Michael Fend

Michael Fend studied Musicology with Carl Dahlhaus at the University of Berlin, as well as German Literature and Philosophy. For his PhD he translated and critically commented on a Renaissance music treatise in which the author attempted to construct an irrefutable theory of tonality. He pursued the history of Renaissance pre-rational and symbolic thinking at the Warburg Institute in London, where he had also come to learn English without realising that this would become a lifelong task.<br /> <br /> Here he pursued a project on non-classical traditions in Opera around 1800. It concerned him that the German repertoire had dominated the historic and normative concept of what was considered 'classical' music. Focussing on Cherubini's operatic dramaturgies, contemporary aesthetics and on institutional practices he has tried to establish the conditions under which Cherubini could continue in his metier during the Revolutionary process. <em>Cherubinis Pariser Opern </em>(1788-1803) was published in 2007. He has also acted as co-editor in a project by 30 scholars into the history of the conservatoire in Europe, funded by the European Science Foundation (ESF) and published in 2005.<br /> <br /> His field is the intellectual history of music, which takes into account the relevant biographical and institutional factors to get a more 'real' view of the forces shaping musical culture.

16th-century theory; Cherubini and 19th-century French opera; Adorno; historiography and philosophy of music.