Mary Oleskiewicz (Mary 21, 1966 – June 26, 2025) was an American flutist and musicologist. The world’s leading authority on the music and flutes of Johann Joachim Quantz, the pre-eminent flutist-composer of eighteenth-century Europe, she made first recordings of many of Quantz’s compositions, including six previously unknown flute quartets which she discovered in a Berlin archive in 2002. Her publications include editions and articles about music by Johann Sebastian Bach, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, and King Frederick II “the Great” of Prussia. She performed with the Handel and Haydn Society, Arcadia Players, Newton Baroque, and other period-instrument ensembles, and was a professor of music at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

Life

Oleskiewicz was born in Mantua, Ohio, and grew up in nearby Garrettsville. As an undergradate at Youngstown State University she studied flute with Walter Mayhall and played as a member of the Youngstown Symphony Orchestra. During graduate studies at Case Western Reserve University she studied baroque flute with Sandra Miller, afterward writing her Ph.D. dissertation at Duke University on the flutes and music of Quantz under the direction of Peter Williams. Her dissertation research, which was supported in part by grants from the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (German Academic Exchange Service), included study of Quantz manuscripts in European archives as well as identification of eight surviving flutes made by Quantz, leading to a CD recording of seven Quantz sonatas issued in 2003 by Naxos.

After the completion of her doctoral studies in 1998, Oleskiewicz served from 1999 to 2001 as curator in America’s Shrine to Music Museum (now the National Music Museum) on the campus of the University of South Dakota, where she was also assistant professor music. In 2001 she won First Prize in both the National Flute Association’s Baroque Flute Artist competition and its Doctoral Dissertation competition. In that year she also joined the faculty of the University of Massachusetts Boston (UMass Boston), where she served until her death from cancer in 2025.

During her tenure at UMass Boston Oleskiewicz held two Research Fellowships from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, which supported further archival research in Germany. She also held visiting teaching appointments at the Aaron Copland School of Music in Queens, New York, and the Universität der Künste (University of the Arts) in Berlin. In addition to studying Quantz manuscripts and flutes in numerous German archives and museums, her research took her to collections in Austria, Holland, Belgium, France, Sweden, Denmark, Italy, Japan, and Russia. As a flutist she recorded in Australia with popular singer Debbie Byrne and toured China with pianist-harpsichordist Yuan Sheng; she also performed in Mexico City with La Fontegara. In 2023, despite battling cancer, she was the keynote speaker at a conference in Berlin on the 250th anniversary of Quantz’s death, presenting a paper that resolved many problems of attribution and chronology in Quantz’s compositions.

From 1998 to 2014 Oleskiewicz was married to harpsichordist and musicologist David Schulenberg, who joined her in her first three CD recordings.

Musical Activities

Although a player chiefly of Baroque flute, Oleskiewicz also performed professionally on modern flute, Classical flute, and Classical piccolo, and gave concert performances on recorder and Renaissance flutes. Her five CD recordings included world premieres of unpublished works by Quantz and by Quantz’s long-time employer King Frederick. Numerous concert recordings are also available online. At her death a recording of Bach’s complete chamber music for flute awaited final editing and publication.

In addition to her work as a classical musician, Oleskiewicz danced and taught Argentine tango professionaly and performed on flute and bandoneòn with the QTango Orchestra.

Scholarly Publications

In her first journal articles Oleskiewicz identified the existing instruments made by Quantz, which had previously been confused with misattributed flutes and spurious copies. Subsequent writings dealt with flutes and keyboard instruments used in music by members of the Bach family, including J. S. Bach’s Musical Offering. She also issued first editions of sonatas by Quantz and King Frederick and contributed a volume of solo sonatas to Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: The Complete Works. It is anticipated that a book on Quantz’s music as well as further editions of his compositions, left unfinished at her death, will be completed by colleagues.

Photography

Oleskiewicz was long interested in the visual arts and during the last ten years of her life worked professionally as a photographer, displaying her work at the Plymouth (Massachusetts) Center for the Arts and other galleries. In 2023 her “Big Dune Pano,” taken in Death Valley, won first prize for black and white photography at the Pembroke (Massachusetts) Arts Festival.

Major Publications

“Quantz als Meisterkomponist: Fragen der Zuschreibung, Chronologie und stilistischen Entwicklung seiner Flötenwerke.” Forthcoming in proceedings of the symposium “Musik im Umbruch: Wirken und Wirkungen von Johann Joachim Quantz,” Berlin, December 1–3, 2023.

“The Partita in A minor for Unaccompanied Flute: Problems and Possibilities.” BACH: Journal of the Riemenschneider Bach Institute 51/2 (November 2020): 259–294.

“Keyboards, Music Rooms, and the Bach Family at the Court of Frederick the Great.” In J. S. Bach and His Sons (Bach Perspectives, vol. 11), edited by Mary Oleskiewicz (Urbana: Illinois University Press, 2017), 24–82. Companion website: https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=c041488&supp=1index.html

“Music at the Court of Brandenburg-Prussia,” chapter 3 in Music at German Courts, 1715–1760: Changing Artistic Priorities, edited by Samantha Owens, Barbara M. Reul, and Janice B. Stockigt (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2011), 79–130.

“New Cadenzas From Eighteenth-Century Berlin,” in Fiori musicali: Liber amicorum Alexander Silbiger, edited by Claire Fontijn (Sterling Heights, Mich.: Harmonie Park Press, 2010), 451–63.

“Like Father, Like Son? Emanuel Bach and the Writing of Biography,” in Music and Its Questions: Essays in Honor of Peter Williams, edited by Thomas Donahue (Richmond, Va.: OHS Press, 2007), 253–79.

“Quantz’s Quatuors and Other Works Newly Discovered,” Early Music 31 (2003): 484–505.

“The Flutes of Quantz: Their Construction and Performing Practice,” Galpin Society Journal 53 (2000): 201–20.

“The Trio in Bach’s Musical Offering: A Salute to Frederick’s Tastes and Quantz’s Flutes?,” in Bach Perspectives, Volume 4: The Music of J.S. Bach: Analysis and Interpretation, edited by David Schulenberg (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999), 79–110.

“A Museum, a World War, and a Rediscovery: Flutes by Quantz and Others from the Hohenzollern Museum,” Journal of the American Musical Instrument Society 24 (1998): 107–45.

Discography

Johann Joachim Quantz: Flute Concertos (Naxos 8.573120, 2013)

Seven Flute Sonatas by King Frederick “The Great” of Prussia (Hungaroton Classic HCD 32698, 2011)

Johann Joachim Quantz: Seven Flute Sonatas (Hungaroton Classic HCD 32617, 2011)

Johann Joachim Quantz: Six Quartets for Flute, Violin, Viola, and Continuo (Hungaroton Classic HCD 32286, 2004)

Johann Joachim Quantz: Flute Sonatas (Naxos 8.555064, 2003)