J. Peter Burkholder | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1954-06-17)June 17, 1954 (age 71) |
| Education | PhD,University of Chicago, 1983 MA, University of Chicago, 1980 AB,Earlham College, 1975 |
| Occupation | Musicologist |
J. Peter Burkholder (born June 17, 1954) is an Americanmusicologist and author. He is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Musicology at theIndiana UniversityJacobs School of Music. He has written numerous monographs, essays, and journal articles on twentieth-century music,Charles Ives, musical borrowing, American music, musical meaning, analysis, and music history pedagogy.[1][2] He is the principal author ofA History of Western Music, 10th Edition, published byW. W. Norton & Company.
Burkholder attendedEarlham College andThe University of Chicago, where he received his Ph.D. inMusicology in 1983. He began his teaching career at theUniversity of Wisconsin before moving toIndiana University Bloomington, where he taught from 1988 to 2019 and served as Associate Dean of the Faculties (1995–2000) and Musicology Department Chair (2009–2013).[1][3] Burkholder has served as president, vice-president, and director-at-large for theAmerican Musicological Society.[4] He has also served as president of the Charles Ives Society (1992–2010)[5] and board member of the College Music Society.
Burkholder has contributed to four main areas. Several articles argue for a view ofmodernism in music that stresses not only its innovations but also its engagement with the past. Five books and numerous articles onCharles Ives revised the earlier view of the composer as American iconoclast, showing his knowledge of European traditions and his gradual evolution from shared conventions to radical modernism. Burkholder’s works on musical borrowing in Ives, inRenaissance music, and elsewhere led him to argue that borrowing is a constant current of Western music (bothclassical andpopular) fromGregorian chant tosampling, rather than a special problem in certain repertories as it was previously regarded. He outlined the first broad history of borrowing as a practice and developed an extensive online bibliography on the subject, and his work on borrowing is featured in the graphic novelTheft!: A History of Music.[6] He has also written extensively on music history pedagogy and historical narratives. His publications have been translated into Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Spanish, German, Italian, and Arabic and are known worldwide.[3]
Since 2001, he has written and revisedA History of Western Music and the correspondingNorton Anthology of Western Music after the deaths of the previous authors,Donald Jay Grout andClaude V. Palisca.A History of Western Music is an English-language general survey of music history used at colleges and universities around the world. Burkholder thoroughly revised the narrative to emphasize the people who made and heard the music and what they valued in it and to include more music from the Americas, more by women and African Americans, and more popular music and jazz.[7]
In 1986, Burkholder was awarded theAlfred Einstein Award for excellence of a musicological article by the American Musicological Society.[8] Additional honors include twoIrving Lowens Awards from theSociety for American Music, and twoDeems Taylor Awards fromASCAP. In 2010, he was named an Honorary Member of the American Musicological Society, the youngest person ever granted this award for lifetime achievement.[9]
