Bro. Todd Ridder, S.M., Ph.D., teaches courses in music history and literature, and acts as coordinator for the Church Music Certificate program and as media and personnel coordinator for the Musical Arts Learning Lab (MALL). He is also the faculty advisor for the Phi Omega chapter of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia professional music fraternity. He joined U.D.'s music faculty in 1993, and he also teaches courses for both the Department of Religious Studies and the International Marian Research Institute. In the music department he teaches courses on Music History, History of American Music, History of American Jazz, Sacred Music, Contemporary Liturgical Music, and The First-Year Experience (section for music majors), a university-wide required course for first-year students, team taught with upperclass student mentors. In the Winter 2000 semester, he taught a course in Religion and the Arts. He also teaches viola da gamba lessons and sometimes coaches string ensembles.
A member of the Society of Mary, Dr. Ridder has a B.Mus. degree from U.D., masters degrees in both music education (from the University of Cincinnati) and pastoral theology (from Loyola University of Chicago), and a doctorate in musicology from the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC; additional graduate work was done at Case Western Reserve University, Berklee College of Music, Kent State University, the College of Santa Fe, the University of Vienna and the University of Quebec at Chicoutimi. In the summer of 1998 he was one of 15 professors chosen nationwide to participate in a six-week seminar on "Analyzing Early Music 1300-1600," sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities at Brandeis University. He has taught for eighteen years at the secondary school level in Ohio, Kentucky and Maryland, and for eight years at the university level (at Catholic University, United Theological Seminary and U.D.).
Dr. Ridder has done extensive research in North America and in Europe, and he has lectured and published articles in the areas of plainchant, liturgical music, liturgical history, early music performance, jazz and music education. He reviews books for the journals Worship and College Music Society Symposium, and he is the program annotator for the Springfield Symphony Orchestra. He is Assistant Director of the Miami Valley Catholic Church Musicians, a branch of Cincinnati archdiocesan chapter of the National Association of Pastoral Musicians, and in 1995 he was elected into membership in the North American Academy of Liturgy. In 1990 he received the Irving Lowens Award for Musicological Research from the Capital Chapter of the American Musicological Society. With his faculty colleague, Dr. Phillip Magnuson, he was awarded a U.D. Fund for Educational Development grant to develop computer courseware. Their work in progress may be viewed on the Music Department's own instructional webserver, http://maestro.udayton.edu.
Bro. Ridder has performed locally and in the Washington area on cello, viola da gamba and sackbut, especially as a member of Quodlibet. He is the founder and director of the Schola Cantorum Daytoniensis, a group devoted to the performance of Gregorian chant and related medieval and Renaissance liturgical music.