Department of Music History and Theory

The Department of Music History and Theory, officially operating under its current name since 2002, has a long-standing academic tradition within the Azerbaijan State University of Culture and Arts. The department was headed at different periods by Honoured Art Worker, Professor Naila Karimova, Honoured Art Worker, Professor Kamila Dadashzade, and Honoured Cultural Worker, Associate Professor Ellada Huseynova. 

The department provides music-theoretical and musicological instruction for undergraduate and graduate students of the Faculty of Music Arts, as well as students of other faculties. Teaching is based on contemporary methodological principles and supported by textbooks, teaching manuals, and methodological materials prepared by the department’s academic staff.

Among the notable publications are History of Foreign Music by Ellada Huseynova and Gullu Ismayilova, History and Theory of Ashiq Studies by Kamila Dadashzade, Music of the Eastern Peoples by Kamila Dadashzade, Ellada Huseynova, and Nargiz Guliyeva, and Solfeggio by Gulnar Verdiyeva, Samira Azizova, and Pika Akhundova.

The department possesses strong scholarly potential, with research covering ethnomusicology, historical and theoretical musicology, mugham studies, and interdisciplinary approaches in music scholarship. Important monographs published in recent years include Uzeyir Hajibeyli: Personality and Society by Professor Farah Aliyeva, Emin Sabitoglu by Professor Jeyran Mahmudova, Rise: Uzeyir Hajibeyli and Ashiq Art – An Intertextual Dialogue by Professor Kamila Dadashzade, and The Musical Manuscripts of Jovdat Hajiyev by Professor Irada Kocharli.

The department is also the organizer of major international academic conferences, including the long-running conference Problems of Research into the Musical Culture of Turkic Peoples, which has brought together scholars from Turkey, the USA, Canada, the United Kingdom, Hungary, Ukraine, Russia, Iran, and other countries. In 2021, the department organized the international conference Ethnomusicology: At the Intersection of Scientific Paradigms. Information about these conferences was published in the bulletin of the International Council for Traditional Music (ICTM) under UNESCO in 2022.

For the past eight years, the department has also organized the seminar series Art History: A View from the 21st Century, aimed at broadening students’ artistic and scholarly perspectives.