Remembering Dr Bojan Bujic

The Faculty is sorry to learn of the death of Dr Bojan Bujic, former Lecturer (later Reader) in Musicology (1978–2005) and Fellow at Magdalen College.

After graduating in English Literature (1961) and Musicology (1963) from the University of Sarajevo (his birthplace) in the then Yugoslavia, Bojan came to Oxford in 1963 and four years later completed a D.Phil. in Music. After a brief spell in Yugoslavia, he became a Lecturer in Music at Reading University (1969–1978) before returning to Oxford to teach music of the Italian cinquecento, the aesthetics of music, and the music of Viennese modernism. At various times he also held a Visiting Fellowship at Cornell University and a Visiting Lectureship at King’s College, London. During his retirement, Bojan continued to research, write, and take part in broadcasts and scholarly gatherings. In 2023, Magdalen College and the Faculty celebrated his 85th birthday with a symposium on ‘Viennese modernism and its legacies’.

Bojan’s work in the aesthetics of music remains fundamental to the way that sub-discipline is understood. His anthology Music in European Thought 1851–1912 (1987) in particular has remained a reference text for students and scholars alike. His biography of Arnold Schoenberg (2011) is a model of its kind: a clear and well-researched retelling of that composer’s life, informed by a deep understanding of the music and culture of Central Europe. His latest book Arnold Schoenberg and Egon Wellesz: A Fraught Relationship (2020) presents a characteristically incisive perspective on the complex relationship between Arnold Schoenberg and the musicologist and composer Egon Wellesz, who had a formative influence on Bojan during his own student years at Oxford. Now out of print, a revised edition of this book is forthcoming.