Faculty of ArtsComenius University Bratislava

Doc. Dr. Marcus Zagorski, PhD.

My past research focused on twentieth-century music and aesthetics, especially modernism and music after 1945. My current research is in ecomusicology and sound studies, and I am particularly interested in the soundscapes of non-urban areas. I studied musicology at Stanford University and composition at McGill University.

 

Publications:

BOOKS

as author:

Adorno and the Aesthetics of Postwar Serial Music, Hofheim: Wolke, 2020 (ISBN 978-3-95593-124-7).

Kapitoly z estetiky seriálnej hudby [Elements of Serial Aesthetics, trans from English by Robert Kolář], Bratislava: NM Code, 2017 (ISBN 978-80-972585-4-2); this is a revised version of “Material and History in the Aesthetics of Serial Music”.

as translator (from German):

Arnold Schönberg and Composing with Twelve Tones, by Eike Feß, Vienna: Arnold Schönberg Center, April 2023.

as editor:

Musicologica Istropolitana 12, co-edited with Vladimír Zvara, Bratislava: Comenius University Press, 2016 (ISBN 978-80-223-4100-4).

PEER-REVIEWED ARTICLES

“The Aesthetics of Serialism,” The Cambridge Companion to Serialism, ed. M. Iddon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (March 2023), 20-36.

“Water Sounds: Four Essays,” Ecomusicology Review 7 (2019). Available online at https://ecomusicology.info/water-sounds-four-essays/

“Postwar Musical Modernism in East and West,” Musicologica 1/2019.

“Music and Cultural Opposition” (with Andrea Bohlman, Peter Motyčka, and Vladimír Zvara), The Handbook of COURAGE: Cultural Opposition and Its Heritage in Eastern Europe, Budapest: Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 289-306, 2018.

“Listening for Stockhausen,” Hudební věda 55/2 (2018), 193-202.

“On Musical Material: Serialism and ‘Materialdenken’,” Musicologica 1/2018.

“The Role of Technology in the Aesthetics of Postwar Serial Music,” Musicologica Brunensia 51/1 (2017), 127-137.

“Stockhausen’s Theoretical Legacy: An Aesthetics of Experimentation,” The Musical Legacy of Karlheinz Stockhausen, eds. Morag Grant and Imke Misch, Hofheim: Wolke, 2016, 52-62.

“Carl Dahlhaus and the Aesthetics of the Experiment,” Acta Musicologica 87/2 (2015), 249-264.

“Making the Postwar Avant-Garde More German,” Studia Musicologica 56/4 (2015), 285-292.

“Aesthetics and Truth in Nietzsche and Adorno,” Hudba - Integrácie - Interpretácie 18 (2015), 37-57.

“Narratives of Progress in West German Music after 1945,” Konzeptionen des musikalischen Denkens in der europäischen Musikwissenschaft des 20. Jahrhunderts (anlässlich des 100. Geburtsjahres von Jozef Kresánek), ed. Markéta Štefková, Bratislava: Ústav hudobnej vedy SAV, 2014, 209-222.

“Hearing Beethoven, Truth, and ‘New Music’,” International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 44/1 (2013), 49-56.

“Material and History in the Aesthetics of ‘serielle Musik’,” Journal of the Royal Musical Association 134/2 (2009), 271-317.

“‘Nach dem Weltuntergang’: Adorno’s Engagement with Postwar Music,” Journal of Musicology 22/4 (2005), 680-701.

TEACHING MATERIAL (E-BOOK)

A Companion to 20th-Century Music History, Bratislava: Comenius University Press, 2014 (ISBN 978-80-8127-105-2).

REVIEWS

“Jazz in (Eastern) Europe: freedom and ownership,” review of Jazz from Socialist Realism to Postmodernism: Jazz under State Socialism, vol. 5 (eds. Yvetta Kajanová, Gertrud Pickhan, Rüdiger Ritter, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2016), Human Affairs 27 (2017), 235-237.

“Kultur und Musik nach 1945: Ästhetik im Zeichen des Kalten Krieges” (ed. Ulrich J. Blomann, Saarbrücken: Pfau, 2015), Journal of Musicological Research 35/3 (2016), 270-272.

“Melos-Ethos International Festival of Contemporary Music 2015,” Tempo 70/276 (2016), 91-92.

“Melos-Étos 2015,” (in Slovak) Hudobný život, 47/12 (2015), 4-5.

“Wien Modern 2014,” Tempo 69/272 (2015), 77-78.

