The present study builds on the author's experience with teaching musical-rhetorical figures to the students of a performance academy. It begins with listing a number of difficulties which the students of Figurenlehre must face, pointing out the insufficient reflection of this subject in Czech academic literature and the general lack of illustrative musical examples in the existing sources. The text is divided into three parts: the first offers a review of current academic literature on the subject (thus preparing the basis for further research); the second classifies musical-rhetorical figures and briefly comments on each category (thus supplying the reader with a "mind map" of this vast and varied territory); the third provides examples of the application of selected musical-rhetorical figures in compositional practice (hoping to increase the clarity and accessibility of the Figurenlehre). The third part of this study focuses on a narrow segment of the broad spectrum of musical-rhetorical figures: hypotyposis (tone-painting imitation), anabasis (ascending melody associated with positive affections), catabasis (descending melody associated with negative affections), circulatio (circular melodic motion), pathopoeia (expressive chromaticism), passus duriusculus (continuous chromatic progression expressing tragic affections), and saltus duriusculus (dissonant leap expressing dysphoric affections). The conclusion stresses the importance of Figurenlehre for music analysis and interpretation and highlights the need for a comprehensive anthology of musical examples of individual figures.

The paper discusses the importance of micro-historiography in music history research, which involves studying the everyday lives of individuals and events to uncover forgotten details and gaps in traditional historical approaches. Reading the main source, the daily Pest-Ofner Localblatt und Landbote it is especially important to emphasize the significance of shorter news, reports, and advertisements in newspapers as valuable sources of information for reconstructing everyday musical life in Pest-Buda. The Pest-Ofner Localblatt und Landbote mentions several guest performers on the stages of Pest-Buda, including the visits of traveling national or folk companies, the performances of the successful Spanish folk dance company at the National Theater in Pest, the tour of the popular Tyrolean folk music company for several months, the supposedly Viennese singing company, marked by the names of Mutzbauer, Honetz, and Lasky, which clearly represented the Wienerlied repertoire on the stage of popular cafés, the guest performances of singer Babette (Betty) Gundy, or Sigismund Thalberg's student, the pianist Rosa Kastner. The present paper also discusses the sources that can be used to list the guest performers, such as the surviving archive material of the National Theater in Pest, the theatre pocket books of German theaters, and the period's press, especially the Pesth-Ofner Localblatt und Landbote. By studying the lives of everyday individuals and the events of everyday life, researchers can uncover information that may have been overlooked or ignored by traditional historical approaches. In the context of music history, micro-historiography can help to shed light on the functioning of an entire city or region, as well as the structure of musical life from a variety of perspectives. It can also help to reveal the realities of everyday musical life, including the network of contacts through which musicians could reach their audience, and how this was reflected in the period's sources.

The article explores how Bedřich Smetana’s national-historical operas functioned as media for transmitting of political messages in 19th-century Bohemia. The study examines The Brandenburgers in Bohemia and Libuše and aims to demonstrate how Smetana and his librettists intentionally embedded political discourse that drew on national history, myth, and current events. In The Brandenburgers in Bohemia, historical trauma associated with the ­13th-century Brandenburg occupation provided a framework to address themes of oppression, national unity, and resistance, which in turn resonated with ­19th-century experiences of national struggle. When dealing with Libuše, the article highlights elements of the opera that reinforce ideas of the continuity of Bohemian statehood, legal autonomy, and democratic traditions. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of potential political interpretations of the opera’s finale, the scene of Libuše’s prophecy, whose function was – especially if seen against the backdrop of Franz Josef’s unfulfilled promises to Bohemia – to celebrate the most glorious rulers and events from the time of the national rulers, and to emphasize the persistence of the Czech people. Through the elements mentioned, both operas sought to mobilize patriotic sentiments within the 19th-century theatre audience.

This article presents a hermeneutic and analytical study of Nikos Skalkottas's Sixteen Songs (1941), focusing particularly on the first song of the cycle. After an outline of Skalkottas's biography and cultural context, the work explores the complex interplay between poetic text, musical rhetoric, and dramaturgical structure within the song cycle, emphasizing their roots in both Greek tradition and European modernism. Employing tools of topical, textual, and serial analysis, the study demonstrates how Skalkottas fuses dodecaphonic techniques with references to folk music, popular contemporary dances, and rhetorical devices, creating a unique and ironic sound world that transcends the boundaries of tonality, atonality, and genre. The article highlights the cycle's oscillation between lyrical and agitato moments, its dense web of literary and musical topoi, and the innovative handling of form and voice. In addition to presenting a detailed analysis of the first song - including its motivic, harmonic, and structural features - the article provides new English translations of the cycle's lyrics and offers a broader dramaturgical and interpretive perspective on the work as a whole. By considering the technical, symbolist, and expressive dimensions together, the study situates Skalkottas's songs as a singular synthesis of tradition and avant-garde, urging greater recognition of their artistic quality and significance for both Greek and international repertoire. Nikos Skalkottas; Hermeneutic analysis; Sixteen Songs (1941); Musical rhetoric; Musical dramaturgy

The article presents an analysis of melody annotation disagreements in a novel dataset containing annotations of a selection of Haydn and Mozart string quartet movements. For this purpose the following definition of melody from the music information retrieval (MIR) community is applied: the sequence of monophonic pitches that a listener might sing or hum when asked to reproduce a polyphonic piece of music, and encompasses the core identity of the piece. The resulting collection of annotations makes up the new Melody Annotated String Quartets (MASQ) dataset, available online. The rates and types of disagreements between annotators are discussed, as well as the influence of musical form and style on melody perception and the suitability of the given definition of melody.

This article presents the conclusions of a comparative analysis and interpretation of musical works inspired by Vincent van Gogh’s painting Starry Night, created over the last half-century, along with reflections on the similarities resulting from a common source of inspiration. These works include Henri Dutilleux’s Timbres, Espace, Mouvement ou La Nuit étoilée and Correspondances, mov. V: De Vincent à Theo; Einojuhani Rautavaara’s opera Vincent and Symphony No. 6 Vincentiana, mov. I: Starry Night; George Crumb’s Starry Night from Metamorphoses (Book II) and the song Shenandoah from The Winds of Destiny; as well as pieces by Matthew Harris, Alan Hovhaness, and Alla Pavlova. On the one hand, they are considered – together with van Gogh’s painting – on a higher, transmedial level as manifesting an archetype of the cosmic night, as an expression of the “poetic imagination” (Bachelard), evoking a certain atmosphere (Böhme). On the other hand, the musical works are viewed from the perspective of intermedial transposition (Wolf, Rajevsky), in which elements of content and structure are transferred from the painting to music. The “correspondences” that the article aims to explore are on multiple levels: between the painting and musical works, between different musical works, between life and work, between van Gogh’s views as expressed in his correspondences and the painting’s possible interpretations and, finally, between the composers’ reflections and their music.

The choice of the theme of Princess Libuše for the opera shows how problematic mythology is in relation to operatic conventions. The decision of Josef Wenzig (or also Ervín Špindler) and Bedřich Smetana represents, in a sense, a risky artistic experiment as well as a quite exceptional solution. Smetana's Libuše was to retain its position as a representative work within Czech social life, and it still fulfils this purpose today. The history of the reception of Smetana's Libuše is closely linked to the history of the independent Czechoslovak (Czech) state; on the other hand, it is impossible not to see how poor the statistics on the performance of Libuše outside the Czech cultural circle are. Our study attempts to show how Smetana's Libuše helped to build the National Theatre's permanent Czech repertoire, often in spite of the theatre's operational vicissitudes and not infrequently in spite of Smetana's intentions (Libuše was more or less always ready for performance and filled the dramaturgical gaps of the institution's management). A counterpart to the Czech reception history (in the sense of provincial patriotism) is provided by information about performances of Libuše on non-Czech stages. And in this field we find ourselves rather in the realm of - to use Vladimír Macura's words - dreams about Libuše. Of course, dreams and visions also constitute national consciousness. We concentrate on the oft-repeated information that Gustav Mahler intended to perform Libuše in Vienna in the 1890s.

Since 2014, the work of Ukrainian composers has held a mirror up to the events of the Russo-Ukrainian war. A piece from early 2014 by contemporary composer Olena Lys is considered in this article. The piece begins with the composer's reflection on the events of Maidan in winter 2014 in the form of a choral diptych based on Vasyl Dovzhyk's poem "By the Stairs to Heaven…". In its two parts, it illustrates the death of the Maidan defenders (in the first part) and the mother's prayers for her dead son (in the second part). The present article focuses on a semantic analysis of Ukrainian symbols in both the libretto and the musical text, ultimately suggesting that Olena Lys and Vasyl Dovzhyk do not reconstruct the past: they comprehend the spiritual values of the Ukrainian people in the contemporary context in a new way.

