Włodzimierz Poźniak

Włodzimierz Poźniak was a Polish musicologist and composer, born and died in Cracow, in 1904 and 1967 respectively. His career unfolded almost entirely at the university in his native city, where he trained under Jachimecki, and his output combines historical research on his country's music with composition and the collection of folk music.

His training was twofold. He studied musicology at the University of Cracow until 1930, and composition with M. Piotrowski, B. Wallek-Walewski and B. Rizzi between 1929 and 1932. He obtained his doctorate in 1932 with a dissertation on Eugeniusz Pankiewicz, and furthered his studies in Berlin between 1934 and 1935 under Schering, Schmitz, Schünemann and Ernst Pepping. During the 1930s he taught musicology at the university and theory subjects at the Cracow Conservatory and the Moniuszko School of Music. The war took him to a prisoner-of-war camp in Germany. After his return, he gained his habilitation in 1947 with a work on the choral Passion in Poland, was appointed tenured professor in 1956 and headed the department from 1963. Between 1950 and 1955 he led the collection of folk music in southern Poland and, from 1962, directed the institute of popular music attached to the university.

His legacy is divided between writing and editing. He published studies on Ogiński, on the Polish national anthem and on Polish opera before Moniuszko, as well as analyses of The Barber of Seville and The Marriage of Figaro. His collections of folk songs from the Żywiec and Cracow regions and his study of genres in nineteenth-century Polish music remain reference works for those researching Polish folklore and musical Romanticism. As a composer, he left orchestral, chamber and vocal works, although no specific titles are detailed.