Ludwig Finscher

Ludwig Finscher (born March 14, 1930 in Kassel ; † June 30, 2020 in Wolfenbüttel ) was a German music historian .

Live and act

Finscher studied musicology (with Rudolf Gerber ), English and German from 1949 to 1954 at the University of Göttingen . He received his doctorate with a thesis on the topic The Masses and Motets Loyset Compères . From 1955 to 1960 he worked as a freelance music critic and in 1960 became assistant to Walter Wiora , first at Kiel University and from 1965 at Saarbrücken University .

In 1967 the habilitation followed in Saarbrücken with the work The classical string quartet and its foundation by Joseph Haydn . From 1968 to 1981 he held a chair for musicology in Frankfurt , from 1981 to his retirement in 1995, the same position in Heidelberg . From 1974 to 1977 he was President of the Society for Music Research , from 1977 to 1981 President of the International Society for Music Research .

Finscher spent his twilight years in Wolfenbüttel (Lower Saxony).

Research work

One of Finscher's most important achievements is his editing of the 28-volume new edition of the lexicon The Music in Past and Present , for which he wrote or updated around 40 articles himself.

His extensive studies of the string quartet , chamber music and Joseph Haydn , as well as the two-volume music of the 15th and 16th centuries, are considered musicological standard works .

Finscher contributed to the complete editions of the works by Chr. W. Gluck and WA Mozart , as well as to the edition of the compositions by Paul Hindemith . He was also co-editor of the Capellae Apostolicae Sixtinaeque Collectanea Acta Monumenta .

He has published over 130 articles in edited volumes and specialist journals.

honors and awards

• 1994 acceptance into the order Pour le Mérite
• 1997 Award of the Great Cross of Merit with Star of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
• 2002 (February 28) Awarded an honorary doctorate from the Philosophical Faculty of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
• since 2002 honorary member of the Greek magazine "Mousikologia" (Ed. Olympia Psychopedis-Frangou, director of the department "Historical & Systematic Musicology" of the Department of Music Studies at the University of Athens)
• 2003 Awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Zurich
• 2006 Balzan Prize for the history of occidental music since 1600, endowed with 1 million Swiss francs (awarded on November 24, 2006 by the Italian President Giorgio Napolitano in Rome)
• 2009 Award of an honorary doctorate from the Philosophical Faculty of Saarland University

Web links

• Literature by and about Ludwig Finscher in the catalog of the German National Library
• A portrait photo of Finscher
• Literature by Ludwig Finscher in the bibliography of music literature
• Bio and bibliography on the website of the Balzanstiftung
• You don't have to be able to play the piano - a portrait of Volker Hagedorn ( DIE ZEIT , June 21, 2007, No. 26)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Laurenz Lütteken : Premature theses and narrowing down remained alien to him - on the death of Ludwig Finscher. In: Neue ZürcherZeitung. July 1, 2020, accessed July 1, 2020 . 
2. ↑ Harald Eggebrecht: Hunters and collectors: To the death of the musicologist Harald Finscher. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung. July 2, 2020, accessed July 2, 2020 . 
3. ↑ Ludwig Finscher in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)
4. ↑ Communications . In: The music research . tape 50 , No. 4 (Oct. – Dec.), 1997, pp. 498-500, here p. 498 . - Ludwig Finscher. In: Who's Who - The People Lexicon.