Finscher, Ludwig

Finscher, Ludwig, eminent German musicologist and lexicographer; b. Kassel, March 14, 1930. He was a student of Gerber at the Univ. of Göttingen (Ph.D., 1954, with the diss. Die Messen und Motetten Loyset Comperes; publ. as Loyset Compere (c. 1450–1518): Life and Works in Musicological Studies and Documents, XII, 1964), completing his Habilitation at the Univ. of Saarbriicken in 1967 with his Das klassische Streichcjuartett und seine Grundlegung durch Joseph Haydn (publ. as Studien zur Geschichte des Streichquartetts: I, Die Entstehung des klassischen Streichquartetts: Von den Vorformen zur Grundlegung durch Joseph Haydn, Kassel, 1974). He was asst. lecturer at the inst. of musicology at the Univ. of Kiel (1960–65), and then at the Univ. of Saarbriicken (1965–68). After serving as prof, of musicology at the Univ. of Frankfurt am Main (1968–81), he held that position at the Univ. of Heidelberg (from 1981). He was ed. (1961–68) and co-ed. (1968–74) of Die Musikforschung. Finscher served as president of the Gesellschaft fur Musikforschung (1974–77), and also was vice presi-dent (1972–77) and president (1977–82) of the International Musicological Soc. He ed. 2 vols. of the complete musical works of Gaffurius in the Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae series (1955, 1967; not continued), and a collected ed. of the works of Compere in the same series (15 vols., 1958–72). With K. von Fischer, he ed. the complete works of Hindemith (Mainz, 1976 et seq.). He also ed. (with F. Blume et al.) Geschichte der Evangelischen Kirchenmusik (Kassel, 2nd ed., 1965; Eng. tr., aug., 1974 as Protestant Church Music: A History), Quellenstudien zu Musik der Renaissance (2 vols., Munich, 1981, Wiesbaden, 1983), Ludwig van Beethoven (Darmstadt, 1983), Die Musik des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts (Laaber, 1989 et seq.), and Die Mannheimer Hofkapelle im Zeitalter Carl Theodors (Mannheim, 1992). Finscher holds the prestigious position of ed. of the exhaustive revision of Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, which commenced publication in 1994. That same year he was made a member of the order Pour le merite. In 1997 he received the Great Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Bibliography

A. Laubenthal, ed., Studien zur Musikgeschichte: Eine Festschrift fur L. F. (Kassel, 1995).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire