Christopher H. Gibbs is the James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Music at Bard College, Co-Artistic Director of the Bard Music Festival, and Executive Editor of The Musical Quarterly. He was educated at Haverford College (BA) and Columbia University (MA, MPhil, PhD).
Gibbs is a leading authority on the life and music of Franz Schubert and is Vice-Chair of the Schubert Research Center in Vienna at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. He was the musicological director for the final seasons of the acclaimed Schubertiade at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. Gibbs edited The Cambridge Companion to Schubert (Cambridge University Press, 1997) and is the author of The Life of Schubert (Cambridge University Press, 2000), which has been translated into five languages. He co-edited, with Morten Solvik, Franz Schubert and His World (Princeton University Press, 2014) and is editor of the forthcoming Schubert in Context (Cambridge University Press, 2026). His other books are as co-editor, with Dana Gooley, of Franz Liszt and His World (Princeton University Press, 2006), and co-author, with Richard Taruskin, of The Oxford History of Western Music, College Edition (Oxford University Press, 2013; revised 2018, 2026).
Gibbs won the Berlin Prize in 2022 and was the Anna-Maria Kellen Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. He is a recipient of the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award and was a fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies. As a writer, lecturer, and consultant, Gibbs works internationally with leading cultural institutions. For the past twenty-five-six seasons, he has been the program annotator and musicological advisor for the Philadelphia Orchestra and writes regularly for the New York Philharmonic.
