J. Peter Burkholder (born June 17, 1954) is an American
musicologist
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 ...
and author. He is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Musicology at the
Indiana University
Indiana University (IU) is a system of public universities in the U.S. state of Indiana.
Campuses
Indiana University has two core campuses, five regional campuses, and two regional centers under the administration of IUPUI.
*Indiana Universit ...
Jacobs School of Music
The Indiana University Jacobs School of Music in Bloomington, Indiana, is a music conservatory established in 1921. Until 2005, it was known as the Indiana University School of Music. It has more than 1,500 students, approximately half of whom ar ...
. He has written numerous monographs, essays, and journal articles on twentieth-century music,
Charles Ives
Charles Edward Ives (; October 20, 1874May 19, 1954) was an American modernist composer, one of the first American composers of international renown. His music was largely ignored during his early career, and many of his works went unperformed f ...
, musical borrowing, American music, musical meaning, analysis, and music history pedagogy.
He is the principal author of ''A History of Western Music'', 10th Edition, published by
W. W. Norton & Company.
Career
Burkholder attended
Earlham College
Earlham College is a private liberal arts college in Richmond, Indiana. The college was established in 1847 by the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) and has a strong focus on Quaker values such as integrity, a commitment to peace and social ...
and
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 be ...
, where he received his 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 ...
in 1983. He began his teaching career at the
University of Wisconsin
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, t ...
before moving to
Indiana University Bloomington
Indiana University Bloomington (IU Bloomington, Indiana University, IU, or simply Indiana) is a public university, public research university in Bloomington, Indiana. It is the flagship university, flagship campus of Indiana University and, with ...
, where he taught from 1988 to 2019 and served as Associate Dean of the Faculties (1995–2000) and Musicology Department Chair (2009–2013).
Burkholder has served as president, vice-president, and director-at-large for the
American Musicological Society
The American Musicological Society (AMS) is a musicological organization which researches, promotes and produces publications on music. Founded in 1934, the AMS was begun by leading American musicologists of the time, and was crucial in legitim ...
. He has also served as president of the Charles Ives Society (1992–2010) and board member of the College Music Society.
Burkholder has contributed to four main areas. Several articles argue for a view of
modernism in music that stresses not only its innovations but also its engagement with the past. Five books and numerous articles on
Charles Ives
Charles Edward Ives (; October 20, 1874May 19, 1954) was an American modernist composer, one of the first American composers of international renown. His music was largely ignored during his early career, and many of his works went unperformed f ...
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, in
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 ...
, and elsewhere led him to argue that borrowing is a constant current of Western music (both
classical and
popular
Popularity or social status is the quality of being well liked, admired or well known to a particular group.
Popular may also refer to:
In sociology
* Popular culture
* Popular fiction
* Popular music
* Popular science
* Populace, the total ...
) from
Gregorian chant
Gregorian chant is the central tradition of Western plainchant, a form of monophonic, unaccompanied sacred song in Latin (and occasionally Greek) of the Roman Catholic Church. Gregorian chant developed mainly in western and central Europe durin ...
to
sampling, 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 novel ''Theft!: A History of Music''. 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.
Since 2001, he has written and revised ''A History of Western Music'' and the corresponding ''Norton Anthology of Western Music'' after the deaths of the previous authors,
Donald Jay Grout
Donald Jay Grout (September 28, 1902 – March 9, 1987) was an American musicologist. He is best known as the author of ''A Short History of Opera,'' first published in 1947. The fourth edition was published by Columbia University Press in 2003.
...
and
Claude V. Palisca
Claude Victor Palisca (24 November 1921 – 11 January 2001) was an American musicologist. An internationally recognized authority on early music, especially opera of the Renaissance music, Renaissance and Baroque music, Baroque periods, he was ...
. ''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.
Awards
In 1986, Burkholder was awarded the
Alfred Einstein
Alfred Einstein (December 30, 1880February 13, 1952) was a German-American musicologist and music editor. He was born in Munich and fled Nazi Germany after Hitler's ''Machtergreifung'', arriving in the United States by 1939. He is best known for b ...
