My father, Richard Macnutt, who has died aged 88 from Parkinson’s disease, was an internationally renowned antiquarian music dealer and expert on Hector Berlioz and Felix Mendelssohn.
In 1958, at the age of 22, Richard attended a performance of The Trojans at Covent Garden; it was a pivotal moment in his life. Captivated by the experience, he returned to see the five-hour production again the following week, and so began a lifelong interest in opera, and especially Berlioz. He began to collect, including on an early visit to Paris with his friend and later collaborator Hugh Macdonald.
Two years after the Berlioz opera, in 1960 he quit his job as an accountant and took over a small antiquarian music dealer’s firm, Leonard Hyman Music Ltd, known as Richard Macnutt Ltd from 1964, which he ran until his retirement in 1996. He specialised in first editions, autographed manuscripts and letters, latterly moving into valuations of collections and libraries, and attending auctions worldwide.
In 1964 he became a founding member of the editorial board of the New Berlioz Edition, which sought to catalogue the composer’s entire literary and musical works, a project that was finally completed in 2005. Richard was closely involved throughout, often providing source materials from his own collection, and was general secretary until 1972 and a trustee for 30 years.
He was a member of the Berlioz Centenary Committee for the 1969 commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the composer’s death and of the exhibition committee for Berlioz and the Romantic Imagination, held at the V&A the same year.
In 2002 he sold the vast majority of his personal Berlioz collection to the French government for a bicentennial exhibition staged at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris. He also wrote and edited numerous articles and bibliographies during his lifetime, inspiring many of his contemporaries along the way.
Born in Hove, East Sussex, Richard was the only son of Patricia Willett and Derry Macnutt, who was an insurance underwriter. Evacuated to Somerset during the second world war, he went to Eagle House preparatory school in Surrey before attending Winchester college from 1949 to 1954 where he became an accomplished cricketer, captaining the first XI; a superb leg-spin bowler, he once took six wickets in three overs with no runs conceded.
After national service with the Royal Artillery (1954-56) and a spell with ICI, he worked for a firm of chartered accountants in London before becoming an antiquarian music dealer.
He mainly lived in and around Tunbridge Wells, Kent, and will be fondly remembered as a humorous, gentle and intelligent man, a lover of opera, a fantastic and generous host, a loving partner, dedicated family man and an extremely proud grandfather.
Richard is survived by his partner, the conductor Sian Edwards; his two children, Kirstie and me, from his first marriage to Mary Sutherland, which ended in divorce; his second wife, Janet (nee Hughes), whom he married in 1981 and from whom he was separated in 2017; and his four grandchildren, Daisy, Sam, Olly and Izzy.
