David Bratman, Tolkien Scholar and SFCV Music Critic, Dies at 69

David Bratman died at his Sunnyvale home on Monday, Nov. 9, at 69. He reported on classical music for San Francisco Classical Voice for more than 20 years as its mainstay South Bay critic. One of his editors at SFCV once said of him: "He [had] good ears."

Bratman was born in 1957 in Illinois. His family soon moved to Los Altos, California, where he grew up. He earned an undergraduate degree in history at UC Berkeley and a master's in library science from the University of Washington in Seattle.

His day job was libraries. He worked at Stanford University as a cataloger, converting old-fashioned paper card catalogs into electronic format. He then did the same work at several other libraries, until, as his wife Bernadette Phillips put it, "he basically put himself out of a job." Digitization finished what he had helped start.

Who was David Bratman beyond the newsroom?

He never defined himself by his bill-paying jobs. He lived through his interests, and they were unusually deep ones.

Bratman spent more than 50 years in the Mythopoeic Society, a group of scholars and enthusiasts devoted to the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and other members of the Oxford "Inklings" literary circle. According to a notice on the Society's website, he was a respected Tolkien scholar who contributed to many essay collections and served as one of the editors of the journal Tolkien Studies.

The recognition was concrete:

• Guest of Honor at Mythcon 52 in 2022
• Author of Gifted Amateurs, a volume of his collected writings published in 2023
• Editor of Tolkien Studies
• More than five decades of involvement with the Mythopoeic Society

His interests also ran to Jane Austen and to British and American history and politics. Phillips said she and Bratman met in 1987 at a science fiction convention, at the convention's Regency dance — a courtship dance form named for the era of Austen's novels.

What did he bring to music criticism?

No formal musical training, but plenty of listening. Bratman described himself in his own byline as living "with a wall full of symphony recordings," and he knew the classical repertory well.

His reviews for San Francisco Classical Voice had a signature style. They cut straight to the heart of the matter. They showed a generosity of spirit toward the Bay Area's many amateur and low-budget organizations — the community orchestras and small ensembles that a more status-driven critic might skip.

There was no meanness in him, his colleagues note. He listened well and carefully, which is the first duty of a music journalist.

What does this change for the Bay Area scene?

For the South Bay's smaller classical groups, it means the loss of a critic who consistently showed up and took them seriously. For readers of San Francisco Classical Voice, it means the end of a byline that had covered that beat for over two decades — a rare stretch of continuity in regional arts coverage. His death leaves a gap in attention to the amateur and low-budget end of the Bay Area's musical life, the part of the ecosystem that depends most on being noticed at all.

His wife, Bernadette Phillips, survives him. He will be missed.