Biography
George Bozarth specializes in 19th-century studies, especially the music of Johannes Brahms and musical life in Boston. He is also interested in the early history of the piano.
He was the founding Executive Director of the American Brahms Society, 1983–2014. He is co-author of the article on Johannes Brahms for the second edition of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, and the editor of Brahms Studies: Analytical and Historical Perspectives (Oxford University Press),The Brahms-Keller Correspondence (University of Nebraska Press), and On Brahms and His Circle: Essays and Documentary Studies by Karl Geiringer (Harmonie Park Press). His most recent book, Johannes Brahms and George Henschel: An Enduring Friendship, appeared with Harmonie Park Press in 2008.
Bozarth has published numerous articles on Brahms, focusing on compositional process, problems in chronology, documents, word-tone relationships in the songs and piano music, editorial issues, and questions of performance practice. He has edited the cantata Ach Gott, von Himmel sieh darein, BWV 2, for the Neue Bach-Ausgabe, and the complete organ works of Brahms for G. Henle Verlag (2017) and the Neue Brahms-Ausgabe (2016). His current projects include books on the Irish fortepiano maker William Southwell, musical life in late 19th-century Boston, and the reception of Brahms's music in 19th-century Boston. He has held grants from the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Philosophical Society, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Royalty Research Fund at the University of Washington.
He offers courses on music from the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic periods, including specialized courses on chorale-based music from Luther to Bach, the choral music, art songs, and chamber music of Brahms, cultural life in 19th-century Boston, and performance practices in the 18th and 19th centuries.
A fortepianist who specializes in accompanying German art song, Bozarth owns a large collection of early pianos (1780-1895) housed in the Seattle Early Keyboard Museum (SEKM!). He was Artistic Director of the Seattle early music series Gallery Concerts for twenty-eight years, and now is Artistic Director of the Kennebec Early Music Festival (Bath, ME) and the series Musique du Jour Presents! (Seattle, WA)..
Bozarth took his Ph.D. in historical musicology at Princeton University and was Ruth Sutton Waters Endowed Professor of Music at the University of Washington, 2008–11.