Richard Strohm has studied musicology, violin, Latin and Italian literature in Munich, Pisa, Milan and Berlin. Since receiving his Ph.D. in 1971 from the Technical University, Berlin he has had a distinguished career in musicology. From 1975 until 1983 he was a Lecturer in Music, and then Reader, at King's College, London before being appointed as Professor of Musicology at Yale, a post he held for seven years. Returning to KCL in 1991 he then moved to Oxford in
1996, where he was the Hether Professor of Music until he retired in 2007. Throughout his career he has held visiting professorships at the Universities of Chicago, Rome, Vienna, Zurich, Budapest (Liszt Academy), and Hamburg. He has published a range of titles on topics such as European music in the
14th-19th centuries, the history of opera, criticism of musicology, and global music history.