Emil Platen

Emil Platen (born 16 September 1925) is a German musicologist and conductor. Life Born in Düsseldorf, Platen received his first music lessons at the Jugendmusikschule Düsseldorf in the disciplines violin and music theory/composition (with Reger’s student Otto Leonhardt). After work and military service (1943–45) he enrolled in 1946 at the University of Cologne in the subject musicology, changed in 1947 to the Hochschule für Musik Detmold, where he studied composition with , viola with Hermann Hirschfelder and choral conducting with Kurt Thomas. After his examination as a choral conductor, he resumed his musicological studies at the University of Bonn in 1951, which he completed in 1957 with a dissertation on the “Chorische Choralbearungen von Joh. Bach” which won him his doctorate. During his studies he worked as a violist in various ensembles in Bonn and at Westdeutscher Rundfunk Köln. Further stages in his professional career were: 1959 research assistant at the Beethoven-Archiv Bonn, 1963 academic music director and 1971 honorary professor for musicology at the University of Bonn. In 1969 he founded the North Rhine-Westphalia Youth Symphony Orchestra together with Hans-Josef Men