Professor Paweł Gancarczyk
Editor-in-chief in "Muzyka"
Chairman of the Academic Board
Quarterly “Muzyka”
Paweł Gancarczyk graduated in musicology from the University of Warsaw in 1994 and received his PhD from the same university in 1999. He pursued further studies at Royal Holloway, University of London (1993), and at Charles University in Prague (1996). In 2012 he obtained his habilitation, and in 2025 he was awarded the title of professor. He has been affiliated with the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IS PAN) since 1999. Since 2016 he has served as editor-in-chief of the quarterly “Muzyka”, and the years 2019-2026 was head of the Department of Musicology. Since 2023 he has been Chair of the Academic Board of the Institute of Art, and since 2020 Vice-Chair of the Committee on Arts Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He has taught at the University of Warsaw (2008, 2010–2013) and served as a visiting professor at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (2022/23). In 2024 he was a visiting researcher at KU Leuven. In 2020 he was elected a member of Academia Europaea and of the Warsaw Scientific Society. He is the recipient of the Prix des Muses (2016) and the Prize of the Committee on Arts Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences (2022). His research focuses on the history of medieval and early modern music, with particular emphasis on the musical culture of Central Europe and the study of musical sources. He is currently a visiting researcher at Charles University in Prague, supported in the academic year 2026/2027 by a scholarship from the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange (Bekker NAWA Programme).
Publications
Books
Paweł Gancarczyk, Petrus Wilhelmi de Grudencz i muzyka Europy Środkowej XV wieku, Warszawa 2021
Paweł Gancarczyk, La musique et la révolution de l’imprimerie. Les mutations de la culture musicale au XVIe siècle, przeł. / transl. Wojciech Bońkowski, Lyon 2015
Paweł Gancarczyk, Muzyka wobec rewolucji druku. Przemiany w kulturze muzycznej XVI wieku, Toruń 2011 („Monografia Fundacji na Rzecz Nauki Polskiej”)
Paweł Gancarczyk, Musica scripto. Kodeksy menzuralne II połowy XV wieku na wschodzie Europy Łacińskiej, Warszawa 2001
Selected recent articles
Paweł Gancarczyk, Music in a Vanished Kingdom. Medieval Polyphony in the Teutonic Order State in Prussia, „Early Musicˮ 52/2 (2024), 204-215, https://doi.org/10.1093/em/caae026
Paweł Gancarczyk & Lenka Hlávková, The Missa L’ami Baudichon in Central Europe: A New Source and the Early Transmission of Josquin’s Music, in: Music of the Josquin Era, 1460–1560: Studies in Honor of Joshua Rifkin, eds. Mitchell P. Brauner, David Fallows & Jesse Rodin, Middleton (Wisc.)-Münster 2024, 267-289
Paweł Gancarczyk, Cantiones and a Central European Repertory in the St Emmeram Codex, in: St. Emmeram. Liturgie und Musik vom Mittelalter bis zur Frühen Neuzeit, eds. Harald Buchinger, David Hiley & Katelijne Schiltz, Regensburg 2023, 331-344
Paweł Gancarczyk, Distant or Close? Two Music Manuscripts from c.1500 in Comparison, „Journal of the Alamire Foundation” 15/2 (2023), 151-168, https://doi.org/10.1484/J.JAF.5.135278
Paweł Gancarczyk, Musical Culture in Medieval Central Europe, in: The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Central Europe, eds. Nada Zečević & Daniel Ziemann, Oxford 2022, 553-566
https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190920715.013.26
Paweł Gancarczyk, Die Musikkultur Mitteleuropas in Spätmittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, in: Handbuch der Musik der Renaissance, vol. 4, Das Musikleben der Renaissance. Zwischen Alltag und Fest, ed. Wolfgang Fuhrmann, Laaber 2021, 281-308
