author
Friedrich J. (Friedrich Johann) Lehmann
1866–1950
An influential music theorist and teacher at Oberlin Conservatory, he wrote practical textbooks that helped generations of students learn harmony, counterpoint, and musical form. His books are clear, methodical, and rooted in classroom experience.
1 Audiobook
A Treatise on Simple Counterpoint in Forty Lessons
by Friedrich J. (Friedrich Johann) Lehmann
About the author
Born in 1866, Friedrich J. Lehmann was a music educator and theorist best known for his long association with the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio. Contemporary and archival sources identify him as an instructor of theory there, and later as an emeritus professor who retired in 1932 after about 30 years on the faculty.
Lehmann wrote several teaching texts on core subjects in music study, including Harmonic Analysis, A Treatise on Simple Counterpoint in Forty Lessons, and The Analysis of Form in Music. In the prefaces and title pages of these works, he presents them as practical books shaped by the needs of conservatory students, which helps explain their direct, lesson-based style.
He died in 1950 at the age of 83. Today he is remembered chiefly through the durable usefulness of his textbooks, which reflect a careful, disciplined approach to teaching musical structure.