Christian Schaper, born in Essen in 1976, studied musicology, philosophy and modern German literary history at the University of Freiburg. He obtained his doctorate at the Karlsruhe University of Music with a dissertation on Richard Strauss' opera Die Frau ohne Schatten (The Woman without a Shadow).
From 2000 to 2011, he was musical and dramaturgical advisor to conductor Thomas Hengelbrock (including the new Bayreuth production of Tannhäuser in 2011). He worked as a research assistant at the Freiburg Musicology Seminar from 2004 to 2009, then at the Institute for Musicology and Media Studies at Humboldt University in Berlin from 2011 to 2022, and briefly at the Richard Strauss Institute in Garmisch-Partenkirchen in late summer 2022. Since October 2022, he has been representing the Chair of Music History and Musicology at the Institute for Music Informatics and Musicology at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Music.
His research interests include the music history of the 18th to 20th centuries, analysis, music theatre, music editing, performance practice and interpretation research, and in particular the music of Richard Wagner, Richard Strauss and Ferruccio Busoni.
ORCID: 0000-0003-1073-8554
Current projects:
- Ferruccio Busoni – Letters and Writings (digital edition, in collaboration with Ullrich Scheideler)
- History of the composition of the recapitulation from Haydn to Shostakovich (postdoctoral project)
Publishing activities:
- 2025: Writings in three volumes by Hermann Danuser (together with Burkhard Meischein and Lukas Michaelis)
- 2015–2019 Editor of wagnerspectrum (9 issues)
- 2014: Collected lectures and essays by Hermann Danuser (4 volumes together with Has-Joachim Hinrichsen and Laure Spaltenstein)
- 2010–2023 Editor and co-editor of the publications of the International Handel Academy Karlsruhe (4 volumes, together with Thomas Seedorf)
Awards:
- 2017: Faculty Award for Good Teaching from the HU Berlin (together with Ullrich Scheideler)
- 2013: Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching from HU Berlin
Guest lectureships:
- 2019: Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre, Tallinn
- 2014/15: Karlsruhe University of Music
- 2012: Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre, Tallinn
- Translated with DeepL.com (free version)