Patricia Carpenter was born in Santa Rosa, California on January 21, 1923, and died on July 8, 2000. Carpenter studied several instruments, primarily piano with Ethel Leginska, as well as percussion, bassoon, and conducting. She conducted the San Bernardino Symphony. Learning of Arnold Schoenberg from Leginska, she wrote asking him for lessons (correspondence is preserved in the Arnold Schoenberg Center in Vienna). From 1942 to 1949 she studied with Schoenberg, and in 1944 she gave the Los Angeles premiere of his Piano Concerto in the two-piano version. She was initially accepted into the composition program at Columbia University to study with Douglas Moore, and her compositions included several chamber and orchestra works. Under the supervision of Albert Hofstadter in philosophy and Paul Henry Lang in musicology, she embarked upon studies in the aesthetics and history of music. She completed her Ph.D. in Music and Philosophy at Columbia in 1972. The first woman to present a keynote address to the Society of Music Theory, she served as its Vice-President from 1992 to 1994. She retired in 1989. The Music Theory Society of New York State holds an annual competition for an emerging scholar award named after her.