A native of Chicago, Whiting graduated from Macalester College in 1975 with a major in music (voice and piano) and a minor in German. He studied musicology at Christian-Albrechts-Universität in Kiel, Germany, on a Fulbright fellowship (1975–77), then sang for a season with the Chicago Symphony Chorus (under Solti, Giulini, Barenboim, and Hillis). He did his graduate work in musicology at the University of Illinois, taking the M.M. with a thesis on Erik Satie and Parisian musical entertainment, and the Ph.D. with a dissertation on Beethoven’s early variations. As a Professor at the University of Michigan, he has published thirty articles, book chapters, and editions, on a wide variety of subjects. He has given dozens of scholarly presentations in the US and Germany. His Satie the Bohemian: From Cabaret to Concert Hall (Oxford, 1999) was named an outstanding academic book by Choice. His most recent publication is “Beethoven Translating Shakespeare: Dramatic Models for the Slow Movement of the String Quartet Op. 18 No. 1” in the Journal of the American Musicological Society (2018). His current projects include a translation of Jürgen Uhde’s Beethovens Klaviermusik (3 vols.) and a study of Beethoven’s theatrical background.
Whiting’s professional commitment to university education is reflected in his service as an academic administrator. At the U-M International Institute, he directed the Center for European Studies (1998–2002), served as an associate director of the Institute (2000–2002), and launched its European Union Center in 2001. From 2003 to 2014 he served as Associate Dean for Graduate Studies at the School of Music, Theatre & Dance. He chaired the Musicology Department in 2016–17.