Professor Christian Leitmeir

Background

Christian Thomas Leitmeir grew up in Donauwörth, Southern Germany. From 1995 he read Musicology, Comparative Literature, Philosophy and Theology at the University of Munich. In 1999 he completed his MMus degree in Musicology at King’s College London and in 2003 was awarded a Dr. phil. from the Karl-Eberhards-Universität Tübingen (2003). After a Long-Term Frances A. Yates Research Fellowship at the Warburg Institute (London, 2003-2006), he taught at Bangor University (2007-2015), before joining the University of Oxford in 2015.

He serves on the editorial boards of Plainsong & Medieval Music (which he co-edited from 2010 to 2020), Journal of the Alamire Foundation, Music Theory & Analysis and Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum. In 2013 he was elected into the Academy of Europe (Academia Europaea), and in 2020 into the Royal Historical Society.

Teaching

At the Faculty of Music, Christian Leitmeir mainly teaches on the history of music from the Middle Ages and the early modern period, including palaeography and music philology. His tutorial teaching covers these subject areas, but additionally extends to other periods of music history.

Research interests

Christian Leitmeir is a historian and critical editor of music. His research evolves primarily around music and music theory during the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period in Continental Europe (with a regional emphasis on Central and Central Eastern Europe). Alongside, he pursues research into other areas, especially musical notation, Viennese Classicism and German Romanticism, women in music, music around 1900 (with a focus on Richard Strauss) and the history of musicology. He collaborates regularly with professional ensembles and frequently engages in interdisciplinary research, reaching out especially to theology and art history.

Developing projects are devoted to pioneering performances of medieval music in the first half of the 20th century and content and context of the Beethoven Centenary, celebrated at Vienna in 1927.

Selected Publications

• A full listed of publications can be found on Christian Leitmeir’s academia webpage.

Books

• Jacobus de Kerle (1531/32-1591): Komponieren im Brennpunkt von Kirche und Kunst (Turnhout, 2009)
• The Production and Reading of Music Sources: Mise-en-page in manuscripts and printed books containing polyphonic music, 1480-1530, co-edited with Thomas Schmidt (Turnhout, 2018)
• The Medieval Dominicans: Books, Buildings, Music and Liturgy, Medieval Monastic Series 7, co-edited with Eleanor Giraud (Turnhout, 2022)

Editions

• Reconstruction of missing parts for Johannes Stadlmayr: Apparatus musicus (Innsbruck 1654), online edition (2004) at http://www.musikland-tirol.at/html/musikedition/musikedition.html
• Teodoro Riccio: Liber primus missarum (Königsberg, 1579), Monumenta Musicae in Polonia, Series B: Collectanea musicae artis (Warsaw, 2020)

Medieval Music

• ‘Arguing with Spirituality against Spirituality. A Cistercian Apologia for Mensural Music by Petrus dictus Palma ociosa (1336)’, Archa Verbi. Yearbook for the Study of Medieval Theology, 4 (2007), 115–59.
• ‘Die Musik am Kölner Dom und am erzbischöflichen Hof im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert: Zur Vor- und Frühgeschichte musikalischer Institutionen’, Das Kölner Erzbistum in der Musikgeschichte des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts, edited by Klaus Pietschmann, Beiträge zur rheinischen Musikgeschichte, 172 (Cologne, 2009), 259-309.
• ‘Sine auctoritate nulla disciplina est perfecta: Medieval Music Theory in Search for Normative Foundations’, Between Creativity and Norm-making: Tensions in the Medieval and Early Modern Eras, edited by Sigrid Müller, Cornelia Schweiger, Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions, 165 (Leiden, 2012), 31‒60.
• ‘Dominicans and Polyphony: Re-Appraisal of a Strained Relationship’, Making and breaking the rules: Discussions, implementation and consequences of Dominican legislation, edited by Cornelia Linde (Oxford, 2018), 59-88.
• ‘Compilation and Adaptation: How ‘Dominican’ is Hieronymus de Moravia’s Tractatus de Musica?’, The Medieval Dominicans: Books, Buildings, Music and Liturgy, Medieval Monastic Series 7, edited by Christian Thomas Leitmeir and Eleanor Giraud (Turnhout, 2021), 335-364

