Craig Milton Wright (born 1944) is an American music historian who hold the title of the Henry L. and Lucy G. Moses Professor of Music Emeritus at

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

. He studied at the

Eastman School of Music The Eastman School of Music is the music school of the University of Rochester, a private research university in Rochester, New York. It was established in 1921 by industrialist and philanthropist George Eastman. It offers Bachelor of Music (B.M ...

from 1962 to 1966, and at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

from 1966 and 1972, where he obtained an M.A. and a Ph.D. in

musicology Musicology (from Greek μουσική ''mousikē'' 'music' and -λογια ''-logia'', 'domain of study') is the scholarly analysis and research-based study of music. Musicology departments traditionally belong to the humanities, although some mu ...

. Wright completed his Ph.D. in 1972 with a thesis titled ''Music at the court of Burgundy, 1364-1419''. After a year teaching at the

University of Kentucky The University of Kentucky (UK, UKY, or U of K) is a Public University, public Land-grant University, land-grant research university in Lexington, Kentucky. Founded in 1865 by John Bryan Bowman as the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Kentu ...

in Lexington, he moved to Yale in 1973, serving as the chair of the department of music from 1986 to 1992. Wright specialises in music history. His early work concentrated on

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire a ...

and

renaissance music Renaissance music is traditionally understood to cover European music of the 15th and 16th centuries, later than the Renaissance era as it is understood in other disciplines. Rather than starting from the early 14th-century '' ars nova'', the Tr ...

, his most important contribution being Music and Ceremony at Notre Dame of Paris (1989). More recently, Wright turned his attention to

Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 17565 December 1791), baptised as Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period (music), Classical period. Despite his short life, his ra ...

and the study of genius generally, with the publication of his trade book The Hidden Habits of Genius (HarperCollins, 2020, at Amazon), which was an Amazon Book of the Year selection for the Nonfiction class. He received a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

in 1982. In 2004 he was awarded the honorary degree Doctor of Humane Letters from the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

and in 2010 was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2016 he was awarded Yale's Sewall Prize for excellence in undergraduate teaching and in 2018 the Yale

Phi Beta Kappa The Phi Beta Kappa Society () is the oldest academic honor society in the United States, and the most prestigious, due in part to its long history and academic selectivity. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal a ...

Devane Medal for excellence in teaching and scholarship. On May 15, 2013, Wright was named the first Academic Director of Online Education at Yale University. His Yale online music course Introduction to Classical Music (available at Coursera) had been engaged by 180,000 participants as of December 1, 2020.

Publications

* ''Music at the Court of Burgundy, 1364-1419: A Documentary History'' (Institute of Mediaeval Music, Ltd., Henryville, Ottawa, Binningen, 1979), 271 pp. * ''Music and Ceremony at Notre Dame of Paris'', 500-1550 (Cambridge University Press, 1989), 400 pp. * ''Listening to Music'' (West Publications, St. Paul, 1992), 419 pp; 2nd edition (West Publications, St. Paul, 1996), 435 pp; 3rd edition (Wadsworth, 2000), 451 pp.; 5th edition (Wadsworth, 2007), 451 pp.; 7th edition (Schirmer-Cengage, 2014), 488 pp.; 8th edition (Cengage Learning, 2017). * ''The Maze and the Warrior: Symbols in Architecture, Theology and Music'' (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2001, paperback edition, 2004), 351 pp. * ''Music in Western Civilization'' (Wadsworth-Schirmer, 2006; media edition, 2010), 871 pp. * ''The Essential Listening to Music'' (Schirmer-Cengage, 2013; 2nd edition, 2016), 282 pp. * ''The Hidden Habits of Genius'' (HarperCollins/Dey Street, 2020).

References

1944 births Living people Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni Eastman School of Music alumni American musicologists American music historians American male non-fiction writers Yale University faculty Du Fay scholars {{Musicologist-stub