Dieter Christensen
Professor Emeritus
PhD, Comparative Musicology and Anthropology (Free University of Berlin 1957)

Dieter Christensen came to Columbia in 1971, having previously been the Director of the Berlin Phonogram Archive, and having taught at the Free University of Berlin and Wesleyan University. He has also taught at the University of Hamburg, CUNY, and the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal.

His central interest is the intellectual and institutional evolution of music research. He has published on musics of Oceania and has done fieldwork on the musics of Northern Norway, Makedonia, Bosnia-Hercegovina, and Mexico; but in cultural-geographic terms his major research has been among the Kurds of Turkey and Iran, and most recently in the Sultanate of Oman. He has served as Secretary-General of the International Council for Traditional Music (an NGO of UNESCO), editor-in-chief of the Yearbook for Traditional Music, and editor of the UNESCO Collection of Traditional Music.

Selected Publications:

"Cross-cultural Processes in Music: Directions of Research," in Portugal and the World: the Encounter of Culture in Music (Lisbon: Dom Quixote, 1997)

"Hugo Riemann and the Shaping of Musicology: an Ethnomusicological Perspective," in Fetschrift Walter Wiora (Tutzing: Schneider, 1997)

"On Object and Methodology in Music Research: Concepts of Music and Paths of Inquiry ...," in Ethnomusicology and Historical Musicology (Tutzing: Schneider, 1997)

"On the post-Venitian Music History of a Village in Hercegovina: Anthropological-Ethnomusicological Perspectives," Musica e storia 5 (1997)

"Oman, Ethnomusicology, and the History of Music" and "Music Making in Sohar: Arts and Society in al-Batinah of Oman," Publns of the Oman Centre for Traditional Music, vols 1-2 (Wilhelmshaven: Noetzel, 1993, 1995)

Traditional Arts of Oman, CD disk and booklet (Paris: UNESCO/AUDIVIS, 1993)

Graduate Courses Taught:

G8410 Seminar in Ethnomusicology: Theories and Structures
G8411 Seminar in Ethnomusicology: Transcription and Analysis
G8412-8413 Seminar in Ethnomusicology: Field Methods and Techniques I-II
G8414 Seminar in Ethnomusicology: Asia
G6411 Proseminar in Ethnomusicology and other courses on Time Perception; Musical Styles in Polynesia; etc.

Undergraduate Courses Taught:

AHMM V3320 Introduction to the Musics of East Asian and Southeast Asia

AHMM V3321 Introduction to the Musics of India and West Asia
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