Christoph Hohlfeld

Born in Pegau, Hohlfeld received his musical imprint as a member of the Leipzig Thomanerchor through Karl Straube and Günther Ramin. After the war and captivity, he studied composition and theory with Wilhelm Weismann and Arnold Mats at the University of Music and Theatre Leipzig.

He worked in Halle, Berlin and Dresden. In 1960, Wilhelm Maler appointed him to the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg, where he worked from then on as a teacher of musical composition and music theory. In 1968, Hohlfeld was appointed professor. In recognition of his research in music theory, he was awarded an honorary doctorate in musicology (Dr. h. c. sc. mus.) in 1992. In addition to his music-theoretical work, he has written compositions in various genres over the years.

Since the beginning of his teaching career, Hohlfeld has been one of the formative teaching personalities at the Hamburg Academy of Music. With his great expertise and extraordinary pedagogical commitment, he not only shaped generations of music theorists, but also students from other disciplines. His independent and, in his time, novel approach to music theory, which takes its starting point in melody and the single tone, was first disseminated through his circle of students before Hohlfeld summarised the central themes of his work in the three volumes of a Schule musikalischen Denkens:[1] Der Cantus-firmus-Satz bei Palestrina (with Reinhard Bahr, 1994); Johann Sebastian Bach. Das Wohltemperierte Klavier 1722 (2000); and Beethovens Weg (2003).

• Literature by and about Christoph Hohlfeld in the German National Library catalogue
• Christoph Hohlfeld discography at Discogs