Jürgen Meyer (acoustician)

Jürgen Meyer (born March 16, 1933 in Braunschweig ) is a German expert on acoustics .

Meyer graduated from the Wilhelm-Gymnasium in Braunschweig in 1951 and studied electrical engineering and acoustics at the TH Braunschweig with his doctorate in 1960 on the acoustics of organ pipes ( about the resonance properties and transient processes of labial organ pipes ). From 1957 he worked at the Laboratory for Musical Acoustics at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB), where he took over as the successor to Werner Lottermoser in 1971 . In 1985 he took over the management of the hearing acoustics division (applied acoustics). He stayed there until his retirement. His successor as head of the Laboratory for Musical Acoustics was Klaus Wogram, a specialist in brass instruments, from 1985 to 2005.

Meyer deals with the acoustics of musical instruments and especially the connection between playing technique and sound, acoustics of orchestras (and their performance practice) and concert halls, including historical concert halls, flutes, directional characteristics of musical instruments, church acoustics. Since 1990 he has given acoustic demonstrations with orchestras in the USA, Japan and Europe, including the Berliner Philharmoniker.

He was also a lecturer for musical acoustics and from 1980 professor at the Detmold University of Music .

Meyer plays the violin himself, played in string quartets and directed a chamber orchestra with amateur musicians.

In 1992 he became a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America and in 2004 he received the Helmholtz Medal of the German Society for Acoustics , of which he was President from 1995 to 1998.

Fonts

• Acoustics and musical performance practice: guidelines for acousticians, sound engineers, musicians, instrument makers and architects (series of books Das Musikinstrument ). Bochinsky, Frankfurt am Main 1972. 4th edition 1999; 5th, updated edition 2004, 341 pp.
• Church acoustics . Bochinsky, Frankfurt am Main 2003.
• with Werner Lottermoser: organs, churches and acoustics . 2 volumes, Bochinsky, Frankfurt 1983 (first 1966).
• Acoustics of the guitar in individual representations . Frankfurt 1985.
• Physical aspects of violin playing . Siegburg 1978.
• Editor: Quality aspects of musical instruments . Celle 1988.
• Acoustics of the woodwind instruments in individual presentations . Frankfurt 1966.