musicologist; b. 24th May 1908 in Zgorzelec, d. 14th September 1944 in Warsaw. In 1926-30 he lived in Vienna, where he attended lectures on musicology, history of art, psychology and philosophy (A. Orel, R. Lach, W. Fischer, E. Wellesz, R. Ficker) and took piano and composition lessons with Joseph Marx. In 1929-30 he worked as a volunteer at the Autrian National Library. In 1932 he obtained a PhD for a thesis titled Geschichte des Begriffs Volkslied im musikalischen Schrifttum. Ein Stück deutscher Geistesgeschichte. Encouraged by A. Chybiński, Pulikowski started investigating Polish dances found in German 16th- and 17th-century tabulatures. In 1932 he worked at the Preussische Staatsbibliothek in Berlin preparing his PhD thesis for publication (Heidelberg, 1993). Next he moved for a year to Hamburg, where he collaborated with W. Heinitz at an university phonetics laboratory thanks to the scholarship from the National Culture Fund. In 1934 he moved to Warsaw and became a Polish citizen. He wrote his habilitation thesis in 1936 under Adolf Chybiński at the Humanities Faculty of the University of Warsaw. At that time he taught comparative musicology, musicological systematics, and musical palaeography at the State Conservatoire of Music and worked on a project run by the Institute of Folk Song Research which resulted in the establishment of the Central Phonographic Archive at the National Library in Warsaw. Working at the archives, he collaborated with Wanda Rudzka and Józef Chomiński. He trained more than 20 field researchers who collected folk songs and cooperated with the Central Phonographic Archive. His own fieldwork started in 1935 in Podlasie. That year he also started teaching musicological systematics and introduction to musicological literature at the University of Warsaw. During the World War II he worked at the Staatsbibliothek Warschau as the head of the music section, striving to save Polish collections from destruction. He died digging trenches during the Warsaw Uprising.
Julian Pulikowski was a librarian, educator, and organiser. National Library Report of 1939 mentions him as a philosophy doctor; member of the academic staff of the Józef Piłsudski University and lecturer of the State Institute of Dramatic Art; chairman of the Publishing Commission of the Fryderyk Chopin Institute; curator of the Library of the State Conservatoire of Music; member of the Board and deputy secretary of the Karol Szymanowski Society; member of the Music Commission of the Polish Radio Programming Council; member of the Warsaw Music Society, Society of Early Music Lovers (Stowarzyszenie Miłośników Muzyki Dawnej) and Polish Music Publishing Society (Towarzystwo Wydawnicze Muzyki Polskiej); head of the Musicology Department of the State Conservatoire of Music. He published studies on various topics, in particular comparative musicology, aesthetics and sociology of music, as well as reviews of academic papers in "Kwartalnik Muzyczny" and "Polski Rocznik Muzykologiczny". Drawing inspiration from philosophy and culture studies, he made attempts to coordinate historical and systematic musicology, and - for the discipline - to embrace musical culture as a whole, including folk music.

 

updated: February 2015 (ab)