Michal Hottmar

Mgr. Michal Hottmar, PhD. is a Slovak musicologist and performer of lute music who specializes in lute music of the 16th and 17th centuries in Slovakia. He worked as a teacher at the universities in Žilina and in Prešov, today he teaches at the Department of Art and Culture, Faculty of Education, Comenius University in Bratislava. He is the author of the first scientific monograph on lute music in today's Slovakia and many professional articles in the field of historical music at home and abroad, which results in reconstructions of compositions of this nature published in domestic and international magazines and anthologies.

He is a performer of lute music and a basso continuo player, with further training under the guidance of significant lutenists such as P. O'Dette, P. Beier, A. Abramovich, M. Študent, J. Čižmář, and others. He is a member of the European Lute Orchestra, with which he performed in Italy, Holland and Germany, and a member of the English, American and Italian Lute Societies. He cooperates with the Hilaris Chamber Orchestra and is active in the International Musicological Society. At the same time, he leads the festivals Musica Testudinis Slovacca and Florilegium Musicum Žilina, as well as the ensemble Ensemble Thesaurus Musicum, and is a member of several domestic and international projects (VEGA, KEGA, Visegrad Fund, FPU).

Hottmar also often collaborates with Slovak artists such as Marcel Benčík, Eva Tkáčiková, or Samo Čarnoký, for whom he composes original music for exhibitions.