In 1964 Flotzinger's doctoral dissertation on lute tablatures in Kremsmünster, Die Lautentabulaturen des Stiftes Kremsmünster, was published by the University of Vienna, and he received his doctorate from that institution in 1965.[1] He remained at that institution doing further research and teaching, and received his habilitation at the University of Vienna in 1969 following his scholarly research into early music at the Notre-Dame de Paris.[1]
As a musicologist, Flotzinger has mainly published content and pursued research in the areas of medieval music (particularly early polyphony) and the music history of Austria.[1] From 1992 until 1999 he was editor of the journal Acta musicologica.[1] He also co-edited the three-volume Musikgeschichte Österreichs and was editor of the five-volume Oesterreichisches Musiklexikon in addition to serving as a member of the Academia Europaea in London as well as corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences in Vienna, Zagreb and Ljubljana.[2]
Composer Georg Friedrich Haas remembers Flotzinger as part of an informal group that continued to adhere to the aesthetic and political norms of the 1938–45 era in post-war Austria. Within the circle of the Secretary of State for Cultural Affairs in Styria during the Nazi period, Josef Papesch, Haas records in his memoir Through Poisoned Times (Durch vergiftete Zeiten), he had met in the 1960s "the Nazi painter Ernst von Dombrowski. I also came across Rudolf Flotzinger, soon to be appointed to the Chair of Musicology at the University of Graz. [...] [Dombrowski] died without children; he gave his money to a private foundation that would bestow, in his name, awards on Styrian composers, writers and visual artists. Member of jury of the first award for musical composition turned out to be the very professor of musicology I had met at Papesch′s home."[3] Flotzinger granted the first Dombrowski award for a composer in 1988 to Hannes Kuegerl (1906–1990) who had garnered attention, i.a., with his 1942 Heroic Suite (Heldische Suite) for symphony orchestra, a musical glorification of Germany’s war of aggression at the time, first performed in Graz in 1943.[4]
^Georg Friedrich Haas, Durch vergiftete Zeiten, ed. Daniel Ender and Oliver Rathkolb, Böhlau, Vienna/Cologne 2022, pp. 158–160: "So begegnete ich hier dem Nazimaler Ernst von Dombrowski. Und dem [späteren] Ordinarius für Musikwissenschaft an der Universität in Graz, Rudolf Flotzinger. [...] Er [Dombrowski] starb kinderlos, und vermachte sein Erbe einer Privatstiftung, die unter seinem Namen Preise an steirische KomponistInnen, SchriftstellerInnen und bildende KünstlerInnen verleiht. In der Jury des ersten Kompositionspreises saß jener Grazer Ordinarius für Musikwissenschaft, den ich im Hause Papesch kennengelernt hatte."
^Kurt Hildebrand Matzak, ‘Fünftes Symphoniekonzert in Graz. Uraufführung Heldische Suite von Hannes Kuegerl’, Marburger Zeitung. Amtliches Organ des Steirischen Heimatbundes, no. 39, 8 February 1943, p. 4. Cf. Wolfgang Suppan, Steirisches Musiklexikon, Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, Graz 1962, p. 316; Rudolf Flotzinger, Musik in der Steiermark, Styria, Graz 1980, pp. 79, 233–234 (on p. 233 spelt „Kügerl“).
