Donald Jay Grout was an American musicologist.

Grout attended Syracuse University

Syracuse University

Syracuse University is a private research university located in Syracuse, New York, United States. Its roots can be traced back to Genesee Wesleyan Seminary, founded by the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1832, which also later founded Genesee College...

 and graduated with a degree in philosophy

Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...

 in 1923. He took his Ph.D. at Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

 in 1939. He taught at Harvard from 1936 to 1942, at the University of Texas from 1942 to 1945 and at Cornell University

Cornell University

Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...

 until 1970.

Early in his career, Grout's main body of research was in opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

. After 1960 he became more interested in philosophies of music history, due in large part to his publication of a general music history textbook, A History of Western Music. This work, which has gone through seven editions as of 2008 and whose later editions were co-written by Claude Palisca and then J. Peter Burkholder after Grout's death, was the foremost English-language general history of music used in colleges and universities in the late 20th century.

Grout also performed as a pianist and organist up until the early 1950s. He served as editor of JAMS

Journal of the American Musicological Society

The Journal of the American Musicological Society The Journal of the American Musicological Society has been published three times a year since 1948. It was preceded by the annual Bulletin of the American Musicological Society and the annual Papers of the American Musicological Society...

from 1948 to 1951, and was president of the American Musicological Society

American Musicological Society

The American Musicological Society is a membership-based musicological organization founded in 1934 to advance scholarly research in the various fields of music as a branch of learning and scholarship; it grew out of a small contingent of the Music Teachers National Association and, more directly,...

 (1952-54, 1960-62) and the International Musicological Society (1961-64).