He was born in Allenstein, East Prussia, then part of the German Empire. From 1923 he studied musicology in several universities—University of Heidelberg, University of Munich, and University of Leipzig—and also took courses at the Mannheim Conservatory. His teachers included Adolf Sandberger. He took the doctorate at the University of Leipzig in 1927, and then taught musicology first at the University of Königsberg, and then at the University of Bonn. Schrade's interests at the time lay mostly in early music: his Leipzig dissertation was on early organ music, and he completed the Habilitation in Königsberg in 1929 with a work on early instrumental music notation. Schrade left Germany for the USA in late 1930s. In 1938 he was appointed assistant professor at Yale University, where he went on to become associate professor, and finally professor of music history ; all the while, from 1939, also working as director of graduate studies in music. In 1958 he succeeded Jacques Handschin as professor and director of the musicology institute at the University of Basel. Schrade held these positions until his death in 1964; he died at Spéracèdes, France. Schrade's critical editions of works by Guillaume de Machaut, Francesco Landini, and other medieval composers are still of utmost importance for early music performers. He is also known today for his universal approach to the history of music: he worked not only on specialist topics such as medieval music, but also on works by Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, and many other composers. His large scale study of early opera composerClaudio Monteverdi, Monteverdi: Creator of Modern Music, still controversial among early music scholars, remains a key work in the evolution of critical attitudes towards the music of Monteverdi. Schrade founded and edited the Yale University Collegium Musicum series of critical editions and the Yale Studies in the History of Music series of publications; he also worked as co-editor of several journals, such as Journal of Renaissance and Baroque Music and Annales musicologiques.
Selected bibliography
Writings
Die ältesten Denkmäler der Orgelmusik als Beitrag zu einer Geschichte der Toccata
Die handschriftliche Überlieferung der ältesten Instrumentalmusik
Beethoven in France: the Growth of an Idea
Bach: the Conflict between the Sacred and the Secular
Monteverdi, Creator of Modern Music
Renaissance: the Historical Conception of an Epoch
Political Compositions in French Music of the 12th and 13th Centuries, 9–63. Reprinted in: De scientia musicae studia atque orationes, ed. E. Lichtenhahn
