Herzfeld studied musicology and philosophy at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg and at the Scuola di Paleografia musicale[1] from 1996 to 2001.
In 2001 he obtained the Magister Artium with a thesis on the US-American composers Elliott Carter and Morton Feldman.
From 2005 to 2006 he worked as a research assistant at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, with funding from the German Academic Exchange Service.
From 2007 to 2015 Herzfeld was a research assistant at the Department of musicology of the Freie Universität Berlin with Albrecht Riethmüller and contributing editor of the journal Archiv für Musikwissenschaft.
He lectured at universities and cultural institutions in Germany, Austria, Belgium, France, the Czech Republic, Switzerland and the United States.