The study presents a structural analysis of Modest Petrovich Musorgsky's output. The songs are studied in detail as well as the extensive musical dramatic works. The findings of Musorgsky's compositional style are given in the context of wider contemporary musical tendencies.

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 Ein Buch vom Erleben Bruckners (1931), and unpublished memorial file Herbert Hiebsch - Deutsches Schicksal unter Tschechen.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.

The study investigates the financial situation of Bedřich Smetana and its fluctuations in the individual phases of his life. It is based especially on a detailed analysis of the composer's financial records preserved in various types of written sources (diaries, catalogues of his music institute, records of revenues from opera performances, correspondence, and other individual documents). With a few exceptions, Smetana kept regular and systematic records of his revenues from as early as the 1850s; as of the 1860s, his records also included family expenditures. These overviews provide rather detailed and credible information about the amount and structure of Smetana's finances in the individual periods. Apart from investigating the changes in the value and proportions of the incomes and expenses, the study also uses the above described sources to analyse the circumstances determining Smetana's financial situation and the way in which they interacted with his artistic and social activities, and to determine his actual economic situation in general. The supplemented tables summarize his annual income and expenses in the individual years, including the main items constituting their structure.

The contribution of Czech composers to the development of the Polish national music begins in the era of the activity of Jan Stefani, the composer of musical set to Cracovians and Highlanders by Wojciech Bogusławski, considered the first Polish national opera. Further on are the achievements of Wilem Würffel as the creator of polonaises and fantasies based on Polish national melodies. Although after the anti-Russian uprising (1831), many Czech musicians still worked in Poland as music teachers, members of orchestras or choir directors, their participation in shaping the formation of Polish national music was rather niche. It was influenced by political reality, which was not favorable to the development of Polish-Czech contacts, especially in the part of the country under Russian rule (here Czechs were seen as Russophiles). The impulse that increased interest in Czech music in Poland in the last decades of the 19th century was the awareness of its high position in Europe. The successes of Smetana and Dvořák's works discussed in foreign music press, prompted several Polish music activists to attempts to introduce them to national stages. However, it was only the beginning of the twientieth century when Czech national music was properly assessed by Polish composers. And here political factors played also a role - the "Czech Renaissance" in Polish musical thought was largely inspired by the events of the Prague Neo-Slav rally of 1908.

The collection of folk songs organized in 1819 in Vienna, in our environment called the governorate, in Austria Sonnleithner's, is the first known centrally organized collection in Europe. The fact that the collection covered lyrics, songs, and melodies of folk dances was a unique feature. The official result of the collection in Bohemia was the so-called Kolovrat manuscript (1823), the unofficial one was the printed collection of Czech and German lyrics and songs called Rittersberk's (1825). Gradually, however, in total 9 sources were identified, representing more than a thousand writing units of folk songs and dance tunes from Bohemia.

Moritz Geiger, Edmund Husserl's pupil, was the first phenomenologist to devote himself to the issues of aesthetics throughout all his life. Growing out of a background in psychological aesthetics, mainly the aesthetics of empathy, he was chiefly concerned with the study of aesthetic experience. The present article pays attention to Geiger's concept of aesthetic enjoyment and especially the position in it of music, while analysing the most important assumptions of Eduard Hanslick's music aesthetics as Geiger implemented them into his own reasoning. The paper shows that Geiger's position was mainly rooted in the Kantian formulation of the aesthetic attitude as it was echoed in Hanslick. Both Hanslick and Geiger were helped in their thoughts about the position of music among the arts by the role of perceptual parameters. While Geiger acquired a more differentiated position in classifying aesthetic perception over Hanslick's brusque distinction between the right (aesthetic) and inappropriate (pathological) experience of art, in the context of his seemingly puritan formalism he could also appreciate Hanslick's cautious claim about the ideas conveyed by music because his position later shifted toward positing the existential significance of art.

Although B. Smetana designated his opera Libuše for representation of the Czech nation, it was Prodaná nevěsta that became a representative work whose performances indelibly illustrated contemporary conflicts. In this respect, it is possible to perceive the individual performances of Prodaná nevěsta as political issues and society-wide events. Apart from information about the main protagonists of the individual performances, including stage designers or directors, the study also provides commentaries on possible motivations within the particular social conditions which led to conflicts around performances of Prodaná nevěsta. Public discussions were often (and continue to be) led in the entire spectrum of media coverage, from expert reviews to interference by politicians.

