Peter Burkholder, Distinguished Professor of Musicology Emeritus, has received the Society for American Music’s Lifetime Achievement Award. The award was presented on March 23rd, at the Society’s 50th Annual Conference.
This honor is given by the SAM Board of Trustees “in recognition of the recipient’s significant and substantial lifetime achievement in scholarship, performance, teaching, and/or support of American Music.” In this special fiftieth anniversary year, there were three honorees: J. Peter Burkholder (IU), Carol Hess (UC Davis) , and Guy Ramsey (UPenn). Burkholder was chosen in honor of “the depth of his scholarly insights into the music of Charles Ives as well as the breadth of his contributions to the pedagogy of music history.”
During his time at the Jacobs School of Music, Burkholder has advised dozens of doctoral students in musicology, music theory, and performance. His research interests include 20th-century music, American music, Charles Ives, musical borrowing, and music history pedagogy.
Among his publications are Charles Ives: The Ideas Behind the Music (1985), All Made of Tunes: Charles Ives and the Uses of Musical Borrowing (1995), and Listening to Charles Ives: Variations on His America (2021). He is the editor of Charles Ives and his World (1996), co-editor of Charles Ives and the Classical Tradition (1996), and lead author of A History of Western Music, 10th ed., and Norton Anthology of Western Music, 8th ed. His articles have appeared in Grove Music Online, Journal of the American Musicological Society, Journal of Musicology, Music Theory Spectrum, 19th-Century Music, Musical Quarterly, American Music, Journal of Musicological Research, College Music Symposium, and Journal of Music History Pedagogy, among many others.
Burkholder’s research has garnered many awards, including the American Musicological Society’s Alfred Einstein Award, the Society for American Music’s Irving Lowens Award, and the ASCAP’s Deems Taylor Award. In 2010, he became the youngest person to be named an honorary member of the American Musicological Society. 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.
Burkholder’s work has had a remarkable impact on specialists, through his sustained research on Ives, as well as on generalists, through his monumental revision of A History of Western Music and the Norton Anthology of Western Music. He has worked to update these sources for the 21st-century, helping to create a more diverse and inclusive music history classroom, and shaping the musical education of a new generation of music students.
Congratulations Dr. Burkholder!
Leave a Reply