Born in
Olten, Rentsch studied
musicology,
media and
linguistics at the
University of Zürich. From 2000, she spent five years as a research assistant at the Musicological Institute of the University of Bern. In 2004 she received her doctorate with her thesis on
Bohuslav Martinů's operas of the
interwar period. In 2005 she was granted a research scholarship at the Austrian universities of
Graz and
Salzburg for the project
Dance in Score (
Swiss National Science Foundation). From 2006 to 2013 Rentsch was assistant at the Musicological Institute of the University of Zurich. She
habilitated there in 2010 with her study on the significance of dance for instrumental music and music theory of the early modern period. At the same time, she held teaching positions at the universities of
Basel, Bern,
Fribourg and Graz. Since 2013 Rentsch has been professor for
historical musicology at the University of Hamburg. Rentsch is married to the musicologist
Arne Stollberg. == Focus of research and publications ==