Jürg Stenzl

In 1996 he succeeded Gerhard Croll ordinary university professor for historical musicology and head of the department of art, music and dance studies at the University of Salzburg. Together with Claudia Jeschke, he expanded the institute in 2004. The Salzburg activities ended with his retirement in 2010

1992/93 Stenzl was artistic director of the Universal Edition in Vienna. In 1993 he habilitated a second time at the University of Vienna, this time on Italian music from 1922 to 1952. Stenzl was visiting professor at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz from 1994 to 1996 and in 2003 visiting professor at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

He is also active as an author and music critic (Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Berliner Zeitung and since 1992 for the Falter). From 1975 to 1983 he was editor of the Schweizer Musikzeitung and from 1983 to 1992 co-editor of Contrechamps and Musica/Realtà. He is considered a patron of new music, so he was congress organizer in Boswil from 1982 to 1988 and from 1985 on director of the concert series (Festival Belluard Bollwerk International (1985 to 1990) and Musiques du treizième Siècle (in the Kunsthalle of the Fri Art – Centre d'art contemporain [de], 1990 to 1994) in Freiburg in the Üechtland. Stenzl has been a member of the board of trustees of the Experimentalstudio des SWR [de] in Freiburg im Breisgau since 1992, of which he is vice president. In 1994 he was programme consultant of the Donaueschinger Musiktage. From 2003 to 2005 he was chairman of the Salzburg State Cultural Advisory Board, of which he has been a member since 1998. In 2006 he conceived the counterpoint concerts at the Salzburg Easter Festival. He also worked as a production dramaturge. Stenzl is a former member of the Central Institute for Mozart Research of the International Mozarteum Foundation in Salzburg.

Stenzl has been married to Nike Wagner, a great-granddaughter of Richard Wagner, since 1991 and lives mainly in Vienna since his retirement.

He has published mainly books and essays on the European history of music from medieval music to the present, including Arcangelo Corelli, Georg Friedrich Handel and Alban Berg. A special research focus is Luigi Nono: Since 1971 a Luigi Nono archive has been established, which is on loan from the Institute of Musicology at the University of Salzburg. He has written articles in the Pipers Enzyklopädie des Musiktheaters [de], in Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart.

From 1969 to his habilitation in 1974 as assistant to Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini and from 1980 to 1991 as titular professor, he taught musicology at the University of Freiburg. Afterwards he was a representative and visiting scholar, so from 1988 to 1990 for Carl Dahlhaus at the TU Berlin, 1990 in Cremona/Italien (1990) and 1991/92 and 1996 at the University of Bern.

Born in Basel, Stenzl began his musical education in 1949, first took flute and violin lessons. From 1961 he studied oboe with Walter Huwyler and from 1963 to 1968 musicology, German literature and philosophy at the University of Bern (with Arnold Geering and Lucie Dikenmann-Balmer) as well as in 1965 at the Sorbonne, where he listened to Jacques Chailley. With his dissertation The Forty Clausulae of the Manuscript Paris, Bibliothèque nationale latin 15139 (Abbey of Saint-Victor, Paris – Clausulae), a work on 13th century music, he was awarded a doctorate in 1968 at the University of Bern. In 1970 the work appeared as a publication of the Schweizerische Musikforschende Gesellschaft [de].

Jürg Thomas Stenzl (born 23 August 1942) is a Swiss musicologist, and University professor.