Update: There will be a memorial for Michael on Friday 26 April at 14.00 at Leckhampton. All are welcome.

The College was deeply saddened to hear of the death on 3 April of alumnus, former Fellow, and Life Fellow, the philosopher and opera critic Dr Michael Tanner (m.1955).

Michael Tanner was born in Bromley, Kent and attended Warwick School where at a young age he developed an interest in philosophy along with the desire to study the subject at Cambridge. After two years National Service in the Royal Airforce, Michael matriculated at Corpus in 1955 and took a double first in both parts of the Moral Sciences Tripos. In 1961 he was elected to a Research Fellowship and appointed to a University Assistant Lectureship in Moral Sciences; four years later he was appointed to a lectureship, a post he held until retirement in 2002 (and his transfer to a Life Fellowship). He served as Director of Studies in both English and Philosophy and was for two decades Dean of College.

The Master, Professor Christopher Kelly said, "Michael was one of the great figures in Corpus in the latter half of the twentieth century. His rooms on P staircase were legendary; as was the sound of Wagner drifting across the Old Court lawn on a summer's evening. His acuity, dry wit and conversation (especially after lunch in the Red MacCurdy Room) will be very greatly missed." 

Michael Tanner introduced the teaching of aesthetics to the Moral Sciences Faculty, and authored books on Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. His great passion was for music, particularly that of Richard Wagner, about whom he also wrote two books. From 1996 to 2014 he was opera critic of the Spectator.

In an interview published in The Pelican Easter 2010, Michael was interviewed by Simon Heffer (m.1979), in which they discuss Tanner's love and deep knowledge of Wagner. Heffer quotes him as remembering, "I’ve spent a very large part of my life playing Wagner to people, explaining first, and then giving them an idea of what they were going to hear. When I became a Fellow and lived in Old Court, on Friday evenings – partly to counter the bellringers in St Bene’ts – I would take people through the music. I used to have open house for those who wanted to listen, and I would give them the text in German and English and talk them through it and play them an act. In the course of a term, by messing around a bit, you could get through a whole Ring cycle. I was notorious for the amount of noise that came from my room. But those evenings became something of an institution."

Tributes to Michael Tanner

Remembrance comments from many of those who studied under, collaborated with, and admired Michael Tanner can be found on the philosophy blog, The Leiter Reports.

The Telegraph obituary of Michael Tanner describes him a "one of the most brilliant and single-minded Cambridge dons of his generation." The Times says "he was even incapable of writing a dull footnote."

Igor Toronyi-Lalic, Tanner's editor at the Spectator, writes of visits to the opera followed by dinner where the conversation ranged over Tanner's many interests and life experiences.

A full obituary of Dr Michael Tanner will appear in The Record 2024.