Martin Knust

Martin Knust is an Associate Professor in Musicology at Linnaeus University, actively involved in the Linnaeus Research Centre for Intermedial and Multimodal Studies (IMS). He has held academic positions in Germany and Sweden, including a postdoctoral fellowship at Stockholm University. His research focuses on opera and music theatre (especially historical performance practices of speech, song, and gestures), North European music (reception and cultural transfer between the North and continental Europe), and Swedish pop and music in audiovisual political journalism. He has taught and supervised across multiple countries and currently serves as program director for the collaborative Music and Sound Design program (120 hp) between Linnaeus University, Dalarna University, and Mid Sweden University.

Knust leads a three-year research project on digital music production in Småland, funded by the Kamprad Family Foundation, and contributes to the Alternative Media Logic study group. His publications include two monographs on Richard Wagner, an edited anthology Wagner and the North, and co-edited works on Nordic composers. He has also published extensively in journals like 19th Century Music and Music in Art, exploring topics from Wagner’s stage gestures to music iconography in Angkor carvings.

His recent article collaborations (e.g., with Ambrazaitis et al., 2024) examine intermedial media production in television morning shows. Knust’s work spans

• Operatic Gestures
• 19th-Century Cultural Transfer
• Audiovisual Political Journalism
• Småland Music Entrepreneurship
• Modern Opera Productions

He contributes to popular science through OPERAPOINT, discussing topics like

• 19th-Century Music as Zeitgeist
• Beethoven’s Late Works
• Operatic Program Music