Greek art music has made a significant and enduring contribution to the symphonic genre within European art music, serving not only as a site of stylistic development but also as a repository of cultural memory. Since the 18th century, beginning with Michele Stratico's (1728-1783) thirty-five (35) sinfonias, Greek composers have engaged in a continuous dialogue with the symphonic form, each work echoing both contemporary influences and inherited legacies. This evolving tradition - passed from generation to generation - embodies not merely musical innovation but also the collective memory of a nation navigating modernity, exile, identity, and continuity. Key figures such as Nikolaos Chalikiopoulos-Mantzaros (1795-1872), with twenty (20) sinfonias, and later Alkis Panagiotopoulos (1950) and Athanasios Simoglou (1954), each with ten (10) symphonies, contribute to a sonic lineage in which memory is not just thematic but structural - embedded in forms, modes, and motives. Petros Petridis (1892-1977), Dimitris Dragatakis (1914-2001), Mikis Theodorakis (1925-2021), Dinos Constantinides (1929-2021), and Dimitris Themelis (1931-2017) each composed six (6) symphonies, acts of remembrance as much as composition, often drawing on national, historical, or personal pasts. The lifespans and works of Giannis A. Papaioannou (1910-1989), Christos Samaras (1956), and Stelios Coucounaras (1936) (each with five symphonies) mark successive stages in a shared memoryscape, demonstrating the genre's increasing weight in Greek musical culture as both a formal discipline and a vessel for cultural reflection.

In an interview for Cassell's Family Magazine from 1894, Lady Hallé (born as Vilemína Nerudová) declared that she was an offspring of Johann Baptist Georg Neruda, a court musician in Dresden. Johann Baptist Georg Neruda's older son, then, should be a grandfather of Vilemína's father Josef Neruda. Research in registries brought a few valuable findings: data from the birth, wedding and death registers partly confirm Lady Hallé's words, however, a birth register of Vilemína's grandfather Johann Neruda was not found. Johann Neruda's wedding register confirms that Johann Neruda was a cottager from Mohelno and the birth registers of his children mostly indicate that he worked as a miller. Still, none of the registers available mentions the names of Johann Neruda's parents, Thus, the answer as to how a court musician's son from Dresden could become a cottager from Mohelno cannot be provided.

This article examines the representation of Ukrainian music abroad through an analysis of programming in French musical institutions since 2022. Numerous concerts featuring Ukrainian compositions have occurred in France, signifying a renewed interest in, and at times a novel encounter with, this repertoire since the onset of Russia's full-scale invasion. We explored how two leading Parisian musical institutions, the Philharmonie de Paris and the Opéra National de Paris, have supported Ukraine, both symbolically and practically. Further, we analysed how the selected works, chosen to represent Ukrainian cultural identity on European musical stages, have been framed as part of a shared European heritage, thus demonstrating the role of music as a form of soft power in the current wartime context. Finally, we considered the 1991 Project, an initiative led by Anna Stavychenko that supports Ukrainian musicians and strives to preserve Ukrainian musical heritage. In this context, Ukrainian music emerges as a resilient force and a symbol of resistance within the European cultural sphere.

The Czech composer Vítězslava Kaprálová (1915–1940) maintained a profound connection with Paris throughout her career, undertaking studies at the École Normale de Musique. As both a composer and conductor, Kaprálová distinguished herself within domains traditionally dominated by men, and integrated successfully into the artistic milieu of her era. Despite her achievements, however, her legacy in France diminished after her premature death, remaining largely confined to brief and sporadic references until the early 21st century. This article critically assesses Kaprálová’s position within French music programming since 2001. Many aspects are explored, such as the evolution of the number of concerts that include opuses of Kaprálová, her most interpreted works according to the musical genre, or her place in the French musical institutions. Finally, a broader critique reveals how these observations fit in the institutional structures within the French musical landscape and the negative impact these structures have for the visibility of women composers.

A survey in the parish registers of the village Rosice (the district Chrudim) resulted in the findings that Rosice was the birthplace of musician Josef Nágl, and the nearby village Chrast was the birthplace of musician František Jindřich Zvěřina. The parish office was located in Chrast and administered Rosice as well. František Jindřich Zvěřina and Josef Nágl knew each other probably since childhood and, as far as is known, even after having left abroad, they always performed together. They both worked for many years in Wallerstein where they were best men at each other's weddings (Zvěřina married twice). This paper complements the basic biographical data of representatives of Czech music in the 18th century. The findings can be included into music dictionaries and encyclopaedias published both in the Czech Republic and abroad.

