Charles H. Webb

Charles Haizlip Webb (1933–2026) was an American pianist, organist, conductor, composer, arranger, music educator, and United Methodist church musician whose career joined university leadership with more than six decades of service to congregational music. Born in Dallas, Texas, on February 14, 1933, he was a keyboard prodigy and began performing publicly as a child. He studied music at Southern Methodist University, served as a United States Air Force officer, and moved to Bloomington, Indiana, in 1958 for doctoral study. Indiana University awarded him the Doctor of Music degree in 1964.

Webb joined the Indiana University music faculty in 1960 and became dean of the School of Music, now the Jacobs School of Music, in 1973. He led the school for twenty-four years, retiring in 1997, while continuing to perform as a pianist, organist, and conductor. He also served First United Methodist Church in Bloomington for nearly sixty-two years and was active as a church musician throughout his professional life.

Webb served on The United Methodist Church’s Hymnal Revision Committee in the 1980s and contributed tunes, harmonizations, descants, arrangements, and transcriptions to the 1989 United Methodist Hymnal. His setting of the final Baptismal Covenant response appears as hymn 53c. Indiana University announced his death in Bloomington on April 13, 2026, at age ninety-three.