Antoine-Elisée Cherbuliez

Antoine-Elisée Cherbuliez (born Mulhouse, Alsace, 22 August 1888; died Zurich, 15 October 1964) was a Swiss musicologist from a Franco-Swiss family who, despite his origins, settled in eastern Switzerland and carried out most of his work in German. His career combined an initial training in engineering, for which he obtained his diploma in 1911 and his doctorate in 1914, with a thorough musical education at the conservatories of Zurich and Strasbourg.

Alongside his technical studies, Cherbuliez completed his musical training with Max Reger in Meiningen and Jena between 1913 and 1916, and worked in Berlin with Siegfried Ochs during 1916. In 1921 he took up the post of musical director in Chur, in the canton of the Grisons. At the University of Zurich he began as a lecturer in 1912, was appointed honorary professor and director of the musicology seminar in 1932, and in 1950 obtained the post of reader. Between 1938 and 1948 he presided over the Swiss Association for Music Education and, from 1948, served as vice-president of the International Council for Traditional Music.

His contribution to Swiss musicology is considerable. Die Schweiz in der deutschen Musikgeschichte (1932) was the first broad account of the history of music in Switzerland, while Geschichte der Musikpädagogik in der Schweiz (1944) traces the history of music teaching in Switzerland from its origins to his own time. He also researched the musical sources of the Grisons, publishing in specialist journals. He wrote or adapted numerous biographies of composers and studied music education, theory, and questions of musical form and structure. His legacy lies above all in Swiss musicological historiography, which he helped to establish as a discipline.