Niemöller, Klaus Wolfgang

Niemöller, Klaus Wolfgang, esteemed German musicologist; b. Gelsenkirchen, July 21, 1929. He was a student of Fellerer at the Univ. of Cologne (Ph.D., 1955, with the diss. Nikolaus Wollick [1480–1541] und sein Musiktraktat; publ. in Cologne, 1956), and continued his studies in Paris, Rome, and Freiburg im Breisgau (1955–56). In 1958 he became an asst. lecturer in the musicology dept. at the Univ. of Cologne, where he completed his Habilitation in 1964 with his Untersuchungen zu Musikpflege und Musikunterricht an den deutschen Lateinschulen vom ausgehenden Mittelalter bis um 1600 (publ. in Regensburg, 1969). He subsequently held appointments on its faculty as a lecturer, ausserplanmässiger Professor (1969–70), and research fellow and prof. (from 1970), and, from 1983 to 1994, as director of its Musikwissenschaftlichen Inst. In 1977 he became chairman of the Joseph Haydn Inst. in Cologne. From 1989 to 1993 he was president of the Gesellschaft für Musikforschung. With A. Mayeda, he served as ed. of the new critical edition of the complete works of Robert Schumann, which began publication in 1991. In 1971 he received the Dent Medal of England, and, in 1975, was made a member of the Nordheim- westfälischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Niemöller’s learned articles have appeared in various Festschriften, series, and journals. He is an authority on sources for the study of the history of early music theory and other aspects of early music, as well as of the music of the 19^th century.

—Nicolas Slomnisky/Laura Kaun/Dennis McIntire