Christian Kaden

Christian Kaden (born Dohna, near Dresden, 16 November 1946) is a German musicologist whose work has focused on the sociology of music. His career developed almost entirely at the Humboldt University of Berlin, where he studied musicology and ethnography from 1965 to 1968 under Georg Knepler and Frederick Rose, and where he taught for much of his academic career.

After a year as chief dramaturg of the Musiktheater at the Landestheater in Halle (1972–1973), he submitted his doctoral thesis on shepherds' signals, which he defended at the Humboldt University in 1973 and which was published in Leipzig in 1977 under the title Hirtensignale. That same year he was appointed acting professor of music sociology at the same university. In 1983 he obtained the doctorate of science (DSc) with a study of notation and composition in early polyphony; he became reader in 1986 and full professor in 1993.

His writings address the relationship between social structures and the reception and analysis of music, and also show an interest in non-Western music as a possible alternative model of production and reception. He has published on medieval music, the history of musical terminology, semiotics and the methodology of analysis. In 1996 he took over the editorship of the Musiksoziologie series.