John Koslovsky (BM McGill University, 2003; MA & PhD Eastman School of Music / University of Rochester, 2006, 2010) is department chair and lecturer in music theory and aesthetics at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam. He is also an affiliate research faculty member in the humanities at Utrecht University, at the Institute for Cultural Inquiry (ICON). He has previously taught at the Eastman School of Music (2003-2009) and at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music (2009-2010).
His research has dealt with topics in the history of western music theory, Schenkerian theory and analysis, historiography, intertextuality, aesthetics, musical performance studies, and music theory pedagogy, and as such spans the gamut of practices and ideas in European art music from the Middle Ages to the first half of the twentieth century. His numerous conferences papers, articles, book chapters, and reviews have touched on musical repertoire of the twelfth-century Notre Dame School, Guillaume de Machaut, and Johannes Ockeghem; to Johann Sebastian Bach, Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven,Franz Schubert, Frederic Chopin, and Richard Wagner; to Béla Bartók, Paul Dukas, Claude Debussy, and Igor Stravinsky.
His dissertation, From Sinn und Wesen to Structural Hearing: The Development of Felix Salzer's Ideas in Interwar Vienna and their Transmission in Postwar United States (University of Rochester, 2010), won the “Alfred Mann Dissertation Award” of the Eastman School of Music. As part of this research project he catalogued the Felix Salzer Papers of the New York Public Library (2007) and was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to undertake archival research in Vienna, Austria (2007-2008). He is currently preparing a monograph entitled Felix Salzer and the Making of American Schenkerism, which examines the development and culture of Schenkerian practices in the twentieth century from the vantage point of one of its most important practioners.
Currently, he is also co-editing (with Michiel Schuijer) a book volume entitled Music Performance Encounters: Collaborations and Confrontations (Routledge, forthcoming). It features the work of twenty-four scholars and musicians from around the world, who share their knowledge and expertise on musical practices from a wide variety of global cultures and sub-cultures, from both an historical as well as contemporary point of view.
Dr. Koslovsky has been an initiator of multiple symposia and conferences, with the aim of stimulating and facilitating interaction between various musical and research cultures in the Netherlands and beyond. This includes a 2014 joint conference of the Dutch-Flemish Society for Music Theory, the Royal Society of Music History in the Netherlands, and the Royal Society for Music History in Belgium; a joint 2017 conference of the DFSMT and the German Society for Music Theory (Gesellschaft für Musiktheorie) in Leipzig; a 2017 international symposium on “Researching Performing, Performing Research” with the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, the University of Amsterdam, Utrecht University, and the VU-University/Orgelpark; and a 2020 international conference hosted by the Dutch-Flemish Society for Music Theory, “Beethoven 2020: Analytical and Performative Perspectives.”
Dr. Koslovsky has also been a frequent guest at international institutions, including the Hochschule für Musik in Freiburg, the Hochschule für Music und Theater in Leipzig, and the Zagreb Academy of Music.
Among his various activities as a scholar, Dr. Koslovsky is a member of Schenker Documents Online, a project that seeks to digitize all the personal documents of Heinrich Schenker. From 2011 to 2020 he has was on the board of the Dutch-Flemish Society of Music Theory, and from 2015 to 2020 served as its president. He has served on the board of the Koninklijke Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis (2012-15), and has served on various scientific committees and international boards, including the journal Music Theory & Analysis and the European Music Analysis Conference (EuroMac).