Peter Child is Class of 1949 professor of music and a Margaret MacVicar Faculty Fellow at MIT, where he has twice chaired the department of Music and Theater Arts. He received his B.A. in music from Reed College in 1975 and his Ph.D. in musical composition from Brandeis University in 1981.
Child was awarded a 2015 Artists Fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Commission and has been awarded numerous fellowships and prestigious awards dating back to the 1970s. His compositions have also been awarded prizes from Tanglewood, East and West Artists, WGBH Radio, New England Conservatory, and League-ISCM in Boston. In addition to his compositional work, Child has published papers concerning music by Shostakovich and Bartok in Music Analysis and College Music Symposium. He won the 2004 Levitan Award in the Humanities at MIT to support his work in musical analysis, and the Levitan Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2010. Child's music has been prominently featured on every biennial Lontano Festival of American Music in London, England, since 2006, and performed by numerous ensembles throughout the United States and the world.
Portrait by John Sachs
