Carl B. Schmidt received his undergraduate degree with honors from Stanford University and his masters and doctoral degrees from Harvard University. His principal teachers were Putnam Aldrich, John Ward, Nino Pirrotta, and Nadia Boulanger (at Fontainebleau). He has written extensively on seventeenth-century Italian and French opera and ballet (notably Lully), on Georges Auric and Francis Poulenc, and is currently researching the 20th century American composer Randall Thompson and the history of the Handel Choir of Baltimore. His research and reviews have been published in numerous American and foreign journals including Journal of the American Musicological Society, Rivista Italiana di Musicologia, Music Library Association Notes, Musical Quarterly, Harvard Library Bulletin, Journal of Musicology, Dix-septième siècle, 'Recherches' sur la Musique française classique, and Current Musicology, among others. Schmidt has directed a college glee club on a seven-week/eight-country European tour, narrated Poulenc's L'Histoire de Babar le petit elephant, in various concerts, and given lecture/recitals including several with mezzo-soprano Leneida Crawford and pianist Susan Ricci. In January 2013 he read a paper entitled 'La method de composition de Francis Poulenc à travers ses brouillons' at the international Poulenc Colloquium at the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse in Paris. A former Chairperson of the Towson University Department of Music, Schmidt teaches survey courses for non-majors and upper-division history classes for music majors including specialty courses on Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, the Arts in Paris, Igor Stravinsky, Symphonic Literature, and Vocal Literature.

He lectures widely in the Philadelphia-Baltimore-Washington area, serves on the Board of Directors of The Handel Choir of Baltimore, and has been the recipient of significant grants from various universities, the American Council of Learned Societies, The National Endowment for the Humanities, and of a Harvard University Houghton Library Visiting Fellowship.