The author of the paper searches for the answer as to what Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf's personality was like. In the case of this composer, we not only have his own biography, but also numerous archive evidence preserved in this country. The answer to such a question needs to be sought already in his childhood. His father was not only a theatre tailor, as stated in the existing domestic literary sources, but the imperial and theatre embroider. The contacts of his father in theatre circles and the nobility apparently influenced Dittersdorf's future life, among other things his interest in opera. The author also observes how Dittersdorf's personality and character developed, as well as his behaviour towards the nobility and common people. Attention is paid to his trouble with superiors, especially with Baron Kaschnitz. The paper documents Dittersdorf's entrepreneurial spirit, his relationship to property and to his wife. One aspect of Dittersdorf's life which is presently little known is his religious tolerance. The text deals in detail with his relationship with Mozart as a critical reaction to the most recent publication by Ian Woodfield Cabals and Satires. Based on this, the text also deals with the topic of the Brno premiere of Dittersdorf's opera Die Hochzeit des Figaro [The Marriage of Figaro].

The first part of the journal is devoted to a prominent researcher and pedagogue of the Department of Musicology of the Palacký University, Prof Alena Burešová, PhD (1947) to her life jubilee. The readers are offered a selection from the rich publishing activities of the author from the 1970s to the present, whether it is academic studies on domestic and international topics, reviews, or other texts of scientific and popularizing nature. One of the chapters presents also an unpublished selected bibliography focused on children's choirs from the 1970s, partly the early 1980s.

The production of Paris publishers in the second half of the 1700s is considered the most fruitful in contemporary Europe; as such it also significantly contributed to the dissemination of the repertoire of foreign authors, including composers from Central Europe. Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf ranks among the best-known Viennese composers of his generation, and it was perhaps even thanks to his success with Paris publishers that an awareness of his works has been preserved up until the present. Paris prints of his compositions belong to the very first editions; they appeared since 1766 and the greatest increase in the number of works published came in 1767. Dittersdorf's instrumental compositions, especially symphonies, orchestral trios, and trio sonatas, as well as several piano adaptations of symphonies were released by prominent French publishers specializing in foreign production. In total, information about 94 compositions, published under the name Ditters, was found in 36 prints dated up to the year 1800. The preserved copies allow for determination of an error rate equalling approximately one fifth in the authenticity of works published. A great majority of the identified works that were published in Paris were composed in the 1760s or earlier - i.e. at the time when Ditters worked in Vienna. It is probable that particularly the contacts within the Viennese circles of musicians and sponsors, including the high nobility, enabled Ditters to establish contact with Paris publishers that was apparently direct to a certain extent.

Various types of music theatre (for instance, singspiel, magic opera, or operetta) serve to reveal how new motifs emerged in opera librettos, presenting unusual challenges for composers. These included non-specified choirs of demons and creatures of the underworld in seventeenth century opera to the individualized character of the devil. Although the interest was preserved until the nineteenth century (K. Penderecki, A. Schnittke), the basic repertory foregrounding the demonic powers was created in the eighteenth century (Meyerbeer's Robert le diable [Robert the Devil], Weber's Der Freischütz [The Freeshooter], or Boito's Mefistofele). The character of the devil is not always frightening. Some works intentionally emphasize the comic and fairy-tale features: this being typical in Czech opera (Smetana's Čertova stěna and Dvořák's opera Čert a Káča [The Devil and Kate]).

Anton Neumann (1721-1776) was a composer, violinist and Kapellmeister whose numerous original compositions are preserved in domestic as well as foreign music collections. The aim of the study is to introduce new findings on Neumann's life and point out the importance of his preserved works, many of which manifest features of the "Sturm und Drang" style. Thanks to their characteristic composition style, Neumann's works even enable us to determine the authorship for materials where the first name is missing. An extensive research project has demonstrated that his works are included in collections in Central, and partly also Western, Northern and Southern Europe. The paper discusses the importance of the fundamental collection of Neumann's compositions in the property of Benedictine monks from Lambach and a determination of the links to the composer's activity in Kroměříž. The crucial new findings involve a specification of Neumann's date of birth, and proof of his identification with the personality of a Brno tower apprentice Johann Heinrich Neumann.

