Background
Zofia Helman was born in Radom and studied musicology at the University of Warsaw from 1954-1959.
Zofia Helman was born in Radom and studied musicology at the University of Warsaw from 1954-1959.
University of Warsaw.
Helman took a position at the Institute of Musicology at the University of Warsaw in 1959, and served as director of the Institute from 1991-1996. In 1991 she was appointed professor She has also served as guest lecturer at the Department of Musicology at the Jagiellonian University, the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, the Krakow Academy of Music and at the universities of Mainz, Ljubljana, and the Geneva Conservatory in Beijing.
She has served on the editorial boards of Polish Art Studies, Theatre, Opera, Ballet (Paris), Musicological Review and the PWM Music Encyclopedia.
In 1967 she defended her doctoral dissertation on the sound techniques of Karol Szymanowski.
Helman has been a member of the Committee on Art, Academy of Sciences since 1981, and has sat on the Board of the Karol Szymanowski Foundation since 1996. She is a member of musical and musicological associations including the International Musicological Society, the Robert-Schumann-Gesellschaft Düsseldorf, Gesellschaft für Musikforschung in Kassel, the Société Internationale d"Histoire Comparée du Théâtre de l"Opéra et du Ballet, the Polish Society of Composers, the Frédéric Chopin in Warsaw Music Society and the Karol Szymanowski Musical Society in Zakopane.