Born in Reichensachsen [de] near Kassel, Cadenbach studierte German (with Benno von Wiese and Rudolf Schützeichel), philosophy (with Hans Wagner and Hariolf Oberer) as well as musicology (with Emil Platen and Günther Massenkeil at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn.
Cadenbach conceived and directed numerous interdisciplinary and cross-faculty artistic-scientific projects, symposia and congresses.
Topics were the composer Dieter Schnebel (1990, 2000), Musicology in United Berlin (1991), Music and Visualization (1992), Walter Benjamin (1993), John Cage (1993), Friedrich Nietzsche (1994), Paul Hindemith (1995), Joseph Joachim (1995, 1997, 2007), surrealism and DADA (1998), Bohuslav Martinů (1999), Hermann Kretzschmar (1999), Beethoven (1996, 1999, 2001), Ernst Pepping (2001, 2006), Max Reger (2003, 2006), Richard Strauss (1999), Franz Schreker and his pupils (2003) and George Enescu (2005).
From 1997 to 2005 he was one of the main members of the first graduate college at a German art academy on the subject of Practice and theory of the artistic creative process.
Collaborators on the project, which was completed in 2008, were Klaus Martin Kopitz, Oliver Korte and Nancy Tanneberger.