The first critiques of the performance of the opera Dalibor already pointed out its long-term poor acceptance and major problems with dramaturgy. Although Smetana continued to emphasize the quality of his third opera, he did not succeed in promoting it, and this lack of understanding became the author's life disappointment. Dalibor was considered a Wagnerian work that did not correspond to any type of Czech national opera (one of the reproached aspects was the lack of choir and dance acts which were typical for local culture). The study reveals the intentions of the librettist Adolf Wenzig, who focused on a story of tragic love burdened by history and causing deadly vengeance. Smetana's interpretation of the libretto was different, emphasizing the motif of friendship and love. The tension between reality and the visions of the main characters in Dalibor is fully manifested at the end of the third act, which was reworked several times. In spite of the problematic solution, Dalibor remains a work of exceptional quality reacting in a distinct way to the contemporary situation in tragic opera of the second half of the nineteenth century.

James MacMillan is one of the few internationally renowned composers who embraced the liturgical reform of the Second Vatican Council with its key concept of participatio actuosa and wrote music involving the congregation. With regard to these works, the following questions are discussed and answered: In what way did he compose for untrained singers so that they are able to sing his compositions? Which stylistic compromises did he accept and how are they artistically justifiable? How does his liturgical music involving the congregation relate to liturgical theological concepts?

Organ compositions by Josef Förster Jr. and Josef Bohuslav Foerster are interesting from two points of view. In connection with Josef Förster Jr., this can primarily be seen within the context of the overall change of in the aesthetic organ ideal in Bohemia, which was mostly started by Förster himself. His compositions are professionally composed, but their invention does not exceed the average of contemporary compositions. The compositions of J. B. Foerster are not particularly interesting in terms of their organ-building context, as J. B. Foerster bases his character of the organ on that promoted by Josef Förster Jr. J. B. Foerster's compositions are more interesting in terms of their compositional aspect. J. B. Foerster makes use of the organ like an orchestra, with a delicious intensification of multicoloured dynamics, with both distinct harmonic and dynamic twists, and also with a primary, but nevertheless changing, melodic. In this way a composition with the following characteristics arises: in comparison with Josef Förster Jr. more evolutionary, regardless of the time of creation (1896, 1925) but always conforming to a purely romantic feeling. Only a few of these compositions have been already critically edited and published. A number of them are definitely deserving of this in the future.

The aim of this paper is to look at the design of the melody line in J. Mysliveček's Symphonies nos. 42-47 (ED. 10: D21, F8, Bb8, Eb6, G10 and C11) from a music-analytical perspective. The following aspects are presented in details: instrumentation of the bass line, octave doublings of the melody line within a movement, as well as the participation of the low strings and the brass section in the performance of the melody. These symphonies will then be compared with opera symphonies from the same period which also have the same instrumentation, in order to find differences and similarities between them. Furthermore, J. Mysliveček's symphonies are compared to symphonies by W. A. Mozart of the same period (1772-1774) with the same instrumentation to determine relationships on the one hand, and to stress special features of the symphonic works of J. Mysliveček on the other hand.

Smetana's Piano trio in G minor ranks among the first elaborate works by its author, but was received with a critical distance from its very beginning. The study investigates the historical context of the trio's birth, and based on a comparative analysis, aims at emphasizing Smetana's original solution of the sonata cycle and the form in the scope of a chamber ensemble. In order to read the text, a simultaneous study of the scores of both these chamber works by César Franck and Bedřich Smetana would be needed.

The reception of Smetana's operas in the German-speaking environment is intensive, but very unsteady. Smetana's opera work is not known as a whole (for instance, the first opera Braniboři v Čechách [The Brandenburgers in Bohemia]), but plays such as Prodaná nevěsta [The Bartered Bride] or Dvě vdovy [The Two Widows] returned to German stages on a regular basis. The study provides a detailed image of notable performances of Bedřich Smetana's operas on German stages in the 1900s. It monitors the changing approaches in directions, and lists leading artists who enriched performances of Smetana with idiosyncratic elements.

The article is devoted to the presentation and interpretation of critical-musical works of Max Brod, Czech-born German-Israeli writer, composer and librettist, best known as a monographer of Franz Kafka. On the basis of the press articles (published, inter alia, in German-speaking daily "Prager Tagblatt"), the author analyzes and systematizes Brod's views on musical art. Significantly, in the center of the critic's interest were found to be such composers as Leoš Janáček, Gustav Mahler and Arnold Schönberg. The press articles concerning Jewish music, more specifically - the "Jewish element" ("Jewishness") in music are discussed in detail. The author also attempts to answer whether the Zionist element of Max Brod's worldview could have affected his professional evaluation of musical pieces. At the end of the article critical-musical skills of Max Brod are subjected to the technical analysis, and his artistic views (particularly on Neue Musik) are placed in a wider context of the thought of the era.

