Obituary: Laurence Picken (original) (raw)

The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and clarifications column, Monday June 11 2007

We said in the obituary below that Laurence Picken had the "almost [sic] unique distinction of being an honorary fellow of two Cambridge colleges". In fact at least 15 others share that distinction, according to the latest list in Cambridge University Reporter, special issue 3, October 5, 2006.

Laurence Picken, who has died aged 97, was one of the most original academic minds of the 20th century. In a career lasting more than 70 years, he achieved excellence in both biology and musicology. He was the archetypal bachelor don, his progeny being his scholarship and his students.

An invitation to his rooms at Jesus College, Cambridge, was always greatly appreciated, as his hospitality and gourmet cooking for students and colleagues was held in high esteem. Alongside the now fashionable green tea, guests would occasionally be offered a homemade alcopop: a bottle of orange juice which he had deliberately allowed to ferment. "It's perfectly safe, my dear boy" - and you didn't dare question the old sage.

Born in Nottingham, from humble beginnings at Waverley Road secondary school, Birmingham, he won a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1928 and gained a double first in natural sciences. He undertook a PhD researching into the urine production mechanism of invertebrates. European postings followed, including the Geneva School of Chemistry, where he carried out groundbreaking research into the biophysics of long-chain polymers.

During the second world war he found himself officer-in-charge of a blood transfusion unit, where he refined the methods for filtration and drying of plasma. The work was considered so important that in 1944 he joined Joseph Needham's scientific mission to China, an episode that laid the foundations for Picken's later great scholarship on ancient Oriental music.

In 1944 he was made a fellow of Jesus College and in 1946 assistant director of research in the zoology faculty, spending the next 20 years researching and teaching biology. His zenith was The Organisation of Cells and Other Organisms (1960), which centred on the relationship between structure and function in living matter. Exploring this relationship in other fields opened up the next chapter in his life, as he turned from zoology to musicology.

Picken was a fine keyboard player, and the music of JS Bach, combining structure with emotion, had a great hold over him. Unsurprisingly then, his first musical paper identified a previously unknown Bach fugue. His reputation as a musicologist grew, and his love and deep understanding of Oriental culture led him to contribute articles on Chinese and Japanese music to Grove's Dictionary and the New Oxford History of Music. In recognition of the breadth of Picken's research, he was allowed to do that rare thing in academia and change faculties, from zoology to oriental studies in 1966.

Turning his attentions to the Middle East, he wrote the magisterial Folk Musical Instruments of Turkey (1975), in which he created a landmark way of looking at instruments. The relationship between structure and function was again prominent as he combined biological discussion of the instruments' constructional materials, a scientific taxonomy of instruments, analysis of performance techniques, musical transcriptions and extensive contextual material.

Many considered him a giant of ethnomusicology, although he intensely disliked the term, considering it patronising to other cultures. Whether Bach or Japanese classical gagaku, to him it was simply musicology, because, as he wrote in Musica Asiatica, which he co-edited from 1977 to 1984: "The musics of Asia and Europe constitute a single, historical continuum." Such enlightened thinking was not in vogue though, and he gained many enemies in the Cambridge music faculty who were creating an ethnomusicology department without him. Despite the efforts of many, the wound never totally healed, and Picken carried on his musicology firmly outside the music faculty.

In 1972, a sabbatical to Japan changed his life for ever. Through meticulous detective work on manuscripts of the Japanese classical togaku music, he discovered that it was a replication of Chinese Tang court music, albeit acculturised and slowed down to 1/16 tempo. The result was a projected 25-volume series Music from the Tang Court (1981-2000). The seven volumes that he edited before failing health intervened are among Picken's greatest contributions to scholarship.

After he moved quarters out of college in 1976, he led a much less sociable life and gradually entered what might be described as hermitude, surrounded by his scholarship. Until the late 1990s he refused even to have a telephone installed. Even then for several years only three people were allowed to know his number.

Picken experienced a renaissance in 1997 when the enterprising American conductor Sarah Caldwell knocked at the door. "I was told you weren't on the phone, so I've come from Boston to see you." Picken queried, "Lincolnshire?". "No. Massachusetts." This encounter was the start of the Ancient Asian Music Project at the Library of Congress, work that continues Picken's legacy today.

Honours and prizes came from countless institutions. Alongside his fellowship of the British Academy however, his greatest pride lay in the almost unique distinction of being an honorary fellow of two Cambridge colleges: Jesus and Trinity.

Of striking fitness and with an encyclopaedic knowledge until his early 90s, Picken succumbed to the ravages of Alzheimer's and he spent his final few years in a nursing home. Applying Picken's characteristic editorial precision, it is necessary to point out that he reached the ripe old age of 98, not 97; in his preferred Chinese xusui method of counting, we are born aged one not zero.

· Laurence Ernest Rowland Picken, scientist and musicologist, born July 16 1909; died March 16 2007