Philipp Lojak is a PhD student in music history. He studies opera from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century and has written about the operas by Hans Werner Henze and George Benjamin. Romanticism, medievalism and philosophy, but also music’s global, transcultural connections and economic dependencies interest him.

Philipp studied composition with Manfred Trojahn at Robert-Schumann-Hochschule in Düsseldorf, musicology and media cultural studies at University of Cologne, as well as musicology and dramaturgy at Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen, Germany. In 2025, he received the Folkwang Prize in musicology for his master’s thesis on medievalism in contemporary opera. Furthermore, he worked as a project manager and dramaturg for Duisburg Philharmonic Orchestra. He has written for renowned German music magazines like “neue musikzeitung” and is an active composer with international premieres, and CD and sheet music publications (“Sound - Fire - Ashes“ and “étude diabolique”). Philipp likes to play the classical guitar and enjoys weightlifting. If there is time left, he loves to do urban sketching or street photography.