Paweł Gancarczyk, Fragments of Local Polyphony in Late Medieval Central Europe: Towards a Semiotic Interpretation of Musical Sources, in: Disiecta Membra Musicae. Studies in Musical Fragmentology, ed. Giovanni Varelli, Berlin-Boston 2020, 165-182, https://www.degruyter.tools/document/doi/10.1515/9783110717884-007/html
Paweł Gancarczyk, Memory of Genre: The Polytextual Motet in Central Europe and its Two Traditions, in: Sounding the Past: Music as History and Memory, ed. Karl Kügle, Turnhout 2020, 141-155
https://doi.org/10.1484/M.EM-EB.5.122009
Paweł Gancarczyk, Traces of Polyphonic Music in Late-medieval Republic of Dubrovnik, in: Glazba, migracije i europska kultura. Svecani zbornik za Vjeru Katalinić / Music, Migration and European Culture. Essays in Honour of Vjera Katalinić, eds. Ivano Cavallini, Jolanta Guzy-Pasiak & Harry White, Zagreb 2020, 35-52
Paweł Gancarczyk & Lenka Hlávková, The Lviv Fragments and Missa L’homme armé sexti toni. Questions on the Early Josquin Reception in Central Europe, „Tijdschrift van de Koninklijke Vereniging voor Nedeerlandse Muziekgeschiedenis” 67/1-2 (2017), 139-161
Paweł Gancarczyk, Changing Identities of Songs by Petrus Wilhelmi de Grudencz, „Hudební věda” 54/1 (2017), 5-24
Projects
The Czech Lands within Central European Networks: Polyphonic Music in the Fifteenth Century, Narodowa Agencja Wymiany Akademickiej / Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange, Bekker NAWA 2025, no. BPN/BEK/2025/1/00047/DEC/1, period: 1.10.2026-30.06.2027, researcher.
Monumenta Musicae in Polonia – edycje źródłowo-krytyczne – kontynuacja, Narodowy Program Rozwoju Humanistyki / National Programme for the Development of Humanities, no. NPRH/DN/SP/506936/2021/11, period: 2023-2028, researcher.
Muzyka w państwie zakonu krzyżackiego w Prusach: źródła, repertuar, konteksty, OPUS research project, Narodowe Centrum Nauki / National Science Centre, Poland, no. 2018/31/B/HS2/00479, period: 2019-2023, principal investigator.
Sound Memories. The Musical Past in Late-Medieval and Early-Modern Europe, HERA (Humanities in the European Research Area) research project, no. 15.037, period: 2016-2019, principal investigator: Karl Kügle (Utrecht), research group leaders: Paweł Gancarczyk (Warsaw), Inga Mai Groote (Heidelberg/Zurich), Lenka Hlávková (Prague), Susan Rankin (Cambridge).
Petrus Wilhelmi de Grudencz i kultura muzyczna Europy Środkowej XV wieku, OPUS research project, Narodowe Centrum Nauki / National Science Centre, Poland, no. 2013/11/B/HS2/02822, period: 2014-2017, principal investigator.
Kultura muzyczna Śląska do 1741 roku z perspektywy polskiej i czeskiej / The musical culture of Silesia before 1741 from the Polish and Czech perspectives, as part of the Polish-Czech Executive Program (intergovernmental agreement), funding from the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Musicology at Charles University in Prague, and the Department of Musicology at the University of Wrocław, period: 2010-2011, Polish group leader.
Kultura muzyczna na słowacko-polskim pograniczu / Musical Culture on the Slovak-Polish Borderland”, a joint research project between the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Slovak Academy of Sciences, period: 2010-2015, researcher.
Chorwacko-polskie związki muzyczne od średniowiecza do XX wieku / Croatian-Polish Music Relations from the Middle Ages to the 20th c., a joint research project between the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Croatian Academy of Sciences, period: 2008-2013, researcher.
Muzyka wobec rewolucji druku. Przemiany w kulturze muzycznej XVI wieku, research project, Ministerstwo Nauki i Szkolnictwa Wyższego / Ministry of Science and Higher Education, Poland, no. N105 011 31/0971, period: 2006-2009, principal investigator.