Horace Clarence Boyer, PhD, is Professor Emeritus of Music Theory and African American Music at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where he taught for twenty-six years.

During the 1985-86 academic year Boyer served as Guest Curator of Musical History at the Smithonian Institution and during the 1986-87 year he was the Distinguished Scholar-at-Large at Fisk University where he conducted the famed Fisk Jubilee Singers in thirty-five concerts.
Boyer served as advisor on gospel music to the New Grove Dictionary of American Music, for which he wrote forty-five biographical entries; edited EVERY VOICE AND SING II - AN AFRICAN AMERICAN HYMNAL (for the Episcopal Church), and authored the very popular HOW SWEET THE SOUND - THE GOLDEN AGE OF GOSPEL.
With his brother, James, a retired Professor of Education: at Kansas State University. Boyer has performed throughout his life as the Boyer Brothers. They recorded on the
Savoy and Nashboro labels and have appeared in concerts, festivals and on television in over 500 appearances in solo performences, and with such gospel singers Mahalia Jackson, Clara Ward, Alex Bradford, James Ceveland. and Dorothy Love Coates.

As a scholar Boyer has appeared in such documentaries as the BBC'a THE STORY OF GOSPEL. MAHALIA JACKSON: THE POWER AND THE GLORY J and DARK MIDNIGHT WHEN I RISE: THE STORY OF THE FISK JUBILEE SINGERS, both for PHS.
At his retirement from the University of Massachusetts in 1999 the Department of Music and Dance established the Horace Clarence Boyer Gospel Music Fund in honor and recognition of his outstanding service to the University.
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Horace Clarence Boyer, PhD, is Professor Emeritus of Music Theory and African American Music at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where he taught for twenty-six years.

During the 1985-86 academic year Boyer served as Guest Curator of Musical History at the Smithonian Institution and during the 1986-87 year he was the Distinguished Scholar-at-Large at Fisk University where he conducted the famed Fisk Jubilee Singers in thirty-five concerts . . . full bio