James Webster

Prof. Dr. James Webster, born on 13.09.1942 in Evanston (Illinois) did his doctorate in 1974 at Princeton University, where he studied with Sessions, Strunk, Mendel, Cone and Lockwood. Since 1971 he has taught at Cornell University (Ithaca, N.Y.), where he was appointed professor in 1982. He has been a visiting professor at Columbia and Brandeis Universitites and has held several teaching appointments in Germany.

Amongst the honours he has received, the most prominent include a Fulbright grant, fellowships from the NEH, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Research Fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the Einstein and Kinkeldey Awards of the American Musicological Society. He was President of the AMS (1997–98) and has been a member of the Joseph Haydn-Institut (Cologne) since 1979, and since 1998 a member of its board. Webster’s interests include the music of the 18th and 19th centuries in German-speaking countries, with a special focus on Haydn’s life, work and influence. In addition, instrumental music from 1750, the operas of Mozart and those of the 18th century, Beethoven, Schubert and Brahms, as well as editorial practice, the historiography of music and musical aesthetics.