A professor of musicology at the Washington University in St. Louis, he is known for his research on Italian sacred music of the 17th century, especially Monteverdi's Vespro della Beata Vergine.
He studied musicology at the University of Illinois from 1965 to 1968, earning a PhD in 1972 with a dissertation entitled The Monteverdi Vespers of 1610 and their Relationship with Italian Sacred Music of the Early Seventeenth Century.
[4] He authored a critical edition of the Vespro della Beata Vergine for Oxford University Press in 1999 and subsequently wrote a book, The Monteverdi Vespers of 1610: Music, Context, Performance.
[5] He noted the author's knowledge and "keen musical instincts" in aspects of performance such as tempo, tuning, pitch and transposition, vocal technique, pronunciation and ornamentation, and continuo realization.
[5] Together with Anne Schnoebelen, Kurtzman published a catalogue of sacred music printed in Italy, around 2000 works for mass and other liturgical functions.