After training as a woodwind instrument maker and studies in music, Martin Kirnbauer worked as a restorer of historical musical instruments at the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg. He then studied musicology in Erlangen and Basel (licentiate in 1993, doctorate in 1998), and was a research assistant at the Musicology Institute of the University of Basel between 1994 and 2004 and head of the microfilm archive. After his habilitation in 2007 until the end of 2010 he represented the chair of Early Music History there. From 2004 to 2017 he was head of the Music Museum and curator for the collection of early musical instruments of the Historical Museum Basel. Involved in several SNF- or CTI-funded research projects at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis (2011-13 Transformationen instrumentaler Klanglichkeit am Beispiel der frühen italienischen Viola da gamba' / 2013-15 'Groß Geigen, Vyolen, Rybeben - Nordalpine Streichinstrumente um 1500 und ihre Praxis' / 2015-17 'Studio31 - Entwicklung einer portablen Orgel und eines Cembalos mit 31 Tönen pro Oktave'). 2020-2024 'Vicentino21 – Digitale Edition mit Übersetzung, Kommentar und praktischer Erkundung von Nicola Vicentinos L’antica musica ridotta alla moderna prattica (Rom 1555)'). Currently he is leading the Basel part of the WEAVE-project ‘E-LAUTE - Electronic Linked Annotated Unified Tablature Edition‘ (2023-2026).
In January 2017, he became Head of Research and a member of the management of the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis - Hochschule für Musik Basel / FHNW, while also teaching as a Privatdozent in Musicology at the University of Basel. Since September 2022 he is part of the collaborative management board of the SCB and is head of this board from 2024 to 2026.
Committee work: President of the Basel chapter of the Swiss Music Research Society (SMG) and member of the central board of the SMG; member of the scientific advisory boards of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nuremberg and the Staatliches Institut für Musikforschung Berlin; member of the board of trustees of the Foundation for Historical Keyboard Instruments of the Neumeyer-Junghanns-Tracey Collection in Bad Krozingen; Kagel-Burghard Foundation; executive committee of Freunde Alter Musik Basel; president of the Studio31 association.