Craig M. Wright


Craig Milton Wright is the Henry L. and Lucy G. Moses Professor of Music Emeritus at Yale University. He studied at the Eastman School of Music from 1962–1966, and at Harvard University from 1966 and 1972, where he obtained an M.A. and a Ph.D. in musicology. Wright completed his Ph.D. in 1972 with a thesis titled Music at the court of Burgundy, 1364-1419. After a year teaching at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, he moved to Yale in 1973, serving as the chair of the department of music from 1986 to 1992.
Wright specialises in music history. His early work concentrated on Middle Ages and renaissance music, his most important contribution being Music and Ceremony at Notre Dame of Paris. More recently, Wright turned his attention to Mozart and the study of genius generally, with the publication of his trade book The Hidden Habits of Genius.
He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1982. In 2004 he was awarded the honorary degree Doctor of Humane Letters from the University of Chicago and in 2010 was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2016 he was awarded Yale's Sewall Prize for excellence in undergraduate teaching and in 2018 the Yale Phi Beta Kappa Devane Medal for excellence in teaching and scholarship.
On May 15, 2013, Wright was named the first Academic Director of Online Education at Yale University. His Yale online music course Introduction to Classical Music had been engaged by 115,000 participants as of January 1, 2020.

Publications