dr hab. Szymon Paczkowski, associate professor

He studied musicology at the University of Warsaw in 1981–1986, completing his studies with a master’s degree; in 1996 he obtained a doctoral degree in musicology on the basis of the thesis “The science of affect in musical thought of the first half of the seventeenth century” (supervisor: Prof. dr hab. Irena Poniatowska, reviewers: Prof. dr hab. Mirosław Perz and Prof. dr hab. Zygmunt Szweykowski) and in 2012 a post-doctoral degree.

He has been working at the Institute of Musicology, University of Warsaw continuously since 15 February 1987. As a visiting professor he has lectured at the Eberhards Karls Universtität Tübingen), Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Charles University in Prague, City University of New York and Juilliard School of Music in New York (2013).

Author and editor of numerous scholarly and popular publications reviewed internationally, including two books: Nauka o afektach w myśli muzycznej I połowy XVII wieku (1998) and Polish Style in the Music of Johann Sebastian Bach (2012), translated into English and published by Rowman & Littlefield in the series Contextual Bach Studies (2016).

His current research interests focus on various aspects of the history of musical culture between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, especially topics relating to the theory and aesthetics of music of the Baroque period, and history of opera. He is also intensely involved in research on the musical culture of Poland and Saxony at the time of the so-called Polish-Saxon Union during the reigns of Augustus II and Augustus III in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

He was the chair of the 12th International Congress of Baroque Music, which he organised in Warsaw in 2006, as well as the “Sixth Bach Dialogue Meeting” in 2013 at the University of Warsaw together with the Bach Network UK research group and the Fryderyk Chopin Institute.

He is a respected specialist in Baroque music (particularly the music of Johann Sebastian Bach) and nineteenth-century opera (particularly of Richard Wagner). He is a member of the network council of Bach Network UK, as well as member of the American Bach Society and the Neue Bach-Gesellschaft in Leipzig.

A regular collaborator of the Polish Radio’s Programme 2, Warsaw Philharmonic and Teatr Wielki-National Opera in Warsaw. In 1999–2001 he was the conductor and artistic manager of the University of Warsaw Academic Choir.