Although the subject of the Przemyśl Fortress has been incessantly popular for years, little space has been devoted so far to the merging of power and entertainment, whereas for the distribution of power the culture of leisure and its development was vital; developing appropriate habits and tastes as well as promoting appropriate (from the point of view of the authorities) forms of spending free time was by no means neutral in terms of content and form. The article discusses the relations between the Przemyśl garrison under Commandant Anton von Galgótzy (i. e., between 1891 and 1905) and the local civilians. Galgótzy used specific practices, abusing his power, compared with the commandants of other garrison towns. Concerts of military bands were supposed to warm up his image of an all-powerful general and, through appropriately selected repertoire, develop loyalty towards the Imperial-Royal Monarchy on its outskirts.

This article sheds light on the identity and functions of the boxholders in the coastal theatres of part of the former Venetian republic at the turn of the 20th century, investigating which social categories were represented among them and in what economic terms of "ownership" they were related to the theatre. The boxholders held regular meetings. How were their assemblies organised? What was discussed? Those who paid a social fee for the opera season had a say in the works to be performed, the endowment to be granted to the impresario, and even the cost of admission tickets to the theatre. There were many disputes that could arise from these collective decisions; one event, however, managed to unify the intentions of the boxholders, namely what happened with the death of Giuseppe Verdi. There was a common intent to name many of the coastal theatres after the composer: was it just a tribute to a great artist or perhaps the desire to affirm the italianità of the shareholders in an area that perceived pressure from Croatian nationalists and the growing demands of the Habsburg monarchy for a "germanisation" or "slavicisation" of the territory?

This study explores Jörg Widmann's operatic compositional approach found in his Viola Concerto (2015). He has created a refreshing and intriguing way of presenting the composition that differs from a conventional concerto. In it, Widmann delivers ideas and new approaches through the visual and auditory senses, allowing audiences to effectively engage in the manner he designed of the fictional world. The music takes on several roles so as to create atmosphere, emotion, dialogues, and abstract protagonists in a "story" he designed. He makes the music as dramatic and as theatrical as possible, giving a new presentation fashion in his concerto, keeping the Concerto genre alive.

The Olomouc opera stage (as was, after all, true for all of those in Austria) was part of a network of provincial theatres, characterised by constant changes in membership. It was typical that, following the end of a season, theatre director would go to Vienna and other larger cultural centres to seek new talented singers. Another decisive factor in getting a contract was the successfulness of the artists' guest performances throughout the season. For small theatres, it was advantageous to establish contracts mainly with talented newcomers who had lower demands in terms of their salaries. Operating a successful theatre business was largely connected with the ability of directors to recognise the latent abilities of inexperienced singers. During certain periods, the German municipal theatre in Olomouc was a seedbed of future stars, helping kick off their glamorous careers. However, national disputes, the hostility of city council members, fires, and epidemics as well as the fickle tastes of the audience could thwart the efforts of even the most experienced theatre entrepreneur and make them decide to try their chances elsewhere. The aim of this paper is to document, through several examples of singers or directors, the usual direction of artistic mobility in Central Europe in the 19th and early 20th century.

Richard Taruskin describes the German choral movement as the hotbed of German nationalist unification, the musical precursor of a new nation-building ideology. However, the Liedertafel movement did not stop in Germany, but spread to the whole of Europe, practically without exception the founding of choirs had a national-political dimension, including Hungary. It is interesting to examine how nationalism overtones could take hold in the multiethnical Hungary, especially in the German-dominated cities. Sopron is an excellent case study, since this town, which lies in the western corner of the country, bordering Austria, had a large part of German population, and as a consequence had a German theatre and German speaking press. Christian Altdörfer, the choirmaster of the Lutheran church and founder of the Dalfüzér/Liederkranz, came from Württemberg to set up a singing group in the 1840s that sang in both German and Hungarian. This situation gives us an opportunity to examine how the association saw itself and how others saw it, and in doing so to highlight what national identity meant in mid-19th-century Hungary.

Of all the operas by Ferenc Erkel, we know the most about Erkel's efforts to present abroad his second opera Hunyadi László, while the absence of similar data concerning the other operas may be the result of the fact that the composer himself and/or the National Theatre did not even try to have them performed outside of Hungary. For Erkel's first two operas - Bátori Mária (1840) and Hunyadi László (1844) -, the National Theatre had a German-language score prepared after the premiere, and Franz Liszt, among others, tried to promote the premiere of Hunyadi László, which ultimately became one of the most performed Hungarian operas abroad. After Ferenc Bónis, Dezső Legánÿ, Katalin Szerző Szőnyi, and Inge Birkin-Feichtinger, who have already published on this negative performance history, this study would like to highlight a few minor details that contrast with our previous perception of Erkel's lack of interest in the distribution of his operas outside of the Hungarian capital's National Theatre. Through the performance history of Hunyadi László, and by taking into account the performance copies surviving from the period as well as the contemporary press, we get an insight into the moves and changes that occurred within the theatrical/opera companies during the second half of the 19th-century as well.

Pest-Buda already had two permanent ensembles during the 1830s - the Táborszky and the Szervacinszky quartets; in the 1850s, ambitious programs, explicitly labeled as "quartet concerts," were performed by the short-lived Ridley-Kohne quartet. However, it was only in 1876, that the first Budapest-based quartet was founded that remained stable for the years to come. Although this ensemble, which was led by Dragomir Krančević and disposed of an excellent playing technique, was referred to in the press as the "Budapest quartet," only the second violinist was of Hungarian origin and native of Pest. The case of the Hubay-Popper quartet - established ten years later, in 1886 - was quite similar: of its members, Jenő Hubay was only the one to be born and having studied in this city. In this paper, I will present the press reception of the two latter quartets, focusing on the following issues: How did a biased discourse emerge in the Hungarian press that made a clear distinction between the "German" and the "other" (e. g., French or Hungarian) manners of playing? What was the role played by the performers' national origin, the influence of their teachers and of the schools they attended? How did the press reviews treat these aspects? How did the repertoire of these quartets evolve during this period, and was there any connection with the prejudices suggested by the press?

On January 10, 1873, the journal Dalibor predicted for Zdeněk Fibich’s Meluzína that its success would help to spread Fibich’s name within the ‘wider circles of the artistic world’. In retrospect, this prediction might have been a little too optimistic, as, up until this day, Fibich has been acknowledged primarily for his innovative approach to music-dramatic genres. This paper aims to close this research lacuna by shedding light on both Meluzína’s reception and selected compositional-aesthetic features.

The article deals with the letters of Václav Jan Křtitel Tomášek from the Morawetz Collection, housed in the National Museum - Czech Museum of Music. In a critical edition, it publishes and comments on the letters Tomášek addressed to the publishers Ambrosius Kühnel, Carl Friedrich Peters, and Immanuel Guttentag, as well as to the poet and editor Rudolph Hirsch, Tomášek's pupil Alexander Dreyschock and an unnamed (probably Amelia Illaire to Berlin). The edition also includes an appraisal of the compositions of Josef Zvonař and Tomášek's request for an increase in his annual rent, addressed to Count George Franz August Buquoy in 1829. For the first time, a letter by Johann Wolfgang Goethe, the original of which is considered lost by the current edition of Goethe's correspondence, is published here according to the original.

A new methodology for the analysis of the concert melodrama in the Romantic period divided work through the identification of boundaries between music and text, also where in the concert melodrama only musical or purely poetic sections were found. In connection with previous knowledge, new unique types of connection and context were defined. Because important structural aspects of the new methodology were introduced in Fibich's melodramas Štědrý den, Vodník and Hakon, a representative sample of analysis demonstrates the effort of the composer to support not only the meaning of the text and to give it its contextual climate but also to keep the actual musical flow. Great works also show that the degree of originality of the music in relation to the text is very finely differentiated and that the consolidation of the musical material is constructed not only on a motive of concentration, but also on a more general level of its organization.

Through the figure of the singer Prince, Roger Nelson (1958-2016), LoveSymbol, we can reflect complex relationships between the artist and the game of celebrity. The fact of becoming popular, of being a known singer on a world scale, involved automatically and systematically desire to control his image, to come into conflict with his record company and to propose new marketing formulas to sell his music. Now, the tourism and the visit of Paisley Park (Minneapolis - Chanhassen) become a new stage of the memory's construction and of this popularity. This avant-garde singer in his way of communicating and expressing himself on the stage offers future generations a wide range of academic research in multiple fields. He proposes a continuation of his musical art through Paisley Park and cultural tourism.

The director of the Theater an der Wien Alexandrine von Schönerer and her art advisor Franz Jauner used the success of Smetana's Prodaná nevěsta [The Bartered Bride] on the occasion of the visit of the Czech National Theatre at the International Exhibition of Music and Theatre (Internationale Ausstellung für Musik- und Theaterwesen) in Vienna in 1892. They organized the Viennese premiere of this opera, which was also its first enactment in German, in April 1893. This operetta-focused theatre thus used Smetana's opera as a precursor to the intended change in the repertory composition directed towards the genre of comic and later also serious opera. With the same intention, the Theater an der Wien presented a comic one-act opera by Vilém Blodek V studni [In the Well] in the following year. Two Czech operas were thus intended to stand at the beginning of the dramaturgy representing higher ambitions in theatre management. Three years later, the premiere of Prodaná nevěsta in the Court Opera (Hofoper) took place. The study is dedicated to biographies of the artists who participated in both of the premieres in Theater an der Wien and the Court Opera, and provides a further context.

The study captures the personality and activities of Herbert Hiebsch (1905-1948), conductor, writer, music organizer, co-founder of several Bruckner societies in Bohemia, a humanitarian-educated Sudeten German from Litoměřice/Leitmeritz, brought up a Catholic, who in the 1930s and during the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was involved in promoting the goals of National Socialist cultural policy. It deals in more detail with Hiebsch's origin and his studies at the grammar school in Litoměřice and the German Academy of Music and Drama in Prague, but also with the analysis of his novel Das göttliche Finale. Ein Buch vom Erleben Bruckners (1931), and unpublished memorial file Herbert Hiebsch - Deutsches Schicksal unter Tschechen. Ein Lebensbericht (1938). The study concludes with information about the end of his life in Baden-Württemberg.

This study focuses on the work of the Czech singer Karel Burian at the National Theatre in Prague from 1899 to 1903. The first section deals with Burian’s singing repertoire at the Prague National Theatre and his further work during his stay in Prague. The second section considers musical reviews of Burian’s singing performances at the National Theatre in Prague. The following section is concerned with the income of Burian and his colleagues who worked at the National Theatre. The fourth section focuses on the relationship between Burian and the head of the National Theatre Opera, other artists and visitors to operatic performances during Burian’s work at the Prague National Theatre. The study concludes with the reasons for Burian’s departure from Prague.

The text first of all gives a broader comparison of the development of two traditions that significantly influenced Czech society in the 19th century. Political, national and religious influences, together with the development of historical research, were reflected in artistic creation, including music. Both traditions were connected by many features: a place in Czech history, a religious basis, the element of Czech-German coexistence, partly also their incorporation into the interpretation of the Blaník legend, etc. The selection of compositions serves not only to understand the parallel coexistence of both traditions, but it is also beneficial in terms of finding compositions whose authors attempted to merge the two ideological currents. In addition to the compositions themselves, other valuable information on this confrontation is provided by contemporary materials (reviews, memoirs). The text reveals much about the composers’ motivations, the risks of choosing the themes, the reception by audiences, opportunities for performances, competitors’ opinions, etc. One of the main conclusions is the statement that Hus-Hussite compositions quantitatively predominated in the second half of the 19th century and that they were a symbol of the progressive current of Czech political representation. Compositions of a synthesising nature were united by an appeal to reconcile the confessionally, linguistically and politically divided nation, and, in this sense, they are closer to Saint Wenceslas compositions. As a whole, all compositions can then also be understood as a suitable addition to the reconstruction of the subject represented by the question “Wenceslas or Hus/Žižka”.

The Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia in 1989 marks not only the end of communism but also, according to many music journalists and musicians themselves, the end of folk music. This term can be found in the magazines and literature of that time and it reflects the crisis of the folk genre whose main representatives are the singer-songwriters. When the theory of Czech musicologist Josef Kotek about the evolution of genres in popular music is applied, it can be assumed that the folk singer-songwriting reached its final at the turn of the 1990s. Such a decline was marked by a gradual loss of popularity of the genre and by the deterioration of quality of the music. This situation is changing at the brink of 21st century when new singer-songwriter appeared, and it is possible then to speak about the revival of the genre. It is typical for this era that the definition of folk music and singer-songwriting is enlarged. Many female singer-songwriters arose and along with it, folk music gradually penetrated the mainstream pop music.