Jürgen May

Associate Professor Extraordinary

jmay.gap@web.de

+49-176-5283 0529

Jürgen May received his Ph.D. in 1989 with a dissertation on early-seventeenth-century lute music. From 1999 to March 2018 he was Research Fellow at the Richard-Strauss-Institut Garmisch-Partenkirchen. He directed the Richard-Strauss-Quellenverzeichnis (Richard Strauss sources catalogue) and the edition of Strauss’s late writings, and is member of the advisory board of the Richard Strauss edition at the Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften. May is currently research associate at the Research Center Beethoven-Archiv, Bonn. 

Jürgen May has conducted research into 19th and early 20th century composers, particularly Ludwig van Beethoven and Richard Strauss, with a focus on the interrelationship between creative output, biography, and social and political contexts.  

Since 2020, Jürgen May has directed the Genadendal Music Archive project at AOI. In his recent research project, he investigates the reception and impact of Beethoven in southern Africa under colonial and postcolonial circumstances. 

  • Imitation – Translation – Notation: Music, Cultural Transformation and the Making of a Community in the Moravian Mission Station of Baviaanskloof/Genadendal (South Africa), in: Exchange. Journal of Contemporary Christianities in Context (forthcoming). 
  • Beethovenising the Cape and Beyond: The First Performances of Beethoven’s Nine Symphonies in South Africa, 1914 and 1924, in: Bonner Beethoven Studien online (forthcoming). 
  • Beethovens Musik im Kontext der Entstehung des „Afrikanervolk“-Mythos, in: Beethoven Perspectives. Proceedings of the International Congress Bonn, 10–14 February 2020, ed. Christin Heitmann, Jürgen May und Christine Siegert (forthcoming). 
  • The Lied, in: Richard Strauss in Context, ed. Morten Kristiansen and Joseph E. Jones, Cambridge 2020, pp. 218–226. 
  • Kunst als Ware und Waffe. Richard Strauss’ Vertragsstreit mit dem Verlag Bote & Bock und das “Liederjahr” 1918, in: Richard-Strauss-Jahrbuch 2018, Salzburg 2020, pp. 9–38. 
  • Singen mit und ohne Worte: Aspekte vokalen Komponierens in Richard Strauss’ „Spätwerk“, in: Song or Opera, Opera or Song. Proceedings of the Mahler/Strauss Symposium The Hague 2014, The Hague 2018, pp. 45–68. 
  • Richard Strauss und das nationalsozialistische Deutschland. Anmerkungen zu einem vieldiskutierten Thema, in: Richard Strauss-Jahrbuch 2015, Vienna 2017, pp. 119–136. 
  • “symphonische Nachdichtungen … mit recht entbehrlicher Gesangsbegleitung”? Richard Strauss’ “Vier letzte Lieder” im Kontext seines “Spätwerks”, in: Freiburger Universitätsblätter, no. 211, Freiburg 2016, pp. 149–169. 
  • Des Kaisers “Hofbusenschlange”. Richard Strauss und Kaiser Wilhelm II., in: Musik in Preußen – Preußische Musik?, ed. Frank-Lothar Kroll and Hendrik Thoß, Berlin 2016, pp. 169–185. 
  • Richard Strauss’ Lied “Das Bächlein” (1933): Bekenntnis zur “Führertreue” oder Camouflage?, in: Die Reichsmusikkammer. Kunst im Bann der Nazi-Diktatur, ed. Albrecht Riethmüller and Michael Custodis, Vienna etc. 2015, pp. 147–162.
  • Beethoven Perspectives. Proceedings of the International Congress Bonn, 10–14 February 2020 (with Christin Heitmann and Christine Siegert) (forthcoming). 
  • Bonner Beethoven-Studien 13, Bonn 2022 (with Joanna Cobb Biermann, Beate Angelika Kraus and Christine Siegert). 
  • Richard Strauss: Späte Aufzeichnungen (= Veröffentlichungen der Richard-Strauss-Gesellschaft; 23), Mainz etc. 2016 (with Marion Beyer and Walter Werbeck).