Musicologist and pianist Mark Howard is a Visiting Professor at Claremont Graduate University. He has taught for CGU since 2014, giving courses on Rameau, Research Methodology and Bibliography, and Music Literature and Historical Styles Analysis. He primarily specializes in the music and theories of Jean-Philippe Rameau, French Baroque Music, the History of Music Theory, Piano Music, and Opera.
A leading Rameau scholar, Howard presented his paper “The Human Body or Figure and its Integral Role in Rameau’s Code de musique pratique and Nouvelles réflexions sur le principe sonore (1760)” at a conference devoted to the composer in Milan, Italy in 2015 and then published his first book Decoding Rameau: Music as the Sovereign Science (Libreria Musicale Italiana) the following year. Critically well-received, his book was a major contribution to Rameau studies, featuring the first complete English translation with commentary of Rameau’s monumental treatise Code de musique pratique (Paris, 1760), which covered a wide variety of topics ranging from keyboard and vocal technique to the origins of music itself. Howard then contributed his article “Time and Space as Manipulated Materials in Rameau’s Les Cyclopes” to the multi-authored book Time: Sense, Space, Structure (Brill, 2016), edited by Professors Leonard Koff (UCLA) and CGU’s own, now retired, Nancy van Deusen.
Howard is currently working on his second book, titled The Instrumental Music of Jean-Philippe Rameau, which explores the historical and stylistic background of Rameau’s instrumental music, both for keyboard and the stage. This book reexamines not only this rich and enormously influential repertoire from a stylistic perspective but how it reflected his then groundbreaking work as a music theorist and the cultural milieu of eighteenth-century France.
Howard is also an accomplished pianist and piano teacher, having studied with the concert pianist Judith Edberg at the University of Tampa before embarking on his graduate studies at CGU. In addition to his scholarly work, he owns and operates his own piano studio, Für Elise Piano School, in south Orange County.