Tom Lehrer (1928-2025)

The American musician and mathematician, best known for his satirical songs, has died, at the age of 97.

Tom Lehrer combined a love for music with prodigious mathematical skills, and graduated from Harvard at the early age of 18. His songs often carried political messages, and he became popular duing the 1950s and 60s for his glittering piano playing and sardonic wit. Lehrer's songs were often prophetic, including an anti-nuclear stance in We Will All Go Together When We Go but also controversial and dark such as in Poisoning Pigeons in the Park, and The Masochism Tango. The BBC banned most of the songs from his 1953 album Songs by Tom Lehrer, yet it was its success by mail-order that led to him playing clubs, rallies and demonstrations across America.

He drew on Gilbert and Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance for one of his most popular songs, in which he set the Periodic Table of the Elements to the music of I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General. 

Playwright Francis Beckett, writing in The Guardian last year, cites Lehrer's work as making life bearable during his challenging school days, whilst also acknowledging that Lehrer himself might take exception to that. Lehrer certainly wasn't afraid to offend, and didn't round his edges, often entering the domain of comic savagery around sensitive topics.

Lehrer left music and taught essential mathematics and the history of the American musical, fading out of the public view and into some level of obscurity by the early seventies. In 1980, Cameron Mackintosh wrote and produced Tomfoolery, a musical revue based on 28 of Lehrer's songs including those mentioned above and Oedipus Rex, When You Are Old and Gray, and I Got It From Agnes. 

In 2020, he made his entire musical output public domain, writing on his website, "In short, I no longer retain any rights to any of my songs. So help yourselves, and don't send me any money". The Queen's Six took him up on that offer for their 2021 album, The Queen's Six Murder the Songs of Tom Lehrer, which captured his spirit with typical style.