In 2023 the IMS Guido Adler Prize was awarded to Kofi Agawu and Hermann Danuser.

Kofi Agawu
Kofi Agawu has completely transformed the fields of music theory and ethnomusicology with his research. A native of Ghana, he received his PhD at Stanford University. As a result he is equally at home in Ghana, where he regularly teaches, and in the US, where he is distinguished professor of music at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Agawu pursues research in two distinct areas, music analysis theory (where he concentrates on questions of analytical method) and West African music (where he focuses on the relationship between music and language, rhythm, and issues in post-colonial representing of African music). Beginning with his highly regarded book on African Rhythm and continuing with his award-winning The African Imagination in Music, he has established new spaces and working methods for music analysis based on close readings of musical materials and attention to rhythm and intonational patterns in language (spoken, sung, performed). The post-colonial historiography that underpins The African Imagination poses penetrating questions informed by a life lived on three continents and a deep appreciation of African and European musics that is hugely refreshing. His scholarship has been recognized with numerous honors and awards, including the Dent Medal and a Guggenheim Fellowship, and his service to musicology, music theory, ethnomusicology, and African studies as a member of scholarly societies and member of editorial boards has been extensive.

Hermann Danuser
Hermann Danuser is one of is one of the world’s most original and prominent scholars of twentieth-century music. His methodology incorporates analysis, aesthetics, biography, and the history of institutions and genres. His understanding of music in the context of culture and politics draws on related academic disciplines—such as literary theory or philosophy. He has published important books on Gustav Mahler (1986 and 1996), Musikalische Prosa (1975), Die Musik des 20. Jahrhunderts (1984 and 1992), Weltanschauungsmusik (2009), and most recently Metamusik (2017). His writing, which often surfaces paradoxes and ambiguity, has raised crucial questions for the theory of musical performance, the aesthetics of reception, the notion of music as text, and the relationship between elements intrinsic and extrinsic to aesthetics in musical works. The four hefty volumes of his public lectures and essays published in 2014 beautifully exemplify his continual search for the new, his intellectual energy, and the astonishing breadth of his work. A guiding light in music studies, Danuser has been recognized with numerous honorary doctorates and awards and inducted as a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and the Humanities, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and as a Corresponding Member of the American Musicological Society. His service to musicology has been extensive in his capacities as professor at Humboldt University, Berlin, coordinator of research at the Sacher Foundation in Basel, and in guest professorships around the world.

Committee

Anna Maria Busse Berger (US, chair), Maria Rosa De Luca (IT), Valentina Sandu-Dediu (RO), Imani Sanga (TZ)