Cleveland Johnson

Cleveland Johnson is Professor of Music History at DePauw University. He holds the B.Mus. degree from the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music and the D.Phil. from Oxford University. His teachers and mentors included Denis Arnold, John Caldwell, and Alan Tyson in musicology, and Fenner Douglas, William Porter, and Harold Vogel in organ.

Johnson is a respected scholar/performer with a special interest in the seventeenth-century German organ and its literature. His most exemplary contributions to this field are his three-volume edition of previously unpublished organ works by the seventeenth-century Hamburg organist, Heinrich Scheidemann, and 6-CD recordings of Scheidemann's organ music. Most recently, he has investigated the history of keyboard instruments in India; this work includes the documentation of historic pipe organs there, as well as at the history of the indigenous Indian harmonium.

In the classroom, Professor Johnson is particularly interested in the appropriate pedagogical use of new technologies. Rather than using technology to distance the instructor from his students, he explores ways to enhance the classroom experience in the liberal arts tradition. His Virtual Vienna course was a pioneering effort in this direction. His special teaching interests include Music in General Studies, Music History of the Renaissance and Baroque, Music and the Arts in Weimar and Nazi Germany, and the Music of India.

His work has received grant support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Lilly Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Thomas J. Watson Foundation, the American Institute for Indian Studies, and the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdiesnst (Fulbright).

For more information about Johnson and his activities:

Curriculum Vitae

Scheidemann Recordings (listen to Harmonia Interview)

Vocal Compositions in German Organ Tablatures: 1550-1650
(a searchable database of 6585 records)

The Madras Season of 2003/04:
A Searchable Database of Featured Ragas, Composers, and Compositions

Email: cjohnson@depauw.edu