Leon Plantinga 1936

Academic/Scholar

Leon Plantinga is the younger brother of Alvin Pantinga and the older brother of Cornelius Plantinga. Their family was a productive one in terms of producing academic achievers. There is one other brother, currently deceased, who was a news producer for CBS, one of the major national networks in New York City. Leon’s calling was in music, and he became an academic with an appointment at Yale University.

Plantinga graduated from Calvin College, Grand Rapids, MI in 1957. He then went to Michigan State University and earned an MM degree in piano performance in 1959. He then went to Yale University and earned his Ph.D. degree in the History of Music in 1964.

It is rare that major universities hire their graduates for teaching positions unless the graduate shows extraordinary promise for future performance. Apparently Yale saw this in Plantinga and hired him for an academic position. It would be his only permanent academic position for life. He remained at Yale until his retirement in 2005, a 42 year career. His current title at Yale is the Henry L. and Lucy G. Moses Professor of Music Emeritus.

While at Yale, Plantinga served as chair of the Department of Music for ten years. During the 1990’s he also served as the Director of the Division of the Humanities. Following his retirement he spent a year at the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton. Following that he became the Director of the Yale Collection of Musical Instruments.

During his academic career, Plantinga has written widely on music in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, the life and works of Muzio Clementi and a history of the 19^th century European music including a study of the Beethoven Concertos. His textbook “Romantic Music” continues to be the standard textbook on 19^th century music in American universities.

Plantinga’s list of book publications is:

“Schumann as Critic”, Yale University Press, 1967,

“Clementi: His Life and Music”, Oxford University Press, 1977,

“Romantic Music”, W. W. Norton, 1984, and

“Beethoven’s Concertos”: History, Style, Performance, W. W. Norton, 1999.

In addition to the books, Plantinga published numerous articles in academic journals.

Plantinga’s daughter is Amy Plantinga Pauw, Professor of Theology at the Louisville Presbyterian Seminary, and his son is Andrew Plantinga, Professor of Environmental Economics at the Bren Center, University of California at Santa Barbara.

---