John Anthony Caldwell (born 6 July 1938) is an English musicologist and composer.
Caldwell was born in Bebington, Cheshire and studied the organ at the Matthay School of Music in Liverpool, becoming a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists in 1957.
[1] He became a senior research fellow of Jesus College, Oxford in 1999 and given the title of Professor by the University Distinctions Committee.
In one of his late articles dedicated to early witnesses of Western modal music and music theory he suggested to consider modality not to be bound up with 8 "standard" church tones, but to treat it as a unifying concept for Western chant.
[4] His compositions include the opera-oratorio Good Friday, first performed in Oxford in February 1998 [1] and Ecce sacerdos magnus for the Choirs of All Saints' Church, Northampton.