Background
Years of Service: 1995-2018
Robert Gjerdingen joined the Bienen School of Music faculty in 1995. He is the author of several books, articles, and reviews in the fields of music theory, music perception, and 18th-century musical style. He served on the editorial boards of Music Theory Spectrum, the Journal of Music Theory, and the Journal of the American Musicological Society; on the executive board of the Society for Music Theory; and as editor of Music Perception. In 2009 his book Music in the Galant Style received the Wallace Berry Award from the Society for Music Theory. His research on the teaching methods of 18th-century conservatories in Italy garnered six years of support from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
He received a BFA from California Institute of the Arts, an MA from the University of Hawaii, and a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. Before coming to Northwestern, Gjerdingen taught at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, the University of Michigan, Harvard University, Carleton College, and the U.S. Military Band School. He was also vice president for Music Taxonomy at MoodLogic, Inc., an online music company in Silicon Valley, at the peak of the Internet revolution.