“Wien Modern 2014,” (in Slovak) Hudobný život, 46/12 (2014), 26.

TRANSLATIONS

“Jung-Wien Musicians and Tone Poets,” by Therese Muxeneder, Arnold Schönberg & Jung-Wien, Vienna: Arnold Schoenberg Center, 2018, 159-181.

“Arnold Schoenberg and Karl Kraus,” by Therese Muxeneder, Arnold Schönberg & Jung-Wien, Vienna: Arnold Schoenberg Center, 2018, 243-252.

“Signalling a Promised Paradise,” by Peter Behýl, Program Book for Beethoven’s Fidelio, Slovak National Theatre, 2016, 49-51.

“A Word from the Director,” by Martin Bendik, Program Book for Beethoven’s Fidelio, Slovak National Theatre, 2016, 53.

“On the Clash between Religion and Eros. A Conversation with Friedrich Haider,” by Vladimir Zvara and Friedrich Haider, Program Book for Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari’s I gioielli della Madonna, Slovak National Theatre, 2015, 80-84.

“We Have to Serve the Composer,” by Manfred Schweigkofler, Program Book for Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari’s I gioielli della Madonna, Slovak National Theatre, 2015, 86.

“In a Conceptual Note to La Bohème” by Peter Konwitschny, Program Book for Giacomo Puccini’s La Bohème, Slovak National Theatre, 2014, 91-92.

“Does Puccini Glorify Common People and Common Lives? Theses to La Bohème” by Gerd Rienäcker, Program Book for Giacomo Puccini’s La Bohème, Slovak National Theatre, 2014, 99-104.

“‘Returning to the Skin’: On Theodor W. Adorno’s Theory of Musical Interpretation” by Hermann Danuser (translated in conjunction with László Vikárius), Essays in Honor of Lásló Somfai on his 70th Birthday, Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 2005, 109-123.

“New Music in Japan in the 1990s” by Seiji Choki, Ensemble-Modern-Jahresmagazin 3

OTHER ARTICLES AND ESSAYS

“Adorno and Musical Material,” Tempus Konnex, available online at tempus-konnex.com/spip.php?article245.

“How Adorno Heard Beethoven,” Musicologica Istropolitana 12, eds. Marcus Zagorski and Vladimír Zvara, Bratislava: Comenius University Press, 2016, 163-173. [An edited reprint of my article “Hearing Beethoven, Truth, and ‘New Music’”]

“Poňatie pokroku v západonemeckej hudbe po roku 1945,” Slovenská hudba 41/2 (2015), 150-158. [Slovak translation of “Narratives of Progress in West German Music after 1945”]

INTERVIEWS

“Rozhovor: Marcus Zagorski,” Hudobný život, 46/9 (2014).

“Rozhovor,” Naša Univerzita: Univerzity Komenského v Bratislave 60/10 (2014), 28.

OTHER EDITORIAL WORK

English-language Editor, Program Book for La Bohème, Slovak National Theatre, 2014

English-language Editor, International Society for Contemporary Music Program, 2013

Co-Editor, Stanford Humanities Review (1998-2000), Stanford University

Ph.D. DISSERTATION

Between History and Nature: Theories of Material in Postwar Serialism, Stanford University (USA), 2006.

CONFERENCE PAPERS AND INVITED LECTURES

“Planning a SoundMap to Combat Climate Change,”

Thinking Sonic Environments: Soundscapes of Nature, Communities, and Artworks, Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic, 21-22 September 2022

“What is Ecomusicology and Why Shoud I Care?”

Workshop for Young Composers, International Workshop, Young Composers and Gustav Mahler in Toblach/Dobbiaco, Italy, 18-19 July 2022

“From Naturbeherrschung to Naturbewahrung. Or, Where I Was and Where I Will Go,”

Guest Lecture, Department of Musicology, University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria, 21 June 2022

“From the Domination of Nature to the Preservation of Nature,”

Music and Nature Study Group, Gustav Mahler Research Center, Toblach/Dobbiaco, Italy (online), 26 February 2022

“Postwar Musical Modernism in East and West,”

The Cultural Heritage of Dissent – Final Conference of the Courage Project, Institute of History, Research Centre for the Humanities, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary, 27-28 November 2018

“National Differences and International Similarities,”

National versus International (in Contemporary Music), International Conference, Hotel Falkensteiner, Bratislava, Slovakia, 27 September 2018

“The Role of Technology in the Aesthetics of Postwar Serial Music,”

