Johannes Menke was born in Nürnberg in 1972. He completed studies in music education, oboe, music theory, composition and German language and literature studies in Freiburg im Breisgau. In 2004 he completed his doctoral dissertation (PhD) on the subject of Giacinto Scelsi at the Technische Universität Berlin.
He has been co-editor of the book series sinefonia since 2005 and of the edition series Praxis und Theorie des Partimentospiels and is a collaborator for the journal Musik & Ästhetik.
He has numerous publications on analysis, history of theory and didactics. From 2008-2012 he was president of the German-speaking society for music theory (GMTH).
From 1999-2009 he taught music theory at the Musikhochschule Freiburg. Since 2007, he has been teaching historical composition and theory at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis (Switzerland).