The Department of Musicology conducts research in the field of music history from the Middle Ages to the present day, as well as ethnomusicology. While the focus is on the Polish musical tradition, issues related to the music of other countries and regions are also addressed. In particular, the Department specialises in in-depth source research, editorial work and documentation, developed in international cooperation. The Music History Section publishes the quarterly magazine Muzyka, the Monumenta Musicae in Polonia series, the Catalogue of Music Sources in Poland, and the Polish Music Abroad series. Alongside individual projects, the Ethnomusicology Section publishes the Polska Pieśń i Muzyka Ludowa (Polish Folk Song and Music) series. The department organises seminars with foreign guests and regular conferences, including the Symposium of Music Historians of the Second Half of the 18th and 19th Centuries.
The Department is headed by Professor Paweł Gancarczyk.
- Music History Section – Catalogue of Music Sources
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The Catalogue of Music Sources in Poland was established as a result of the Notae Musicae Artis project (funded by the Polish Ministry of Higher Education, Committee for Scientific Research, grant no 1 P 105 015 04). The Catalogue’s goal is to gather information on musical sources preserved in Poland, as well as sources related to the history of Polish music preserved in foreign repositories. These objectives are pursued through archival and source research, the creation of catalogues and databases, the organization of conferences, and the preparation of scholarly publications. The Catalogue focuses primarily on liturgical-musical sources (including post-Tridentine), sources on music theory, and musical iconography.
Currently, the Catalogue is conducting studies in the following areas:
- Cistercian plainchant manuscripts (up to ca. 1600)
- Dominican plainchant manuscripts
- Polish plainchant manuscripts and prints form the 17th and 18th centuries
- Musical notation in Polish plainchant sources (up to ca. 1600)
- Music-theoretical manuscripts and prints from the 13th to the 16th century
- Musical iconography
- History of liturgy, especially its political significance
- Manuscript cultures and theologies of the political in the Early and High Middle Ages
- preparation of an online platform enabling the automation of cataloging liturgical sources (Ritus+ project)
Researchers from the Catalogue collaborate with the Manuscripta.pl project team (Institute of the History of Science of the Polish Academy of Sciences) and with the Archive of the Polish Province of the Dominican Order in Kraków, as well as with the research teams Usuarium (Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, ELTE), and eCLLA+ (University of Regensburg in cooperation with the Henry Bradshaw Society, London).
Ongoing Projects
- Cantus Planus in Polonia is a database dedicated to plainchant sources preserved in Polish libraries and archives. Each manuscript is entered with a general description and is successively indexed. The database is integrated into the Cantus Index Network.
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Liturgica Poloniae. A Descriptive Catalogue of Polish Liturgical Manuscripts, copied until ca. 1300. The project aims to meticulously catalogue approximately 110 liturgical manuscripts copied until ca. 1300, currently held in Polish and foreign repositories.
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Early Music in Central Europe: Collaborative Research, Migrating Sources, Transregional Connections (project funded by the Visegrad Fund; Strategic Grant: 22310209; 2023-2026). The project brings together four research teams to explore key areas of early-music studies (with a focus on liturgical monody). Four workshops organized across the V4 countries foster the exchange of knowledge, research methods, and scholarly perspectives.
- Musical and Liturgical Traditions in Medieval Poland and Hungary – bilateral project between Insttute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Research Centre for the Humanities, Institute for Musicology in Budapest (2024-2026) that enables research collaboration, archive queries, participation in the lectures and conferences and planning further collaborative projects.
- Musical-theoretical and teaching traditions in Europe in the 14th-16th centuries – an individual project carried out within an informal cooperation with musicologists from Great Britain and the United States. Current works focus on the reception of Boethius’s treatise De institutione musica. European source materials from the 9th—16th centuries constitutes a large context for analysing and interpreting Polish texts. collected as part of the project provide a broad context for the analysis and interpretation of Polish texts.
Documentation of source materials muzycznych [in Polish]
Research Team: Prof. Elżbieta Witkowska-Zaremba (Head of the Research Unit), Irina Chachulska, PhD, Dominika Grabiec, PhD, Paweł Figurski, PhD
Contact: Tel.: +48 22 50 48 238
- Music History Section – Monumenta Musicae in Polonia
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The series “Monumenta Musicae in Polonia” was founded in 1951 by Józef M. Chomiński, who served as its first editor-in-chief. From 1972 to 2004 the series was led by Jerzy Morawski, and since 2005 it has been managed by Barbara Przybyszewska-Jarmińska. “Monumenta Musicae in Polonia” publishes musical works and theoretical works on music in the form of critical editions, as well as the most valuable musical sources in facsimile editions. The series encompasses works created in Poland or associated with it, dating from the late Middle Ages to the 19th century. The “Monumenta Musicae in Polonia” team not only conducts editorial work, but also initiates research on early music and music editing.
