Ľudmila Michalková

PhDr. Ľudmila Michalková, PhD. is a Slovak musicologist, music historian and publicist, as well as a dramaturge and university lecturer.

She specializes in research on music in the territory of Slovakia in the 18th–19th centuries in the context of the history of European musical culture, as well as in the study of Evangelical church hymnody and liturgy in sources of Slovak provenance. Since 2006, she has also been researching the role of art music in Evangelical church services. The results of her work include participation in international musicological conferences, contributions to scholarly publications, academic articles, popular-science and journalistic texts, as well as book monographs (Krehkosť a monumentálnosť: K vzťahu piesne a symfónie v hudbe 19. storočia. I. Krehkosť/Fragility and Monumentality: On the Relationship between Song and Symphony in 19th-Century Music. Part I: Fragility, 2020; Kryštalizácia a kulminácia hudobného klasicistického štýlu/Crystallization and Culmination of the Classical Musical Style, 2016).

She studied musicology at the Faculty of Arts of Comenius University in Bratislava and worked at the Slovak Academy of Sciences from 1978 to 1993. She completed study stays at the Hochschule für Musik in Munich (1984) and the Paul Sacher Stiftung in Basel (1994).

She has been teaching at the Department of Music Theory, Faculty of Music and Dance, Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava since 1998. From the beginning of her tenure, her core subjects have included the history of Classical-period music, the history of 19th-century music, aesthetics of music, history of musical aesthetics and music-aesthetic analysis, philosophy of music, introduction to the methodology of musicology, and the history of church music, among others.

Within the framework of the long-standing cooperation between the Faculty of Music and Dance of the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava and the Haydn Konservatorium Eisenstadt, she lectured at the conservatory in Eisenstadt in 2009 (Zur Rezeption und Reflexion von Haydns Musik in der Slowakei).

Between 1985 and 1990, Ľ. Michalková collaborated as an author and presenter with the Experimental Studio of Czechoslovak Radio, where she participated in the creation of program series Spoznávame slovenskú hudbu (Exploring Slovak Music), Mladé pódium (Young Stage), and hosted public recordings of concerts by young artists.

For Czechoslovak Television, she prepared the series Televízny hudobný slovník (Television Music Dictionary, 90 episodes), Hudobný svet mladých (The Musical World of Youth), programs within the series Televízny archív (Television Archive – Organ Metamorphoses, In the Beginning Was the Word), and Dominanty (Dominants – Evangelical Hymnal). She also wrote the screenplay for the television film Alexander Albrecht.

She was a co-investigator of the scientific part of the bilateral Slovak–Austrian project ACCENTUS MUSICALIS, which focused on the cultivation and dissemination of early music (15th–18th centuries), especially in the Vienna–Bratislava region (Tradícia a inovácia v koncepte hudobnodramatických kompozícii Antona Zimmermanna/Tradition and Innovation in the Concept of Anton Zimmermann’s Music-Dramatic Compositions, 2013).

Ľ. Michalková contributed significantly to the revival and promotion of the life and work of Ludmilla Gizycka-Zamoyska, whose compositions were performed at several concerts, exhibition openings, and closing events of the exhibition Stretnutie s veľkou neznámou (Encounter with a Great Unknown), presented at the Polish Institute in Bratislava, the West Slovak Museum in Trnava, and the manor house in Dolná Krupá. She also supported the release of a CD featuring the composer’s art songs and piano miniatures Čaro miniatúr/The Charm of Miniatures (Four Seasons Music, Bratislava, 2022), for which she wrote an extensive study.

At the end of 2024, she authored the project Komorné koncerty a dialógy v Starom lýceu (Chamber Concerts and Dialogues at the Old Lyceum) for the Old Lyceum in Bratislava, which she currently oversees as a dramaturge and moderator. She is also engaged in popular-science lectures on music at organ and chamber concerts and continues her research on European music of the 18th to 20th centuries, as well as her pedagogical activities.