Degrees

Ph.D., Eastman School of Music; M.A., Eastman School of Music; M.L.E., Harvard University; B.M.E., Texas State University

Short Bio

Donald R. Boomgaarden, Dean of the College of Music and Fine Arts and David P. Swanzy Distinguished Professor of Music, is a noted historian of eighteenth-century opera, music aesthetics and harmonic theory. His writings include a book Musical Thought in Eighteenth-Century Britain and Germany, articles in The New Grove Dictionary and The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, the British Dictionary of National Biography, as well as articles and reviews in many scholarly journals including the Journal of Musicological Research, Journal of Music Theory, Ad Parnassum, and the Journal of Education and Learning. 

He attended the Eastman School of Music and the University of Vienna, where he was a Fulbright Scholar. He is also a graduate of Harvard University’s Institute for Management and Leadership in Education. His teaching career has included positions at Ithaca College, St. Mary’s College in Maryland, the Institut für Musikwissenschaft at the University of Salzburg, and Loyola University Maryland. He served as chair of the music department at St. Mary’s College in Maryland, and later as Assistant to the Provost. At Loyola University Maryland Dr. Boomgaarden was the Assistant Vice President for Academic Affairs, where he was responsible primarily for new academic programs, faculty development, and academic assessment. Dr. Boomgaarden has had an extensive career as a composer, pianist, and choral conductor, and has worked as liturgical musician in the United States as well as in Europe.   He has a special interest in American Folk music, and has appeared professionally as a fiddle player and singer of Bluegrass music, and has taught courses in American Roots Music.