See: Monumenta Musicae in Polonia – Editorial Series
Editorial Staff: Editor-in-chief: Prof. Barbara Przybyszewska-Jarmińska, Assistant editor: Jakub Chachulski, PhD, Katarzyna Korpanty, PhD, Julia Palacz, MA
- Music History Section – Polish Music Abroad
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The aim of the team is to conduct research on the work and activities of Polish composers active outside Poland in the 20th and 21st centuries. Among the composers who have received particular attention are Zygmunt Mycielski, Roman Palester, Andrzej Panufnik, Karol Rathaus and Ludomir Michał Rogowski. The team is also interested in foreign centres promoting Polish musical culture, with particular emphasis on Europe and North America.
An international project is being implemented in the years 2025–2027 Polish and Lithuanian Music in Global Perspective: Migration, Diasporic Identities and Homeland (project leader: dr hab. Beata Bolesławska-Lewandowska, prof. IS PAN).
The team organises regular conferences and initiates and edits subsequent volumes of the book series „Muzyka Polska za Granicą” [Polish Music Abroad].
Conferences from the series POLISH MUSIC ABROAD
- Paris and Its Influence on the Musical Culture of Twentieth-Century Central and Eastern Europe. The 6th International Conference of the ‘Polish Music Abroad’ Conference Series. Warsaw, 16–18.09.2026. CALL FOR PAPERS
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Z muzyką w świat! Sto lat polskiej sekcji Międzynarodowego Towarzystwa Muzyki Współczesnej [With music into the world! One hundred years of the Polish section of the International Society for Contemporary Music]. Warsaw, 20.09.2024. PROGRAMME
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Warsaw Autumn Festival – its role and significance for the musical life of the countries on both sides of the Iron Curtain (and after its fall). ONLINE, 16–17.09.2021. Scientific Conference organised by the Department of Musicology of the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Polish Composers' Union. PROGRAMME
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„American dream”. Polscy twórcy za oceanem [The American dream. Polish artists overseas]. Warsaw, 15-16.10.2019. PROGRAMME
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Kompozytorzy polscy a Paryż (1918−1939) [Polish composers and Paris (1918–1939)]. Warsaw, 16.05.2018. PROGRAMME
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Twórcy – źródła – archiwa [Authors – sources – archives]. Warsaw, 25-26.01.2017. PROGRAMME
Other conferences:
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Zygmunt Mycielski: człowiek, myśl, muzyka [Zygmunt Mycielski: man, thought, music]. Interdisciplinary Scientific Conference organised by the Department of Musicology of the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Musicologists Section of the Polish Composers' Union. Warsaw, 8 May 2017. PROGRAMME
Interdisciplinary seminars entitled „Migracje artystyczne w XIX, XX i XXI wieku” [Artistic Migration in the 19th, 20th and 21st Centuries], open to all, are held ONLINE on the last Tuesday of each month at 1 p.m.
See: Polish Music Abroad - Editorial Series
Research Team: Jolanta Guzy-Pasiak, Associate Professor (Head of the Section), Beata Bolesławska-Lewandowska, Associate Professor
- Music History Section – Editorial Office of the Quarterly “Muzyka”
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The quarterly „Muzyka” has been published continuously since 1956 and remains the leading musicology journal in Poland. It publishes texts dealing with music history from the Middle Ages to contemporary times, as well as ethnomusicology and systematic musicology. The main focus of the issues addressed is the Polish musical tradition, as most broadly understood, as well as the culture of the countries of Central Europe. The articles are published in Polish or English and are double-blind peer reviewed.
All texts from 2018 onwards are available free of charge on the journal's website: https://czasopisma.ispan.pl/index.php/m/index. In addition to working on the quarterly, members of the editorial team of Muzyka magazine conduct their own research on music from the 15th to the 20th century.
Editorial Office: Professor Paweł Gancarczyk, Editor-in-chief, Bartłomiej Gembicki, PhD, Jolanta Guzy-Pasiak, Associate Professor, Małgorzata Sieradz, PhD, Managing Editor, Grzegorz Zieziula, Associate Professor
- Music History Section – NCN project „Music and Crusading in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, 1453-1683”
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Music and Crusading in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, 1453-1683
While most people consider the crusades as a series of religious wars for the conquest of the Holy Land that happened between 1095 and 1291, today historians embrace a definition of crusading that also encompasseslater military endeavours happened in the late medieval and early modern period. In the years between the 1453 and 1683, the Ottoman Empire was considered the main crusading enemy and the crusading message was part of a wide effort of propaganda throughout Europe, which included also works of art. While historians and crusading scholars have considered how the crusading message was portrayed in the visual arts and literature, still the musical side has been substantially ignored. At the same time, musicologists have privileged researching music in the classical period of crusading, and did not take into consideration how historians interpreted the later movement.
