he taught English literature and music; his dissertation on the songs of C.P.E. Bach became a book, published three years ago; published a book on semantics in the early 1970s after studying the work of Noam Chomsky.

Passions: Writing, from 18th-century literature to contemporary; European classical music to American traditional jazz; piano; Sanskrit and Greek.

Degrees: Ph.D. Brandeis University; Ph.D. Harvard, 1961; A.M. Harvard, 1955; B.A. Amherst College.

Death: November 26, 2006 in Chestnut Hill, MA.

From the Boston Globe.