John Spitzer studied with Reuben Brower and Barrington Moore at Harvard, where he received his first degree. He studied musicology and ethnomusicology at Cornell University with William Austin, James Webster, Sotiros Chianis, and Bell Yung. He held a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh (1983-84), then taught at the University of Michigan (1984-87). In 1987 he joined the faculty of the Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD. He has published scholarly articles on the history of the orchestra, American song, authorship and authenticity, and