Musica artificiosa: Music as an Art and Profession, 51st International Musicological Colloquium, Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic, 10-12 October 2016

“Öffnung des Eisernen Vorhangs. Europäische Musikgeschichte nach 1989”

Closing Panel Discussion of the 15th Annual Conference of the Gesellschaft für Musiktheorie, Berlin, Germany, 1-4 October 2015

“Experimental Music in Postwar German Aesthetics,”

Doctoral Colloquium Series of Prof. Dr. Gesine Schröder, Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien, Vienna, Austria, 23 May 2015

“Making the Postwar Avant-Garde More German: Dahlhaus’s Historiography”

Nationalism in Music in the Totalitarian State (1945-1989), Archives and Research Group for 20th-21st Century Hungarian Music, and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary, 24-25 January 2015

“The Concept of the Experiment in West German Music Aesthetics after 1945”

Lecture Series offered jointly by the Department of Musicology of Charles University, Prague, and the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic, 22 October 2014

“Narratives of Progress in West German Music after 1945”

Konzeptionen des musikalischen Denkens in der europäischen Musikwissenschaft des 20. Jahrhunderts, Comenius University, Bratislava, and the Institute of Musicology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava, Slovakia, 21-22 October 2013

“Invention and Discovery in Listening”

Faculty Scholar Series, College of Musical Arts, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio, USA, 10 October 2012

“Listening for Stockhausen”

The Art of Listening – Trends und Perspektiven einer Geschichte des Musikhörens, Radialsystem V, Berlin, Germany, and the Universität Potsdam, Germany, 12-14 July 2012

“Historiography in Music after 1945”

Postgraduate Composition Colloquium, Department of Music, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland, 5 March 2012

“Stockhausen’s Theory of Experimentation and Dahlhaus’s Writing of History”

Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society, San Francisco, 10-13 November 2011

“Stockhausen’s Theoretical Legacy: The Aesthetics of Experimentation”

The Musical Legacy of Karlheinz Stockhausen: Looking Back and Forward, Georg-August Universität, Göttingen, and the Stockhausen Foundation for Music, Kürten, Germany, 10-11 August 2011

“Beethoven, Truth, and New Music”

Faculty Scholar Series, College of Musical Arts, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio, USA, 23 March 2011

“The Geist in the Machine: Material and Technology in Early Serialism”

The Ghost in the Machine – Technologies, Performance, Publics, McGill University, Montreal, Canada, 2-3 February 2011

“Historical Narrative and Aesthetic Judgment: serial and post-serial music W. Germany”

Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society, Cold War Panel, Philadelphia, 12-15 November 2009

“Postwar Change and the Narrative Status Quo”

Sixth International Conference on Music Since 1900, Keele, England, 2-5 July 2009

“Material and Technology in the Spatial Conception of Early Serialism”

Annual Conference of the Royal Musical Association, Aberdeen, Scotland, 15-18 July 2008

“‘Beethoven in the Spirit of Modernity’ or Modernity in the Spirit of Beethoven?”

Fifteenth Biennial International Conference on Nineteenth-Century Music, University College Dublin School of Music, Dublin, Ireland, 25-28 June 2008

“Parameter, Material, and the Philosophy of History of Early Serialism”

Annual Conference of the Society for Musicology in Ireland, Dublin, Ireland, 11-13 May 2007

“Early Serialism: Material and Historical Context”

Lecture Series, Department of Music, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland, 23 April 2007

“Theories of Material in Early Serialism”

Lecture Series, Department of Music, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland, 2 November 2006

“Adorno’s Engagement with Postwar Music”

Annual Conference of the Society for Musicology in Ireland, Cork, Ireland, 6-8 May 2005

“The Nature of Musical Material”

Doctoral colloquium of Prof. Dr. Hermann Danuser, Musikwissenschaftliches Seminar, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany, 16 January 2004

“Adorno’s ‘New Music’ and German Romanticism”

International Conference on Romanticism and Nationalism in Music, Ionian University, Corfu, Greece, 17-20 October 2003

“A History of Musical Material (before and after Adorno)”

Doctoral colloquium of Prof. Dr. Hermann Danuser, Musikwissenschaftliches Seminar, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany, 25 April 2003

“Concepts of Material in Twentieth-Century Music”

Stanford University, 4 June 2002

A version of this paper was read at the doctoral colloquium of Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Welsch, Institut für Philosophie, Friedrich-Schiller Universität Jena, Germany, 23 January 2003