Fredrick Aquilina

Dr Frederick Aquilina is a Maltese musicologist, author, researcher, and academic specialising in eighteenth-century music, sacred music traditions, and the history of Maltese musical culture. He has served as a Senior Lecturer in Music Studies at the University of Malta, where his teaching and research have focused on music history, musicology, and the study of Malta’s rich ecclesiastical and cultural heritage.

Aquilina is internationally recognised for his pioneering scholarship on the eighteenth-century Maltese composer Benigno Zerafa. His landmark book, Benigno Zerafa (1726–1804) and the Neapolitan Galant Style (2016), represents the first comprehensive study of Zerafa’s life, music, and historical significance. Drawing upon more than twenty years of archival and musicological research, the work examines Zerafa’s sacred compositions, his education in Naples, and the influence of the Neapolitan galant style on Maltese musical culture.

In addition to his monograph, Aquilina has published scholarly articles on Maltese sacred music, including his influential study A Short Biography of Benigno Zerafa (1726–1804): A Mid-Eighteenth-Century Maltese Composer of Sacred Music, which helped bring renewed academic attention to one of Malta’s most important yet previously overlooked composers.

His research has contributed significantly to the rediscovery and appreciation of Malta’s musical heritage, particularly the sacred vocal repertoire preserved in the archives of Mdina Cathedral. Through meticulous archival investigation and analytical scholarship, he has helped situate Maltese music within the broader European and Mediterranean traditions of the Baroque and Classical eras.

A respected authority on eighteenth-century sacred music, Aquilina continues to be recognised for his contribution to Maltese musicology and for advancing international understanding of Malta’s historical musical legacy.