Education
- Ph.D., Doctor of Philosophy, University of Chicago, 1983
- M.A., Master of Arts, University of Chicago, 1980
- A.B., Earlham College, 1975
Biography
J. Peter Burkholder is distinguished professor emeritus of music in musicology at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. His research interests include twentieth-century music, Charles Ives, musical borrowing, American music, musical meaning, analysis, and music history pedagogy.
While at the Jacobs School of Music, he has advised 18 completed Ph.D. dissertations in musicology and music theory, and 20 Doctor of Music documents in performance.
He is the author of Listening to Charles Ives: Variations on His America (2021), All Made of Tunes: Charles Ives and the Uses of Musical Borrowing (1995), and Charles Ives: The Ideas Behind the Music (1985), and lead author of A History of Western Music, 10th ed., with Donald Jay Grout and Claude V. Palisca, and Norton Anthology of Western Music, 8th ed., with Claude V. Palisca (2019).
He is the editor of Charles Ives and His World, is co-editor of Charles Ives and the ClassicalTradition, and has articles in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., Grove Dictionary of American Music, 2nd ed., Grove Music Online, Journalof the American Musicological Society, Journal of Musicology, 19th-Century Music, Musical Quarterly, American Music, Journal of Musicological Research, Notes, Music Theory Spectrum, College Music Symposium, Journal of Music History Pedagogy, and others. His writings have been translated and published in Japanese, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Korean, Chinese, and Arabic. He has written liner notes for Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, and Centaur.
Burkholder was named an honorary member of the American Musicological Society in 2010, the youngest person to receive this award. In addition, he has received awards from the American Musicological Society (Alfred Einstein Award), Society for American Music (two Irving Lowens Awards), ASCAP (two Deems Taylor Awards), and the Association for Recorded Sound Collections as well as Danforth, Rockefeller, and American Council of Learned Societies fellowships. At Indiana University, he has won awards from the Campus Life Division and the Commission on Multicultural Understanding for contributions to improving the campus climate and promoting understanding with regard to diversity issues.
He has served as president, vice-president, and director-at-large of the American Musicological Society, as a board member of the College Music Society, and as president of the Charles Ives Society.