Peter Petersen (musicologist)
Peter Petersen (born 17 July 1940) is a German musicologist. Life. Born in Hamburg, Petersen first studied music, then historical musicology and German literature at the University of Hamburg. In 1971 he received his doctorate with a dissertation on tonality in instrumental music by Béla Bartók. After his habilitation with a paper on Alban Berg's "Wozzeck" he taught as professor at the University of Hamburg from 1985. In 2001 the university honoured him with the Fischer-Appelt-Prize for outstanding achievements in academic teaching. Since 2005 Petersen has been retired. Research. One focus of Petersen's  research is in the field of 20th century music (among others Bartók, Berg, Hölszky, Lutosławski). Several monographs and numerous essays deal with the work of Hans Werner Henze. Through Petersen's commitment, the Musicological Institute of the University of Hamburg became a centre of exile music research: Petersen founded and directed the "Exile Music Working Group", which existed for almost 30 years, and won over numerous students and colleagues to work on the effects of Nazi rule, exile and the Holocaust on musical life. Petersen is editor of the series "Music in the 'Third Reich' and "in Exile" and co -editor of the Online-Lexikon verfolgter Musiker und Musikerinnen der NS-Zeit (www.lexm.uni-hamburg.de). Petersen perfected the process of "semantic analysis" of subject-bound compositions and especially of works of music theatre. Based on meticulous score analyses, which are then contextualized, his investigations often open up the content-related connections of such compositions in a completely new way - for example, the structure of meaning in Alban Berg's "Wozzeck" or more recently in Richard Strauss' "Friedenstag". In the field of music theory, Petersen developed a fundamentally new rhythm theory (""), which detaches the concept of duration from the individual tone and recognises  all sound phenomena ("components") as having rhythm-generating potential (sound, pitch, diastematic, articulation, dynamics, timbre, harmony, texture, phrase, speech). The "component rhythms" are visualized in multi-line "rhythm scores". Accumulation of the component rhythms results in single-line "rhythm profiles" that precisely map the "rhythmic weight" in the musical progression. Petersen's method of rhythmic fine analysis reveals among others that even monophonic tone sets can already have a complex rhythm. Moreover, the relationship between rhythm and metre is newly illuminated.