The main goal of Music and Crusading is to provide the first comprehensive and interdisciplinary study that integrates crusading rhetoric into the musical culture of late medieval and early modern Europe. Focussingon the crusades against the Ottoman Empire, the project will detail how music negotiated idea about the Turks, celebrated military victories, promoted crusading message in different areas of society. Chronologically, the project will focus on the period between 1453, year of the Fall of Constantinople, and 1683, when the victory of the European camp at the Battle of Vienna, under the command of the Polish king Jan III Sobieski, turned the tide of the Ottoman territorial expansion in Europe.
The project will look at a broad geographic area, with particular attention for areas that are important in crusading history both for their proximity to the battlegrounds or for their importance in shaping crusading propaganda. Particular attention will be given to the Central European regions, such as those of present Czechia, Poland, and Hungary, that have been traditionally marginalized by crusading scholars as well as musicologists.
Research Team: dr Nicolò Ferrari (Project leader)
- Music History Section – NCN project „An Ambivalent Peryphery: Situating Opera and Operatic Culture of Poland on a Map of the Enlightenment”
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The aim of the project is to demonstrate the historical significance of Poland within the European operatic culture of the Enlightenment. The research examines operatic performances and their reception during the reign of Stanisław August Poniatowski (1765–1795) and in the early post-partition decades (up to 1830), analysed against the backdrop of the circulation of Italian, French, and German repertories, the mobility of performers, and the spread of opera in vernacular languages. The project challenges entrenched narratives in opera scholarship that marginalise Poland, presenting, among others, Warsaw as an important centre of operatic life and an active participant in European cultural exchange.
The methodological approach combines musical analysis with national contexts, taking into account the specific character of the Polish Enlightenment, including its reformist, social, and political conditions. Particular emphasis is placed on the ideological and aesthetic dimensions of the development of Polish opera between 1778 and 1830, understood as a vehicle for Enlightenment and national aspirations. At the same time, the project situates Poland within a broad transnational perspective. This approach not only enables a clearer understanding of Poland’s place within a shared European cultural space but also integrates the findings into wider musicological debates on the centre–periphery relationship and on Enlightenment opera as a genuinely pan-European phenomenon.
Research Team: Anna Parkitna, PhD (Project leader)
- Ethnomusicology Section – Polish Folk Song and Music
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The research conducted at the Ethnomusicology Laboratory focuses primarily on traditional musical cultures in Poland, both in their historical and contemporary dimensions. Regional studies, conducted in collaboration with colleagues from other research centres and from the field, have resulted in a series of monographs entitled ‘Polish Folk Song and Music – Sources and Materials’, published since 1974. The main source material for this series consists of archival recordings from the Phonographic Collections of the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences, which are gradually being expanded with new recordings of traditional music. Individual research interests are developed at the Laboratory in areas such as studies of traditional singing, folk religious music culture, the performance of traditional and traditional-inspired music, and the creation of new methodological concepts in ethnomusicological research. An important place is given to cooperation – also on an international level – with other scientific and academic institutions, cultural centres and museums, as well as the media, through regular lectures, broadcasts, consultations, participation in conferences, traditional and folk music competition committees, concerts and other research and artistic projects.
See: Polish Folk Song and Music - editorial series
Research Team: Weronika Grozdew-Kołacińska, PhD (Head of the Team), Agata Krajewska-Mikosz, PhD, Arleta Nawrocka-Wysocka, PhD (Poznań), Barbara Śnieżek, MA, Magdalena Chudy, PhD
- PhD Students and Fellows in the Department of Musicology
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Łukasz Kaczmarowski, the Anthropos Doctoral School of the Institutes of the Polish Academy of Sciences (supervisor: Jolanta Guzy-Pasiak, Associate Professor)
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Łucja Siedlik, the Anthropos Doctoral School of the Institutes of the Polish Academy of Sciences (supervisor: Beata Bolesławska-Lewandowska, Associate Professor)
- Jordan Lian - Fulbright grantee (supervisors: Jolanta Guzy-Pasiak, Associate Professor and Piotr Wciślik, PhD, IBL PAN)
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