composer historian musicologist theorist university professor
He completed school exams through a special program designed for those engaged in combat. After the war, he first studied law, later musicology at the University of Göttingen and Freiburg im Breisgau.
His education was interrupted by the Second World War where he served on the front and as an anti-aircraft auxiliary. He showed an interest in banned literature and was exceptionally well read. His thesis at Göttingen in 1953 concerned the masses of Josquin.
After a period as a dramaturg at the German Theater in Göttingen from 1950 to 1958, a job obtained on the recommendation of Berthold Brecht, he became musical editor of the Stuttgarter Zeitung, a newspaper, from 1960 to 1962.
From 1962 to 1966 he served as a research assistant at the state musical research center at the University of Kiel. He earned a professorial grade from that university where he investigated the origins of harmonic tonality.
In 1967 was hired as professor in music history at the Berlin Institute of Technology. Dahlhaus wrote 25 books, more than 400 articles, and contributed to 150 other works on a wide range of subjects, though the majority of these on the history of western music and particularly that of the 19th century (ie Romantic music).
He was very interested in the work of Richard Wagner and his ideas about musical drama as a "total artwork" and how a new language on society and politics was being formed through the work of so-called "modernist" composers.
That art was no longer just "art for arts sake". His other favourite topics included music theory, the aesthetics of music, and the prehistory of "new music" In 1987, he was awarded the Frankfurter Musikpreis. He died in Berlin. 1983a.
1983b.
B. Bradford West.
1980. Between Romanticism and Modernism: Four Studies in the Music of the Later Nineteenth Century.
Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung.
