Background
Roche was born in 1942 in Cairo, Egypt, the son of an army doctor.
Roche was born in 1942 in Cairo, Egypt, the son of an army doctor.
He was educated at Downside School, a Catholic independent school in Somerset, England, before studying music at Street John"s College, Cambridge, graduating with a Bachelor in 1962. He went on to study for a Doctor of Philosophy, under the supervision of Denis Arnold. In 1967, the year before completing his Doctor of Philosophy, Roche was appointed a lecturer at Durham University.
His dissertation focussed on the development of vocal duets in Italian baroque church music He became a reader in 1987. Roche published editions of music by Francesco Cavalli, Giovanni Battista Crivelli and Alessandro Grandi, and rediscovered many works from the period that had become forgotten.
He edited The Penguin Book of Four-Participant Italian Madrigals (1974) and Masterworks from Venice (1994).
He also regularly contributed articles and book reviews to other journals such as The Musical Times, Music & Letters and Early Music, as well as scholarly publications by the Royal Musical Association. Roche was married to Elizabeth, a fellow musicologist and graduate of Durham University.
His interests outside of music included railways and meteorology. He was also a committed Catholic.
Roche died aged 52 at his holiday home in Vittorio Veneto, Italy in June 1994 from a brain tumour.
The tumour had been discovered earlier in the year, during a period of hospitalisation following a suspected stroke. A concert was held in his honour in Durham Cathedral in October. In 2001, the Royal Musical Association created the Jerome Roche Prize, which is awarded annually to a young scholar for a published article on musicology in English.
Roche was a member of the editorial board of the journal The Seventeenth Century from its establishment in 1986.
