John Henry van der Meer

John Henry van der Meer (The Hague, 9 February 1920) was a Dutch musicologist who spent much of his career in Germany. He is best known as a specialist in organology, the branch of musicology concerned with the study of musical instruments, and much of his work revolves around them.

His training combined law and musicology at the University of Utrecht, where his teachers included Albert Smijers and Eduard Reeser. In 1956 he obtained his doctorate with a dissertation on Fux as an opera composer. Before establishing his profile as a researcher, he taught music theory and music history at the Utrecht Conservatory between 1946 and 1954, and music history at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague between 1949 and 1955.

Between 1954 and 1963 he was curator of the music department of the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague. In 1963 he took charge of the musical instrument collection of the German National Museum in Nuremberg, a post he held until 1984. From that position he published studies on harpsichords, wind and string instruments, and the history of instrument collections.

His institutional recognition included his appointment as corresponding member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences in 1972 and the award of the Curt Sachs Prize by the American Musical Instrument Society in 1986. His bibliography, ranging from studies of keyboard manuscripts to works on the bass clarinet and the keyboard instruments of Domenico Scarlatti, remains a reference for those studying the material history of music.