John C. Schmidt
John C. Schmidt, Professor of Music, teaches music theory, music history, and organ at Texas State. He holds a Bachelor of Music degree from Southwestern University, Georgetown, Texas, studying organ with R. Cochrane Penick, and a Master of Sacred Music from Union Theological Seminary, New York, with organ study from Vernon de Tar. He completed a Ph.D. in musicology at New York University, with a dissertation on the 19th-century American composer, John Knowles Paine. Dr. Schmidt has published scholarly editions of Paine’s works, most recently Paine’s Second Symphony, “Spring,”and is co-author of the Paine article for Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians and Oxford Music Online, as well as thirteen other articles for that publication. A fifth-generation Texan, he is also involved in research concerning the music of 19th-century Germans in Texas.
Dr. Schmidt is a Trustee of the Sinfonian Educational Foundation of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia and a member of the Governing Board of Inspiration Point Fine Arts Colony—Opera in the Ozarks. He is an honorary member of Kappa Kappa Psi and Tau Beta Sigma, and a National Arts Associate of Sigma Alpha Iota. An active organist, he is a Fellow of the American Guild of Organists and one of its professional certification examiners. He is organist for Covenant Presbyterian Church in Austin.