David Schulenberg's bio

I am a music historian and harpsichordist with special interests in the music of J.S. Bach and his son C.P.E. Bach; historical performance practice, theory, and notation, particularly in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century keyboard music; and issues in the philosophy of music and musical expression. Non-professional interests and pursuits include Classical antiquity (ancient Greek and Latin), art history, and tropical fish (especially Cichlidae). For a formal curriculum vitae, please see my resume.

I was born in New York City in 1955 but grew up in Delmar, N.Y., a suburb of Albany. My parents started me taking piano lessons when I was eight, and although I showed some aptitude as a pianist and amateur composer I expected to pursue a career in the sciences. This remained true until the end of my freshman year at Harvard College, when I decided to major in music. At Harvard I encountered the harpsichord for the first time; I was harpsichordist in the Bach Society Orchestra, but as Harvard offered no instruction in musical performance I studied the instrument privately with John Gibbons and Martin Pearlman, and twice I attended the summer Baroque Performance Institute at Oberlin, Ohio. I was honored to have as my adviser Prof. Luise Vosgerchian, under whose direction I wrote a senior thesis on the late keyboard works of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach.

After graduating in 1976, I went to Stanford University, where I received my M.A. in Music (Performance Practice) a year later. My M.A. thesis was a textbook in Baroque figured bass realization, which I have continued to revise and use in my teaching ever since. My M.A. recital (played on harpsichord) included Bach's fantasias and fugues BWV 903 and 904 and my Prelude for viola da gamba and harpsichord.

After spending a year in the musicology program at The Ohio State University (Columbus), in 1978 I became one of the first three doctoral students admitted into the new Ph.D. program in music at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. By 1982 I had written my dissertation--on the instrumental music of C.P.E. Bach--while serving as the department's de facto harpsichord instructor and performing regularly as a soloist and accompanist on harpsichord and fortepiano. I published a revised version of the dissertation two years later as The Instrumental Music of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. During 1982 I also composed an ambitious harpsichord sonata, although I did not manage to learn it well enough to perform it publicly for another ten years.

Except for a few months in Charlottesville, where I had a one-semester position at the University of Virginia in 1983, I lived in Stony Brook until 1989. I was able to remain active in music thanks to a Mellon Fellowship at New York University (1984-5) and temporary teaching jobs at Baruch College (1986) and Columbia University (1987-9). I also had a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies (1986-7) that allowed me to begin writing my second book, The Keyboard Music of J.S. Bach, which was published in 1992. During this time I was fortunate in being given access to the early keyboard instruments at SUNY-Stony Brook, where on Bach's three hundredth birthday in 1985 I played the first full-length recital on the department's then-new German Baroque organ.

In 1989 I moved to Cambridge, Mass., where I remained for the next three years, apart from a semester of teaching at the University of Texas at Austin in 1990. During this period I finished my book on Bach keyboard music while doing occasional freelance copyediting for academic book publishers and considering whether to seek permanent non-academic employment. I was on the verge of deciding to do the latter when I was invited to join the faculty at Chapel Hill.

At Chapel Hill I have enjoyed the opportunity to carry out much research and writing, to present frequent performances, and to teach and coach numerous talented undergraduate and graduate students. I directed the Collegium Musicum for four years while seeing into print a number of scholarly publications and giving frequent talks and demonstrations at conferences and for the general public. I was particularly honored by invitations to appear at the International Bach Harpsichord Festival at Montreal and before the Midwest Historical Keyboard Society, and to serve as a conference leader at one of the annual organ symposia held at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. I also received appointments to the editorial board of the Journal of the American Musical Society and as editor of volume 4 of Bach Perspectives, a publication of the American Bach Society. I also was elected chapter representative to the Council of the American Musicological Society. My textbook on Baroque music history, written for use in a course that I taught at Chapel Hill, was accepted for publication by Oxford University Press.

I will be leaving Chapel Hill at the end of the 1998-9 academic year, but I expect to remain active in music. It gives me great joy to know that I will be doing so in the company of flutist and musicologist Mary Oleskiewicz, whom I married in 1998 and who is curator of musical instruments and assistant professor of music at America's Shrine to Music Museum, one of the world's leading collections of musical instruments, at the University of South Dakota in Vermillion.

Last updated 3/10/99.