Roger Goeb was born in Cherokee, Iowa. Although he had studied piano, trumpet, French horn, viola, violin, and woodwind instruments from an early age, he turned to the profession of music comparatively late. He studied agriculture at the University of Wisconsin (which twenty years later would be called University of Wisconsin–Madison), earning a BS degree in 1936. He then earned his living for two years playing in jazz bands before going to Paris to study composition at the Ecole Normale de Musique with Nadia Boulanger (1938–39). Returning to the United States he studied composition privately with Otto Luening, followed by graduate work, first at New York University, and then at the Cleveland Institute with Herbert Elwell, where he earned a Master of Music degree in 1942. Three years later, he gained a PhD at the University of Iowa with his Symphony No. 2 as a dissertation. After teaching stints at Bard College, the Juilliard School, Stanford University, and Adelphi College, he was awarded two successive Guggenheim fellowships in 1950–51 and 1951–52.
