Julius Joseph Maier (born December 29, 1821 in Freiburg im Breisgau; died November 21, 1889 in Munich) was a German lawyer, musicologist, composer, and librarian. After attending high school in Karlsruhe, Maier studied law at the universities of Freiburg and Heidelberg from 1840 onwards. In 1846, he passed his state examination with distinction in Karlsruhe and entered the civil service of the Grand Duchy of Baden as an assessor. In 1849, he was appointed secretary in the Ministry of the Interior.
However, Maier's inclination was toward music. In 1843, while studying law, he published a historical work on Palestrina's successors in the ''Leipziger Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung''; In 1845, his collection of older vocal church works for male choir, dedicated to Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, was published. In 1849, he left the civil service and moved to Leipzig to study counterpoint with Moritz Hauptmann; the following year, he was appointed lecturer in counterpoint at the Royal Music School in Munich. He held this position until 1857; His students included Josef Rheinberger. In 1887, he retired for health reasons.
Maier's life's work was the catalog of musical manuscripts in the Royal Court and State Library, but only the first part, describing musical manuscripts up to the end of the 17th century, was published in 1879.
(Source: Wikipedia)
Note: Translated from a German version of Wikipedia into English
