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Professor Jan Smaczny



Professor Jan Smaczny
Hamilton Harty Professor of Music

Email:j.smaczny@qub.ac.uk
Tel: +44 28 9097 5201
Office: Music Building
Address: School of Music and Sonic Arts, Music Building, Queen's University Belfast,
BT7 1NN


Key Roles:
Administrative
Head of School (1997-2005); recruitment; director of research in musicology and composition (2007, semester 1), BMus degree convenor (2009/10, Semester 2).

Teaching
Harmonic techniques; keyboard continuo; French baroque music; nineteenth-century music; American popular song.



Achievements and Distinctions

Jan Smaczny was educated at Oxford University and the Charles University in Prague. He came to Queen's from Birmingham University, where he was senior lecturer, in 1996 to take up the post of Hamilton Harty Professor of Music. From 1997 to 2005 he was head of the School of Music.

His teaching embraces the history of romantic and twentieth-century music, American popular song, the French Baroque and continuo techniques. Other interests include contemporary music, the English virginalists and many aspects of performance.

Much of his research is founded on the Czech repertoire in particular opera and the life and music of Dvorak and Martinu. His publications include monographs on the Prague Provisional Theatre and Dvorak's B minor cello concerto, and recently studies of Mozart and Prague, Mozart and the twentieth century, Goethe and the Czechs, Czech grand opera, and nationalism and the string quartet. In 2006 he was elected President of the Society for Musicology in Ireland; he is a committee member of the National Association for Music in Higher Education (NAMHE) and a member of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) postgraduate awards panel.

Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC):
elected to peer review college (2004-); appointed to postgraduate grant panel, performing arts (2006-).

National Association for Music in Higher Education (NAMHE):
elected to national committee (2004-).

Society for Musicology in Ireland (SMI):
founding member of original steering committee (2002); council member (2003-); elected president of SMI (2006-2009).


Research Interests

Czech music, in particular the life and works of Dvorak and Smetana
Music in nineteenth-century Ireland. 

Areas of supervision include the above, the music of Strauss, music broadcasting and French baroque music.

Current Work

 

A critical edition of Dvorak’s last opera, Armida  

A biographical work on Martinu


 

Selected Publications 

Books (authored)
  • The Daily Repertoire of the Prague Provisional Theatre (Prague, 1994)
  • Dvorak’s Cello Concerto (Cambridge, 1999)
Book (part-authored)
  • Dvorak the Dramatist [Dvorak dramatic] (Prague, 1994)
Book (edited)
  • With Michael Murphy, Music in Nineteenth-Century Ireland (Dublin, 2007)
Major Encyclopaedia Articles
  • Dvorak, Martinu and all of their operas, in ed. Stanley Sadie, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (New York: Macmillan, 1992)
  • Martinu, in eds. Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (New York: Macmillan, 2000)
  • Prague, in ed. Simon Keefe, The Cambridge Mozart Encyclopaedia (Cambridge: CUP, 2006)

Other recent publications
  • ‘Grand opera among the Czechs’ in ed. David Charlton The Cambridge Companion to Grand Opera (Cambridge: CUP, 2003)
  • ‘Mozart and the twentieth century’, in ed. Simon Keefe The Cambridge Companion to Mozart (Cambridge: CUP, 2003)
  • ‘The national string quartet’ in ed. Robin Stowell The Cambridge Companion to the String Quartet (Cambridge: CUP, 2003)
  • ‘Goethe and the Czechs’ in ed. Lorraine Byrne Goethe: Musical Poet, Musical Catalyst (Dublin: Carysfort Press, 2004)
  • ‘Martinu’s Last Opera: A Greek Passion?’ in ed. Michael Beckerman Martinu’s Mysterious Accident (Hillsdale NY: Pendragon Press, 2007)
  • ‘Musical national traditions in Ireland and the Czech lands in the nineteenth century: similar roots, creative divergencies’ in eds. Michael Murphy and Jan Smaczny, Music in Nineteenth-Century Ireland (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2007)

Research Grants

Czech Academy of Sciences: 
£3.5K for support for work on an edition of Dvorak’s Armida in 2007-8; 
£12K variously for support with editing work on the new Dvorak Complete Edition.

£41k from AHRC (matching support for study leave)

Research Students 
Current 

Declan Plummer, The career of Hamilton Harty and his impact on British Music; 
Jonathan Price, Richard Strauss’s choreographic works; 
Liam Gorry, accompanied recitative in Handel; 
Ruth Stanley, Music Broadcasting in Northern Ireland 1924-1939.
Recent graduations 

Terrence Needham, Massenet’s Le Jongleur de Notre Dame (2008); 
Eamon Sweeney, The guitar and its role as an accompanying instrument in 17th and early 18th century France (2006); 
Philip Graydon, Richard Strauss’s Die agyptische Helena (1927): Context and Contemporary Critical Reception (2004); 
Mary Callaghan, Richard Strauss’s ‘Geheimnisvolle Music’: Unveiling the Meaning of Salome (2003); 
Elaine Kelly, ‘A More Beautiful Era of Art.’ Figurenlehre, style brise and other baroque elements in Brahms’s piano compositions: Brahms’s involvement as a scholar, performer and editor of baroque keyboard music and the effect it exerted on his compositional style (2002); 
Karl Stapleton, Concert Life in Prague, 1860-65 (2002).