Marko Motnik studied organ and harpsichord at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (mdw) and received his doctorate in 2010 with a dissertation on the works and reception of Jacobus Handl-Gallus. As a researcher based in Vienna, he collaborated on international projects and with major scholarly institutions, including the Esterházy Privatstiftung, the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the Bach-Archiv Leipzig, and the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. Since 2020 he has been a Research Associate at the Institute of Musicology of the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (ZRC SAZU) and Assistant Professor at the Department of Musicology, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana; he also teaches at the University of Vienna.
His research focuses on the musical culture of Central Europe from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century. It encompasses sacred and secular music, the history of dance, and questions concerning the social position and professional activities of women musicians.
Marko Motnik is a musicologist whose work centres on the musical culture of Central Europe from the late Renaissance to the nineteenth century, combining fundamental archival research with critical source studies. His research encompasses sacred and secular music, dance and dance music, bourgeois musical life, the music market, and the role and professional activities of women musicians in historical perspective. A particular focus of his scholarship is the compositional oeuvre and reception of Jacobus Handl-Gallus.
His principal achievements include internationally published monographs, critical editions of musical sources, and numerous articles in leading scholarly journals, addressing both source-based questions and broader historical issues, such as music in women’s convents, bourgeois salons, and the early modern music market. In recent years he has increasingly engaged in interdisciplinary research on women’s convents as centres of musical and cultural production, as well as in an in-depth study of the life, personality, and works of Hugo Wolf. His work aims to integrate music-historical analysis with social and cultural inquiry, while incorporating innovative methodological and digital approaches to advance a broader understanding of musical practice in its historical contexts.
Monographs and critical editions
- Motnik, M. (2024). Glasbena pot Sophie Linhart: po sledeh družine Antona Tomaža Linharta. Založba ZRC, ZRC SAZU. https://doi.org/10.3986/9789610508823
- Motnik, M. (2024). Monumenta artis musicae Sloveniae, vol. 65: Iacobus Handl - Gallus: Šest osemglasnih motetov / Six Eight-Part Motets. Založba ZRC, ZRC SAZU, 2024. https://doi.org/10.3986/9790709004652
- Motnik, M. (2015). Monumenta artis musicæ Sloveniæ, Suppl. 4: Jacobus Hándl-Gallus: Epicedion harmonicum / Undique flammatis, ed. Marc Desmet in Marko Motnik. Ljubljana: Založba ZRC, ZRC SAZU, 2015.
- Motnik, M. (2011). Jacob Handl-Gallus. Werk - Überlieferung - Rezeption. Mit thematischem Katalog (Wiener Forum für ältere Musikgeschichte, 5). Hans Schneider.
Articles
- Žigon, T., Motnik, M. (2025). The Ljubljana Stage in the 1830s: Cultural Exchange and Institutional Dynamics. Forum Historiae, 19(2), 66–82. https://doi.org/10.31577/forhist.2025.19.2.5
- Motnik, M. (2024). Spregledani skladatelj Jožef Robert Zupan (1760–1819) in njegovo glasbeno delo. Kronika: časopis za slovensko krajevno zgodovino 72(2), 285–296. http://dx.doi.org/10.56420/kronika.72.2.05.
- Podlesnik Tomášiková, L., Motnik, M. (2024). Laibacher Deutscher after the Congress of Laibach. Muzikološki zbornik / Musicological Annual 57(2), 5–64. https://doi.org/10.4312/mz.57.2.5-64
- Motnik, M. (2023). Music in the Dominican Convent of Marenberg: in Search of Sources. Bogoslovni vestnik: glasilo Teološke fakultete v Ljubljani 83(2), 449–464. https://doi.org/10.34291/BV2023/02/Motnik
- Motnik, M. (2022). Anselm Hüttenbrenner in Lower Styria (1853–1858). De musica disserenda, 18(1–2), 77–126. https://doi.org/10.3986/dmd18.1-2.02
- Žigon, T., Motnik, M. (2025). The Ljubljana Stage in the 1830s: Cultural Exchange and Institutional Dynamics. Forum Historiae, 19(2), 66–82. https://doi.org/10.31577/forhist.2025.19.2.5
- Digital Presentation of the Long-Sixteenth-Century Church Music Connected to Carniola (fundamental research project • September 1, 2020 - August 31, 2024)
- Old traditions in new vestments: Musical and textual reworkings in the performing practices of liturgical music (fundamental research project • July 1, 2019 - June 30, 2023)