Yo Tomita

Gerhard Herz Visiting Bach Professor 

Music History 

Dr. Yo Tomita is a scholar known internationally for his work on the manuscript sources of the works of Johann Sebastian Bach (esp. the Well-Tempered Clavier II), the Bach Bibliography and musicological font, Bach.

Having been a long-standing member of the organizing committee of the Biennial International Conference on Baroque Music, he chaired the 14th Conference in July 2010 in Belfast. In November 2007, he also organized the international symposium ‘Understanding Bach’s B-minor Mass’ there. From 2005 to 2009, he served the editorial board of the Journal of Musicological Research. From 2006 to 2009 he became the trustee of the Bach Network UK, and from 2010 became the members of both Advisory Council and the editorial team of its journal, Understanding Bach.

His recent publications include the critical edition of the Well-Tempered Clavier II (G. Henle, 2007), The Baroque Masters: Bach (Ashgate Publishing, 2011), and Exploring Bach’s B-minor Mass (Cambridge University Press, c.2013).

Dr. Tomita is currently working on a two-volume monograph The Genesis and Early History of Bach's Well-tempered Clavier, Book II: a composer and his editions, c.1738-1850 for Ashgate Publishing, and The Cambridge Bach Encyclopedia for Cambridge University Press. Dr. Tomita is Professor of Musicology at Queen’s University Belfast and Senior Fellow at Bach-Archiv Leipzig. He is resident during Fall 2012 as the third Gerhard Herz Visiting Bach Professor at the University of Louisville.