Irena Paulus was born on October 2, 1970 in Zagreb, Croatia, into a family of musicians. Her father, Dragutin Paulus, played the viola in the Symphony Orchestra of Croatian National Radio Television, and her mother, Valerija Mezdjić-Paulus, was a pianist who worked as an accompanist at the Department of Wind Instruments at the Academy of Music in Zagreb. Irena’s grandfather, Antun Mezdjić, was a respected painter.
Irena’s first contact with music came through her family. She began learning music at the age of seven at the “Vatroslav Lisinski” Music School and later at the Academy of Music in Zagreb where she earned her MA degree in musicology. During her studies, she developed growing interest in film music and was rewarded with the Rector’s Award for a written paper on music in Alfred Hitchcock’s film Psycho. Paulus specialized in film music at the European Film College in Ebeltoft, Denmark, and subsequently obtained both her MA and PhD in filmology from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb, focusing on film music. She became the first musicologist and film scholar in Croatia to engage in the scholarly and analytical study of film music.
Paulus is currently employed as the mentor professor at the Franjo Lučić Art School in Velika Gorica, which was declared the most successful member school of the Croatian Society of Music and Dance Pedagogues in 2024. She has been continuously teaching courses related to film music as an external associate at the Academy of Dramatic Art in Zagreb. Paulus also taught at the Postgraduate Programme at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb and at the independent university module Croaticum – Centre for Croatian as a Second and Foreign Language of the same faculty, as an external associate as well. In 2024, she was appointed to the academic title of adjunct full professor.
Paulus has been a long-standing regular contributor to Croatian National Radio, currently as the author of the show on applied music named Zvukopis. It is a series of shows in which Paulus presents music that belongs to different artistic expression – film, theater, musicals, but also music for video games and commercials.
She is the author of approximately nine hundred articles on film music, including music reviews, studies and essays, as well as scholarly and professional papers. Among her scholarly works for international editors and publishers, she is particularly proud of her study of the music of the film War of the Worlds by John Williams for the monograph John Williams: Music for Films, Television and the Concert Stage, as well as her contribution of a chapter to the extensive monograph The Palgrave Handbook of Music and Sound in Japanese Animation.
To date, Paulus has published five books: Music from the Screen: Croatian Film Music from 1942 to 1990, Brainstorming: Notes on Film Music, Kubrick’s Musical Odyssey, The Theory of Film Music through the Theory of Film Sound, and Audiovision of Croatian Film: Examples of Contemporary Compositional Practice.
Irena studies singing at Vocal Studio 21 under the guidance of the renowned jazz singer Lela Kaplowitz.
Irena loves to read, walk, explore, travel, sing, dance, and above all, to share her love of music with others.
