Erik Aren Schroeder is an Italian-American composer and violinist. His studies at the Universität Mozarteum Salzburg in baroque violin/viola and historical performance practice, under Hiro Kurosaki and Reinhard Goebel, and music theory, under Dr. Juliane Brandes, have afforded him broad expertise in the music of the past five centuries.

His compositions, grounded in historical styles, include the opera La Locandiera (tied to a project awarded in the 2022 Mozarteum Research Competition), an oratorio (The Passions, 2023), and diverse chamber and orchestral works (including a violin concerto, 2024). In 2025, he was commissioned to compose music, recorded by the Mozarteum Akademieorchester and with a specially-built Bösendorfer piano, for the Austrian pavilion at the World Expo in Osaka. The same year, he was featured in the Ö1 Talentebörse.

He is active regularly and internationally as a violinist and violist, performing with various period instrument ensembles and orchestras and collaborating with leading Early Music specialists. Since 2024, he has been employed in archival work and as research assistant at the Stiftung Mozarteum Salzburg. In 2025, he founded the New Classical Society in Salzburg with Paula Heise, dedicated to exploring ways of interacting with the musical past.

His interests include music in Georgian Britain, in particular the works of Thomas Linley Jr., Neoclassicism and the Early Music revival in the twentieth century, Classical performance practice, eighteenth-century opera, and musical aesthetics.