Award for excellence of a musicological article by the American Musicological Society. Additional honors include two
Irving Lowens Irving Lowens (19 August 1916 – 14 November 1983) was an American musicologist, critic, and librarian in the Washington, D.C. area. He served as the chief music critic at the ''Washington Star'' newspaper, the Assistant Head of the music divi ...
Awards from the
Society for American Music
The Society for American Music (SAM) was founded in 1975 and was first named the Sonneck Society in honor of Oscar George Theodore Sonneck, early Chief of the Music Division in the Library of Congress and pioneer scholar of American music. The S ...
, and two
Deems Taylor
Joseph Deems Taylor (December 22, 1885 – July 3, 1966) was an American music critic, composer, and promoter of classical music. Nat Benchley, co-editor of ''The Lost Algonquin Roundtable'', referred to him as "the dean of American music."
Ear ...
Awards from
ASCAP
The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) () is an American not-for-profit performance-rights organization (PRO) that collectively licenses the public performance rights of its members' musical works to venues, broadca ...
. In 2010, he was named an Honorary Member of the American Musicological Society, the youngest person ever granted this award for lifetime achievement.
Selected bibliography
*"Museum Pieces: The Historicist Mainstream in Music of the Last Hundred Years," ''The Journal of Musicology'' 2/2 (Spring 1983): 115–134
*"Brahms and Twentieth-Century Classical Music," ''19th-Century Music'' 8/1 (Summer 1984): 75–83
*"Johannes Martini and the Imitation Mass of the Late Fifteenth Century," ''Journal of the American Musicological Society'' 38/3 (Fall 1985): 470–523 (Einstein winner, 1986)
*''Charles Ives: The Ideas Behind the Music'' (New Haven, CT, 1985) (Lowens winner, 1987)
*"The Uses of Existing Music: Musical Borrowing as a Field," ''Music Library Association Notes'' 50/3 (March 1994): 851–870
*''All Made of Tunes: Charles Ives and the Uses of Musical Borrowing'' (New Haven, CT 1995)
*''Charles Ives and His World'' (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996, editor)
*''Charles Ives and the Classical Tradition'' (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996, editor with Geoffrey Block)
*"Borrowing," in ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians''/Grove Music Online (2001) (
https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.52918)
*"The Organist in Ives," ''Journal of the American Musicological Society'' 55/2 (Summer 2002): 255–310 (Lowens winner, 2004)
*"Music of the Americas and Historical Narratives," ''American Music'' 27 (Winter 2009): 399–423 (ASCAP-Deems Taylor winner, 2010)
*''A History of Western Music'', 10th edition (New York: W. W. Norton, 2019, with
Donald Jay Grout
Donald Jay Grout (September 28, 1902 – March 9, 1987) was an American musicologist. He is best known as the author of ''A Short History of Opera,'' first published in 1947. The fourth edition was published by Columbia University Press in 2003.
...
and
Claude V. Palisca
Claude Victor Palisca (24 November 1921 – 11 January 2001) was an American musicologist. An internationally recognized authority on early music, especially opera of the Renaissance music, Renaissance and Baroque music, Baroque periods, he was ...
)
*''Norton Anthology of Western Music'', 8th edition (New York: W. W. Norton, 2019, with
Claude V. Palisca
Claude Victor Palisca (24 November 1921 – 11 January 2001) was an American musicologist. An internationally recognized authority on early music, especially opera of the Renaissance music, Renaissance and Baroque music, Baroque periods, he was ...
)
*''Listening to Charles Ives: Variations on His America'' (Lanham, MD: Amadeus Press, 2021)
References
External links
Musical Borrowing and Reworking Annotated BibliographyWFIU Profiles – Musicologist Peter BurkholderWABE – City Lights: Patti Austin; Horror Film Festival; And MoreTheft! A History of Music
{{DEFAULTSORT:Burkholder, J. Peter
1954 births
Living people
American musicologists
Indiana University faculty
University of Wisconsin–Madison faculty
Earlham College alumni
University of Chicago alumni