Dr Michael Tanner, who has died aged 88, was one of the most brilliant and single-minded Cambridge dons of his generation. He possessed an astonishing intellectual breadth that both inspired and sometimes overwhelmed his pupils, whose loyalty to him was usually total and unequivocal.

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/michael-tanner-cambridge-philosopher-ardent-050000141.html

For over 60 years a fellow of Corpus Christi College, Tanner was at different times director of studies in Philosophy and English, doing both jobs simultaneously until 1980, when Corpus decided at last to appoint a dedicated English fellow.

The English faculty had been founded in 1919 but, as Tanner told one of his undergraduates, the Corpus governing body chose not to appoint a fellow specifically to teach the subject because “they considered it to be the mark of a gentleman to have read these books anyway”. His approach to English literature, which he had not formally studied (having been an undergraduate on the Moral Sciences tripos) was heavily influenced by his admiration for, and friendship with, FR Leavis and his wife Queenie.

Tanner’s greatest passion in life, however, was for music, notably the works of Richard Wagner. He had been captivated by them after hearing Parsifal on the Third Programme (a service he considered an essential part of his education) at the age of 16, and built up a vast collection of recordings on vinyl and on cassette tapes.

His interest, as a philosopher, in Nietzsche created another important intellectual bridge with Wagner’s music. For years he held informal evening gatherings in his magnificent rooms in Corpus’s Old Court (the oldest continually inhabited building in the university, dating from 1352), which were said to have belonged to Christopher Marlowe, where he would lead novices through The Ring cycle act by act.