Michael Fend studied Musicology, German Literature, and Philosophy at the Universities of Marburg and TU and FU Berlin (MA 1980, PhD 1983). Before joining King's College London in 1993, he taught at the Universities of Aberdeen and Nottingham. In the 1980s he was a fellow of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, the Society for the Humanities (Cornell University), the DAAD at the Warburg Institute (London) and the Maison des sciences de l'homme (Paris). Following his Habilitation in 2005, he was also Privatdozent at the University of Bayreuth. In 2005 he was Visiting Professor at the University of Hamburg.

Research Interests and PhD Supervision

• Intellectual and Political History of Music
• Nationalism in Music
• Opera
• Music and Law

My first research project dealt with early modern controversies among music theorists and composers concerning the status of arithmetic and aesthetic categories in evaluating musical progress. My second research project explored the conditions under which composers worked during the French revolutionary period, focussing on Luigi Cherubini's opera dramaturgies, contemporary aesthetics and institutional practices. A new book, which investigates Cherubini's career as a whole, is still in progress. PhD supervision on Musical Culture and Aesthetics in France and Germany around 1800, and on Wagner.

Teaching

MMus modules on History of Music Theory from Antiquity to 19th Century, Faust in Music, History and Criticism, Enlightenment and, in particular, on Late Beethoven. BMus modules ranged from the early modern period to 1950s Music Avant-garde. In 2019 I convened (together with Drs Johnson Okpaluba, Ananay Aguilar, and Esther Cavett) an inter-departmental module on Music and Law.

Expertise and public engagement 

External PhD Supervision (University of Utrecht); External PhD Examining (Royal Academy of Music, Royal College of Music, Royal Holloway, Université de Poitiers); Member of Steering Committee in Balzan Project Towards a Global History of Music, directed by Reinhard Strohm (2013-2017); Advisor for European Research Council, European Science Foundation, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Oesterreichischer Wissenschaftsfond, National Agency for the Evaluation of Universities of Italy, Swiss National Science Foundation, German-Israeli Foundation for Scientific Research and Development, Czech Academy of Sciences, National Science Centre Poland, Universitaet der Künste Berlin, AMS, Il Saggiatore, Yale University Press, Routledge, CUP, OUP; essay contributions for Opera Brussels and Wexford; Humanities Recognition of Distinction Committee, University of Oxford.

Selected publications 

• "Opera", The Oxford Handbook of Western Music and Philosophy, ed. Tom McAuley, Nanette Nielsen, Gerold Levinson, and Ariana Phillips-Hutton (Oxford, 2020), 601-627.
• "Romantic Empowerment at the Paris Opera in the 1770s and 1780s", Music and Letters, 94.2 (2013), 263-294.
• Cherubini's Pariser Opern 1788-1803 (Beihefte zum Archiv fuer Musikwissenschaft, Vol. 59) (Stuttgart, 2007).
• "Hugo Riemann's Challenge to the Conservatory and the Modernists' Challenge to Riemann", Music Education in Europe (1770-1914): Compositional, Institutional, and Political Challenges (European Science Foundation: Musical Life in Europe, 1600-1900), ed. Michael Fend and Michel Noiray, 2 vols (Berlin, 2005), II, 399-430.
• "The Changing Functions of 'Senso' and 'Ragione' in Italian Music Theory of the late Sixteenth Century", The Second Sense. Studies in Hearing and Musical Judgement from Antiquity to the Seventeenth Century (Warburg Institute Surveys and Texts, vol. 22), ed. Charles Burnett, Michael Fend, and Penelope Gouk (London, 1991), 199-223.