Richard Taruskin, a musicologist and public intellectual whose scholarship and criticism upended conventional classical music history, died July 1 in Oakland, CA. He was 77.

An emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley7 and a specialist in Russian music, Mr. Tasruskin was the author of a number of groundbreaking musicological studies, including the six-volume Oxford History of Western Music.

Mr. Taruskin courted controversy in nearly everything he wrote. His most consequential flamethrowing was his campaign against “historically accurate” performances of early music. “To be the expressive medium of one’s own age is a far worthier aim than historical verisimilitude,” he wrote in The New York Times in 1990. “What is verisimilitude, after all, but correctness? And correctness is the paltriest of virtues. It is something to demand of students, not artists.”