Holger Noltze is music journalist and Professor of Music and the Media at TU Dortmund University (since 2005), where he set up the degree course in music journalism. He studied German, Hispanic Studies and History in Bochum and Madrid and received his doctorate on Wolfram's "Parzival". From 2000 to 2005, Holger Noltze was head of the "contemporary culture" department at the radio station Deutschlandfunk. From 2001 to 2015, he hosted the discussion round "west.art Talk" on WDR television. Between 2013 and 2017 he was spokesman for the "Council for Cultural Education". As a music journalist and literary critic Holger Noltze writes for "Opernwelt" and Die ZEIT, among others.

Noltze has published books on Goethe (2007) and Wagner (2008) as well as the culture-historical study "Liebestod. Wagner, Verdi, Wir" (2013). He has also published the volumes "Die Leichtigkeitslüge. Über Musik, Medien und Komplexität" (2010) and, in cooperation with the pianist Menahem Pressler, "Dieses Verlangen nach Schönheit. Gespräche über Musik" (2016). Holger Noltze is co-founder of the online platform takt1.de for classical music.