Roger Covell

Roger David Covell AM FAHA (1 February 1931 – 4 June 2019) was an Australian musicologist, critic and author. He was Professor Emeritus in the School of the Arts and Media at the University of New South Wales, in Sydney, and continued until shortly before his death to contribute articles and reviews to The Sydney Morning Herald, where he served as principal music critic from 1960 until the late 1990s.

Biography Published in 1967, Covell's monograph Australia's Music: Themes of a New Society was the first comprehensive study of the history, development and performance of Western art music in Australia, and is now regarded as a seminal text in Australian musicology. It has been widely referenced among succeeding generations of Australian composers, practitioners and critics of serious music, and by Australian cultural historians generally.

Covell died in Sydney on 4 June 2019.