Intra-tonal hierarchy is one of the basic principle of mental processing in music. The paper deals with the research of tonal hierarchy while using the "probe-tone method" first applicated by C. Krumhansl. The respondents aged 9-17 were lower and upper level secondary school students and grammar school students. The tonal profile obtained in the research relative to the standardized tonal profile, student's age and their musicality were examined.

The subject of this analysis is the musical material of the progressive rock area, specifically the Take a Pebble song by the British band Emerson, Lake & Palmer (1970). The analysis focuses on motivic and thematic coherence and the overall musical form, but also deals with substantial correlations in the field of instrumentation, harmony, rhythm, melody as well as dynamic aspect, the program content of the composition (the lyrics), interpretation style and other contexts.

The study is dedicated to the reception of the first German performances of the opera Prodaná nevěsta by Bedřich Smetana in Vienna - in 1893 in the Theater an der Wien, and later in 1896 in Hofoper. Smetana's comic opera came to the Viennese stage as late as almost thirty years after its birth. The work, which was already perceived in Bohemia as part of autonomous Czech music culture as well as a prototype of the national opera of that day, was performed in Vienna during a nationally and politically tense period when Czech society still felt disillusion after the collapse of the Austro-Bohemian compromise in the 1870s. The issue of the position of the Czech Lands within the monarchy had become topical once again by that time. The year 1890 saw a new (and until the outbreak of World War I also the last) attempt at strengthening the centralism, which was rejected by the (non-uniform) opposition in the Czech Lands. In this situation, the Czech National Theatre was visiting the International Exhibition of Music and Theatre (Internationale Ausstellung für Musik- und Theaterwesen) organized in Vienna 1892, where Smetana's Prodaná nevěsta clearly won. This performance was followed by the both above-mentioned premieres on the Viennese stages: first in Theater an der Wien, led by private lessors, and three years later on the official court scene. Based on documents from the archives of the Court Opera, the contemporary press and other sources, the study presents examples of the political context of both the premieres and their reviews by the contemporary satire.

The rich collection of iconographic materials connected to the figure of B. Smetana, assembled by Bedřich Smetana Museum in Prague, requires professional interpretation for two reasons. Firstly, our objective is to determine the actual physical appearance of B. Smetana, and secondly, to interpret the features attributed to B. Smetana in the historical context and with regard to the particular visual style. The aspects taken into account include the rotation of Smetana's head when photographed, his clothes, the colour display of the portraits, etc. Apart from two-dimensional depictions, the study also involves three-dimensional objects including busts.

The technologies of the 20th century represent an important milestone for the concept of musical work in history that concerns not only music composition itself but also its conservation and transmission.
It might have been in the field of music composition that these tendencies have become apparent first - in the construction of first electronic musical instruments; the integration of civilization, primarily non-musical sounds into classical music compositions; and after World War II, also in the new composition methods that record media started employing (e.g. magnetic tapes used for sound collage or phase shifts); furthermore, in the algorithmic composition mathematical formulae and computers applied (as digital support for the restoration of music scores or even as the proper creator of the composition that the computer either reproduces or conveys its graphical notation) or so-called live electronic music (in the sense of the flexibility of technical operations during live performances - reproductions of the work). However, computer music has also brought up new questions on the conception of the work of art and the scope and definition of music itself. These specific traits of so-called new music from the point of view of copyright are the subject of the Appraisal of the Institute of Copyright, Industrial Property and Competition Law of the Faculty of Law of Charles University (abbreviated Appraisal UPAPP) that reflects on the works of electronic and experimental music.
The study also touches on the possibilities of mass distribution of works, mainly related to the Internet and the development of new digital media with which can help to preserve (or fixate) and distribute recordings. These relatively new digital platforms and formats are on the one hand a way to liberalise and shift the distribution of music. On the other hand, they mean some flattening of the quality (technical and content) and a corresponding sharp increase in the quantity of recorded music. These aspects are also reflected in copyright law, where they have caused an increase of the specific problems related mainly to illegal distribution of musical works. Copyright law already regulates so-called indirect means of copyright protection (e.g. § 43). In the future, today's strategy of no responsibility for what content customers are offered on the side of website operators is threatened, since the advocates of stricter protection promote new harsher laws, for example liability of owners and operators of Websites for their content and trying to de facto introduce some form of Internet censorship.

