Reinhold Hammerstein

Reinhold Hammerstein (Lämmerspiel, near Offenbach, 9 April 1915) was a German musicologist specialising in musical iconography, that is, in the ways music, instruments and performance are represented in literature and the visual arts, from classical antiquity to the Baroque. His work is a point of reference in the study of these relationships between music, image and text.

His training began in 1934, when he started studying musicology at the University of Freiburg under Gurlitt and, later, at the University of Munich under Ursprung. He earned his doctorate at Freiburg in 1940 with a dissertation on C. F. D. Schubart. Between 1938 and 1950, with interruptions for military service, he was assistant lecturer in the musicology department of that university, and between 1946 and 1958 he taught music history at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Freiburg. In 1954 he completed his habilitation there with a study of the conception of music in the Middle Ages.

From then on his career advanced in stages: he taught as a visiting professor in Basel (1955–1956), served as a deputy professor at Freiburg between 1959 and 1961, and held a post without permanent tenure in 1962. In 1963 he was appointed professor at the University of Heidelberg, and he returned to Basel as a visiting professor in 1964. He directed the series Neue Heidelberger Studien zur Musikwissenschaft from 1969 and was co-editor of Beiträge zur Musikforschung from 1975. He retired in 1980, and on his seventieth birthday he was honoured with the volume Claudio Monteverdi: Festschrift Reinhold Hammerstein, edited by L. Finscher, published in Laaber in 1986.

Among his publications are Die Musik der Engel (1962, with later reprints), Diabolus in musica (1974), Tanz und Musik des Todes (1980) and Macht und Klang (1986), as well as numerous articles on Monteverdi, Bach, Rameau and Mozart. In them he analysed emblems, allegories and symbols present in musical iconography, and examined how music recreates the images with which it is associated and how the history of music and that of painting and literature evolve in parallel. His legacy is also preserved in collections of articles, some still in preparation, which makes his work a contribution that is still ongoing.