Danuser, Hermann
Danuser, Hermann
Danuser, Hermann , learned Swiss-born German musicologist; b. Frauenfeld, Oct. 3, 1946. He studied at the Hochschule für Musik (concert diploma in piano, 1971) and at the Univ. (Ph.D., 1973, with the diss. Musikalische Prosa; publ. in Regensburg, 1975) of Zürich. In 1973–74 he held a Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst scholarship in Berlin, where he then was an assistant at the Staatlichen Institut für Musikforschung (1974–75) and the Hochschule der Künste (1975–82). In 1982 he completed his Habilitation at the Technical Univ. there with his Die Musik des 20. Jahrhunderts (publ. in Laaber, 1984). From 1982 to 1988 he was a prof. of musicology at the Hannover Hochschule für Musik und Theater, and then at the Albert-Ludwigs-Univ. in Freiburg im Breisgau from 1988 to 1993. He was active with the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel from 1988, becoming its coordinator of research in 1992. In 1991 he was a visiting prof, at Stanford Univ. In 1993 he became prof. of historical musicology at the Humboldt Univ. in Berlin. He became a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Akademie der Wissenschaften in 1998. Danuser is an authority on the music of the 20th century. He served as ed. of the series Neues Handbuch der Musikwissenschaft (Laaber, 1989–95), Meisterwerke der Musik (Munich, from 1993), and Freiburger Beiträge zur Musikwissenschaft (Laaber, from 1993). His articles have appeared in various scholarly books and journals.
Writings
Gustav Mahler: Das Lied von der Erde (Munich, 1986); ed. Gattungen der Musik und ihre Klassiker (Laaber, 1988; 2nd ed., 1998); Gustav Mahler und seine Zeit (Laaber, 1991); ed. Neue Musik im politischen Wandel (Mainz, 1991); ed. Gustav Mahler (Darmstadt, 1992); ed. Musikalische Interpretation (Laaber, 1992); ed. Igor Strawinsky: Trois pièces pour quatuor a cordes: Skizzen, Fassungen, Dokumente, Essays (Winterthur, 1994); ed. Die klassizistische Moderne in der Musik des 20. Jahrhunderts: Internationales Symposion der Paul Sacher Stiftung Basel 1996 (Winter-thur, 1997).
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire