She learned piano at the PTM Conservatoire in Lwów and graduated in musicology from the Jan Kazimierz University in that city (presenting a dissertation On Alexander Scriabin’s Harmony). She then taught theory at the Karol Szymanowski Music Conservatoire in Lwów (ca 1930–37) and was the secretary of the ISCM’s Lwów Branch (1930–33).
She engaged in music promotion projects, for instance by giving popular lectures in Lwów. One of her pioneering publications was Music and the Cinema(Lwów, 1937). She contributed to many periodicals, including Koffler’s Orkiestra (three texts in 1932–34: ‘Speaking Machines: Myths and Reality’, ‘New Instruments’, ‘On the So-Called “Kitsch” in Music’) and Echo (two texts in 1936: ‘Why We Should Educate Our Children Musically?’ and ‘The Radio and Musical Culture’).
She was a communist sympathiser already before 1939. During the first Soviet occupation, she obtained the post of associate professor at the LGK Lviv State Conservatoire and was the dean of two faculties: Composition and ‘Muzikoznavstvo’ (1940–41). She took part in the Kyiv Assembly of the Union of Soviet Composers (1940). In June 1941 she fled to the east of Russia. She returned to Poland in 1947, obtained her postdoctoral degree from the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, and in 1948 organised the Chair (later Institute) of Musicology at the University of Warsaw, which she headed in 1948–75.