This study provides a brief outline of the development of mainstream music and popular music content since the fall of the Iron Curtain in Slovakia, mapping the rise of specific music styles, such as club, hip-hop, and electronic music, and providing a brief description of the infrastructure, including recording studios and currently active music producers. In studying the nature of the creative process, it focuses on selected popular musicians (Štefan Královič and Martin Kavulič) who have been active on the music scene in the recent years. The study deals with the nature of various sources of influence on musicians' decision-making, addressing issues such as the role of their education versus their innate musicality and intuitive sensitivity to current trends, the role of globalisation and the media, and certain specific features related to Slovak artists' mainstream music production.

This contribution pursues the manifestation of social involvement in the lyrics of various genres of pop music after 1989. Any content which touches upon the life of the society or the particular social phenomenon and expresses the specific opinion of it can be considered and broadly understood as "involved". The contribution follows the development of the thematic structure of the lyrics from the 90's (e.g. post-revolutionary disillusionment, corruption and economic criminality) until the New Millenium (racism and xenophobia, nationalism, "memory loss", etc.). The subject of the detailed analysis is especially the work of the era after 2010 when the opinions which have been presented in the lyrics have highly reflected the opinion differences of the society (Xindl X, Gipsy.cz, Živé kvety, etc. versus e.g. Ortel).

This paper concerns the issue of music in two well-known twentieth-century series - Czechoslovakian Krtek (aired between 1957 and 2002) and Polish Reksio (1967-1990). My aim was to present the wealth of composer's ideas - how they provided the films not only with illustrative fragments and interesting stylizations, but even with autonomous musical images. Soundtracks reveal excellent workshop of their authors, their originality and sense of humor. Sometimes we hear classical like music, another time it is even avant-garde. To show the similiarities and differences between artistic strategies (not only strictly musical) I chose three pairs of cartoons (from both series) which action takes place in the similar surroundings or which refer to the suchlike questions. The article presents the conclusions from audiovisual analysis and therefore the description of music is inseparable from the plot. In the case of Krtek I present films with music of two composers - Miloš Vacek (1928-2012) and Vadim Petrov (1932), in case of Reksio it is one composer - Zenon Kowalowski (1939).

This article represents an attempt to describe the use of a sequence of three-chord, comprising the sub-mediant, followed by the dominant and thirdly, the tonic by composers from 1610 (Monteverdi) to 1948 (Richard Strauss). During that time, this three-chord sequence has been used sparingly - by just nine composers - but is used in two of the most well-known and loved orchestral works. The author poses the questions: why has it been used so infrequently? What is the contextual meaning of this chord sequence by each composer? Is there anything significantly similar between the meaning of the chord sequence across all the works of these nine composers? Surprisingly, there was no use of this chord sequence between Monteverdi and Beethoven. After investigation, the author shows that the reverse of the sequence, tonic, dominant, sub-mediant chords, was a standard sequence in works from the Baroque through to the present day, often as an ostinato pattern. From Pachelbel's Canon in D to songs by the Beatles, Bob Marley, and many other famous, contemporary singer-song writers. On the other hand, the author shows that the use of the three-chords, is either as cadence or at the beginning of a phrase; it can also be used as a means of modulating, from a minor to a Major key. From Monteverdi on through the list, the contextual meaning of the sequence, sometimes with a text, and sometimes without, has a religio-philosophical spiritual meaning and use. Most of the composers set the sequence to a Christian text (Magnificat, Easter hymns, Resurrection) while others use folk texts or celebrated poetry, to describe philosophically the journey of the soul from birth to death and beyond.

"Melodies, styles, new sounds drifting through the world without respect for borders and act on anyone who hears them, whether they like it or not." (Susanne Binas-Preisendörfer: Klänge im Zeitalter ihrer medialen Verfügbarkeit, Bielefeld: Transcript, 2010, 16.). In today's postmodern and globalized world, it is effortless to listen to any kind of music around the world from any place via internet or radio for example. But does this techno-cultural phenomena automatically lead to a cultural (and often called westernized) mainstream?
This essay examines how world music is changing under the conditions of a globalized world.

Hans Mersmann presented his concept of musical structure in the 1920s and developed it mainly as a system of form types describing the classical music repertoire. In addition to this, he formulated a set of procedures to be used in the analysis of music. However, with the withdrawal of tonality in twentieth-century music, the significance of his framework for music analysis lessened. Moreover, even within the context of tonal music his approach has not become widely applied. On the contrary, David Lewin's model, developed within phenomenological reasoning sixty years later, despite being a model of musical perception, has turned into an influential theoretical stance with appealing analytical potential. The present paper discusses both approaches against the background of musical temporality and compares their explicative power while considering the advantages of Lewin's model.