Roger Kamien

Who is Roger Kamien?

Roger Kamien is a retired professor emeritus of musicology in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. He was born in Paris, and was raised in America. He is the author of the book Music: An Appreciation, which is intended to show students the basics and the importance of music. It is considered essentially a textbook because its use mostly in colleges. It is published by McGraw-Hill and provides learners with information on how to understand classical and modern music.

Kamien taught at Queens College, New York. He developed the concept of the listening outline, which he incorporated into the first edition of Music: An Appreciation and which he has refined and enhanced in every subsequent edition. This is a text intended for students of all levels and backgrounds. The latest version is the eighth. It contains a multimedia CD-ROM and histories of jazz, rock, and classical music and details of the composition of an orchestra.

Kamien has studied the piano with Claudio Arrau, among others; and Schenkerian analysis with Felix Salzer and Ernst Oster. He obtained a doctorate degree from Princeton University in 1964.