Albrecht Riethmüller, born in Stuttgart in 1947, studied musicology, philosophy, and German literature at the University of Freiburg i.Br., completing the Ph.D. in 1974 and the Habilitation in 1984. He headed the Musicology Department at the Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt a.M. in 1986 before becoming department chair at the Freie Universität in Berlin in 1992. In addition he was visiting professor at the Universities of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Heidelberg, and Halle-Wittenberg. In 1991 he was named Fellow of the Academy of Sciences and Literature in Mainz, and was the 1999 recipient of the John G. Diefenbaker Award of the Canada Council for the Arts in Ottawa, Ontario. Since 2002 he is Affiliated Faculty Member of the Centre for German and European Studies at York University, Toronto, and since 2011 Corresponding Member of the American Musicological Society.

 

Central areas of research are the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and Greek antiquity. He also publishes and lectures on the history of music theory and aesthetics; music terminology; the relationship between music, literature, and politics; and music in film. At the Freie Universität Berlin he is also in charge of various musicological projects in interdisciplinary research clusters such as “Music in Animated Cartoons,” “Military Music in Germany Today,” and “Diversification as the Future of Music?” Publications include Ferruccio Busonis Poetik (1988), Die Walhalla und ihre Musiker (1993), Gedichte über Musik (1996), the two-volume edition Beethoven, Interpretationen seiner Werke (1994, 3rd ed. 2009), and Annäherung an Musik (2007). Since 2000 he is editor of the journal Archiv für Musikwissenschaft.