Lawrence Kramer

Lawrence Kramer (born 1946) is an American musicologist and composer born in Philadelphia, educated at the University of Pennsylvania and Yale, and currently Distinguished Professor of English and Music at Fordham University since 1978.[1][3][7] He is a pioneering figure in New Musicology, or cultural/critical musicology, authoring sixteen books on music, over 150 articles, and editing the journal 19th-Century Music from 1993 to 2025.[1][7] Largely self-taught in composition, he began writing music in the 1980s but produced most of his catalog after 2006, drawing on theories like deconstruction and philosophy to develop interpretive approaches including 'descriptive realism.'[1][3]