Martin Nedbal

Martin Nedbal is Professor of Musicology and Associate Director of the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies at the University of Kansas. Since May 2026, he has served as Editor-in-Chief of “Hudební věda (Musicology, Musikwissenschaft),” a peer-reviewed quarterly journal published by the Czech Academy of Sciences. He is also co-editor of and contributor to “A History of Music in the Czech Lands” (Cambridge University Press, 2025).

His research focuses primarily on German and Czech music, with a particular emphasis on opera. He is the author of two books on Mozart’s operas: “Mozart’s Operas and National Politics: Canon Construction in Prague 1798 to the Present” (Cambridge University Press, 2023) and “Morality and Viennese Opera in the Age of Mozart and Beethoven” (Routledge, 2017). His articles on Mozart have been published in “Journal of Musicology,” “19th-Century Music,” “Opera Quarterly,” “Acta Musicologica,” “Divadelní revue (Czech Theater Review),” “Newsletter of the Mozart Society of America,” and the database “Mozart: New Documents.” He has also published several chapters on various aspects of Mozart’s operas in edited volumes, including “Mozart and His World” and “The Oxford Handbook of Music Censorship.”

Nedbal has also published extensively on Beethoven’s opera “Fidelio” and the reception of Gluck’s and Salieri’s operas, his articles appearing in “Music & Letters,” “Cambridge Opera Journal,” “The Musical Quarterly,” “Music and Practice,” and “Ars Lyrica.”

Nedbal’s research extends to the realm of Czech music, particularly focusing on the works of Smetana and Dvořák. He is the co-editor of Jan Löwenbach’s “Bedřich Smetana: The Life and the Works” (Eastman Studies in Music, 2026). His work on these subjects has also been featured in “The Journal of Austrian American History,” “Current Musicology,” “Journal of Musicological Research,” “Music and Politics,” and “Hudební věda.” He is also contributor to “Martinů and His World.”

Before joining the University of Kansas, Nedbal worked at the University of Arkansas for seven years and earned his Ph.D. in historical musicology from the Eastman School of Music in 2009.