Short answers, pulled from the story.
Peter John Branscombe (the 7th of December 1929 - the 31st of December 2008) was an English academic, musicologist, and writer on Austrian cultural history. He specialized in German studies, the Viennese popular theatre of the Biedermeier period, and the music of composers including Haydn, Mozart, and Schubert.
Branscombe founded the Institute for Austrian Studies at the University of St Andrews in 1979. It was the only research facility of its kind in the United Kingdom.
Branscombe wrote W. A. Mozart: Die Zauberflöte for the Cambridge Opera Handbooks series, published in 1991. He also co-authored Schubert Studies: Problems of Style and Chronology with Eva Badura-Skoda, published by Cambridge in 1978.
Branscombe contributed to The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and the Wagner-Handbuch (Wagner Handbook), where he researched many forgotten composers of the nineteenth century. He also wrote for Forum for Modern Language Studies, Austrian Studies, and Nestroyana.
Between 1996 and 2001, Branscombe edited six Possen for the historical-critical edition of Nestroy's complete works. His unpublished dissertation at the Wiener Stadtbibliothek also examined the connections between drama and music in the Viennese popular theatre from 1781 through Nestroy's opera parodies of around 1855.
Branscombe was born in Sittingbourne, Kent, on the 7th of December 1929. He attended Dulwich College and later studied literature at Worcester College, Oxford. He completed his military service in Vienna before his Oxford studies, an experience that shaped his lifelong focus on Austrian culture.