From 1958 to 1961 he was master student of Hanns Eisler and Leo Spies at the Akademie der Künste der DDR, from 1961 to 1964 lecturer at the International Music Library [de] Berlin and lecturer for music theory at the Deutsche Hochschule für Musik Berlin and for film music at the Konrad Wolf Film University of Babelsberg.
[1] After successes with classical music (Violin Concerto, 1963), Rosenfeld became one of the most prominent and busiest film composers of the DEFA in the 1960s.
One project that he supervised from 1966 until his death, even after the German reunification, was the long-term documentation The Children of Golzow.
Rosenfeld composed six operas, among them The Everyday Miracle (after Evgeny Schwartz, premiere 1973 in Stralsund), The Mantle (after Gogol), first performance 1978 in Weimar), Die Verweigerung (after Gogol, first performance 1989 in Osnabrück) as well as Kniefall von Warschau[2] about Willy Brandt (libretto by Philipp Kochheim, premiere 1997 in Dortmund).
Dem Andenken und zur Ehre aller verfolgten Zigeuner, Requiem for Kaza Katharinnna,[3] (To the memory and honour of all persecuted gypsies) was premiered in 1991 in the Church of Peace of Potsdam-Sanssouci and released on CD in 1996.