Michal Hottmar

Mgr. Michal Hottmar, PhD. is a Slovak musicologist, music historian, university lecturer, and performer of lute music, specializing in music from the 16th and 17th centuries in Slovakia. As a university lecturer, he has worked at the University of Žilina and in Prešov, and he currently teaches at the Department of Art and Culture of the Faculty of Education at Comenius University in Bratislava. He is the author of the first scientific monograph on lute music in the territory of present-day Slovakia and of numerous scholarly articles on historical music, both in Slovakia and abroad.

In his scientific work, he focuses on researching musical heritage from the 16th to the 18th century, resulting in reconstructions of compositions from this period and published studies. He is also a member of various domestic and international research projects (VEGA, KEGA, Visegrad Fund, FPU).

As an artist, he performs lute music and plays basso continuo, having honed his skills under renowned 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 has performed in Italy, the Netherlands, and Germany, and is also a member of the English, American, and Italian lute societies. He collaborates with the Hilaris Chamber Orchestra, is active in the International Musicological Society, and leads the festivals Musica Testudinis Slovacca and Florilegium Musicum Žilina. He is the founder and artistic director of the early music ensemble Ensemble Thesaurus Musicum.

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