Renaissance Music

• ‘Teodoro Riccio’s Liber primus missarum (1579): a musical ambassador between Prussia and Poland’, The Musical Heritage of the Jagiellonian Era in Central and Eastern European Countries, edited by Paweł Gancarczyk, Agnieszka Leszczyńska und Elżbieta Wojnowska (Warsaw, 2012), 125‒156.
• ‘Lutheran Propers for Wrocław/Breslau: The Cantus Choralis (1575) of Johannes Knöfel’, The Musical Culture of Silesia Before 1742: New Contexts – New Perspectives, edited by Paweł Gancarczyk, Lenka Hlávková-Mráčková and Remigiusz Pośpiech (Frankfurt/Main etc., 2013), 89-113.
• ‘Words for music, Words about Music: Salomon Frencel von Friedenthal’s Epigrams as Sources for Music History’, Ars musica and its contexts in medieval and early modern culture, edited by Paweł Gancarczyk (Warsaw, 2016), 367-394.
• ‘Made to Measure: Compositional Challenges behind the Penitential Psalm Codices from the Munich Court’, The Production and Reading of Music Sources: Mise-en-page in manuscripts and printed books containing polyphonic music, 1480-1530, edited by Thomas Schmidt and Christian Thomas Leitmeir (Turnhout, 2018), 103-115 and Appendix Plates 2.1-2.4.
• ‘Beyond the confessionalisation paradigm: The motet as denominational practice in the late 16th century’, Mapping the Motet in the post-Tridentine Era, edited by Esperanza Rodríguez-García and Daniele V. Filippi (Abingdon and New York, 2018), 156-195.
• ‘Following the Scent of the Huntsmen’s Mass: The tradition and legacy of Lasso’s Missa Iager’, Revue belge de musicologie, 72 (2018), 53-83.
• ‘Da pacem Domine: The Desire for Peace in Rudolfinian Music’, The Boundaries of Musical Humanism: Slavic Regions & Mediterranean Culture, edited by Marco Gurrieri and Vasco Zara (Turnhout, 2019), 205-278.
• Entries on Jacobus de Kerle, Missa pro defunctis, and Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Missa pro defunctis for The Book of Requiems: From the Earliest Ages to the Present Period, 1550-1650, edited by David Burn (Leuven: Brepols, 2023), 79-98 and 141-156

Music after 1750

• ‘Leopold Mozarts “Versuch einer Anweisung, ein Klavierkonzert zu komponieren“. Zur Entstehung und Funktion der Pasticcio-Konzerte KV 37, 39, 40 und 41’, Mozart Studien, 14 (Tutzing, 2007), 49–90.
• ‘Eine „glückliche Anwendung historischer Resultate auf die Oper“? Zur Verwendung alter Musik in Adolf Sandbergers Oper Ludwig der Springer (1895)’, Mozart im Zentrum. Festschrift zum 60. Geburtstag von Manfred Hermann Schmid, edited by Klaus Aringer & Ann-Katrin Zimmermann (Tutzing, 2010), 381–407.
• ‘Audiatur et altera pars. Das Kölner Ordinariat Theodor Kroyers (1932-1938), Musikwissenschaft im Rheinland um 1930, edited by Norbert Jers und Klaus Pietschmann, Beiträge zur rheinischen Musikgeschichte, 171 (2012), 93-131.
• ‘[Richard Strauss:] Die Orchesterlieder’, Richard Strauss Handbuch, edited by Walter Werbeck (Stuttgart, 2014), 348-361.
• ‘Totengedenken und Wohltat: Ignaz Lachners Prolog zur Vorstellung zu Gunsten der Hinterbliebenen des weiland Kapellmeisters Albert Lortzing’, Lortzing und Leipzig: Musikleben zwischen Öffentlichkeit, Bürgerlichkeit und Privatheit. …, Hochschule für Musik und Theater ‘Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy’ Leipzig: Schriften, 9, edited by Thomas Schipperges (Hildesheim-Zürich-New York, 2015), 397-439, Open access publication available here.
• ‘Verschollene, verborgene und verstörende Spuren Mozarts im Schaffen von Richard Strauss’, Musik in Bayern, 82 (2019), 149-167, https://doi.org/10.15463/gfbm-mib-2019-260
• ‘Creativity, Performance and Problems of Authorship: Clara Schumann’s cadenzas for K.466’, Nineteenth-Century Music Review, first view (2023), 1-32 https://doi.org/10.1017/S1479409823000046 (includes a critical transcription of Clara Schumann’s cadenza for K.466, 1st movement (1878))

Contributions to CD Recordings

• Johann Stadlmayr, Missa O Bone Jesu, Motetten aus Apparatus musicus (Innsbruck 1645), Neue Innsbrucker Hofkapelle (directed by Detlef Bratschke) (Klingende Kostbarkeiten aus Tirol 25), 2 CDs (2002)
  reconstruction of missing parts from the Apparatus musicus (1645): No. 4, 5, 6, 8, 18, 23, 24, 25, 32, 37, 39, 40
• Johann Stadlmayr, Cantantibus organis, Neue Innsbrucker Hofkapelle (directed by Detlef Bratschke) (Klingende Kostbarkeiten aus Tirol 31), 1 CD (2003)
  reconstruction of missing parts from the Apparatus musicus (1645): No. 1, 21, 22, 26, 30, 42, 43, 44, 47-49
• Da pacem Domine: Echo der Reformation, RIAS Kammerchor (directed by Florian Helgath), Capella della Torre (directed by Katharina Bäuml), deutsche harmonia mundi, CD (2017)
  Jacobus de Kerle, Agnus Dei from Missa Da pacem Domine (1582/3) (edition)
• Orlando di Lasso: Magnificat Octavi Toni, Missa Venatorum, Missa Cantorum, Soloists of the „Vokalkapelle“ of the Theatiner Church in Munich, Christoph Eglhuber (lute) (directed by Robert Mehlhart OP), exando, CD (2021)
  (academic advisor of the recording under Covid restrictions)
• Herz & Mund, „Vokalkapelle“ of the Theatiner Church in Munich, Orchestra La Banda, exando, CD (2022)
  Giuseppe Antonio Bernabei, Missa venatorum (edition, academic advisor of the recording project)