While at Tübingen he joined the Akademische Gesellschaft Stuttgardia, a student fraternity which shaped the political views of the liberalism in southern Germany.
In 1902 he qualified as lecturer by presenting his thesis on music of the Middle Ages at the University of Halle.
But after just one year, Abert took up a post at Leipzig and in 1920 he became the successor of the music theorist Hugo Riemann.
In 1923 he was called to the University of Berlin, where he was seen as the most suitable successor to Hermann Kretzschmar, also a music theorist.
It was there that he worked with Friedrich Blume, Rudolf Gerber, Hans Hoffmann and Theodor Schwartzkopff, on the illustrated Dictionary of Music which was discovered to contain plagiarisms of Alfred Einstein's Neues Musiklexikon und Hugo Riemann Musiklexikon.