Gustav Jacobsthal

Gustav Jacobsthal (Pyritz, now Pyrzyce in Poland, 1845 – Berlin, 1912) was a German musicologist whose work laid the foundations for a historical and philological approach to the study of medieval music. He serves as a bridge between nineteenth-century musicology and the academic discipline that became established in Germany at the beginning of the twentieth century.

He studied music with Heinrich Bellermann and history at the University of Berlin between 1863 and 1870, the year in which he obtained his doctorate with a dissertation on the mensural notation of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In 1872 he completed his habilitation at the newly founded University of Strasbourg, where he taught as an external lecturer. In 1875 he was appointed assistant professor and organised a department that included a substantial research library. During this period he also directed the Akademische Gesangsverein and composed numerous a cappella works, intended both for the liturgy and for the concert hall.

From 1897 to 1905 he held the chair of musicology, the only post of its kind at a German university of the period. His writings focused above all on medieval music; his principal work deals with chromatic alteration in the liturgical chant of the Western Church. His studies of Palestrina led him to regard this composer's output as a source for German Romanticism, and to appreciate it within the polyphonic style of the sixteenth century.

His ideas were not recognised until the 1920s, when they opened up a new musicological perspective. His legacy lies in having applied methods from history and philology to the study of music, paving the way for research into medieval music by his disciples Friedrich Ludwig and Peter Wagner.