Research Guides: International Music Resources by Country: Czechia (Czech Republic)

Garland Encyclopedia of World Music-Czech Republic

Czech Republic
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Books

Bohemian Baroque by Robert G. Rawson Traditional polemical histories of Bohemia and Moravia identify the period from the early seventeenth to the mid-eighteenth century as a "period of darkness" - particularly in terms of Czech-language culture. This book challenges that interpretation from the perspective of musical culture and demonstrates that this was actually a vibrant, productive and innovative period, both for music in the Czech language and instrumental music. By focussing on the distinctive nature of Czech-language education and devotional traditions (rehabilitated along Catholic lines after the Thirty Years War), the book reveals a new understanding of Czech musical practices and repertoires as a beguiling blend of the older, non-conformist, vernacular traditions with the new, theatrical, Italian styles and genres. Drawing on a broad range of genres including sonatas, concertos, oratorios, Passion music, masses, motets, litanies and operas, Bohemian Baroque reveals a fascinating culture and repertoire that have long been overlooked. In the Czech lands, seventeenth-century courtly life emerged in a much different way from many other European countries. Bohemian Baroque underscores the prominent role of rural life in shaping musical culture more broadly in Bohemia and Moravia and consequently draws attention to the works and environments of composers whose careers were primarily in the Czech lands (in contrast to the traditional focus on more famous émigré composers). The book also considers the influence of Germanic traditions on Czech musical culture; several areas of overlap reveal newly identified examples of shared repertoires-in some cases, German and Czech even appear within a single work. Taken as a whole, Bohemian Baroque posits a new paradigm in which received notions of "Czechness" in the musical culture of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries might be reconsidered. Bohemian Baroque will be required reading for anyone interested in the music of the Habsburg Empire and Central Europe, cultural history, or baroque music more generally. Students and scholars of musical style and music and identity will equally find much of interest here. Robert G. Rawson is Reader in Musicology and Performance at Canterbury Christ Church University.
Call Number: ML247.2 .R38 2013
Czech Bluegrass by Lee Bidgood; Tony Trischka (Foreword by) Bluegrass has found an unlikely home, and avid following, in the Czech Republic. The music's emergence in Central Europe places it within an increasingly global network of communities built around bluegrass activities.   Lee Bidgood offers a fascinating study of the Czech bluegrass phenomenon that merges intimate immersion in the music with on-the-ground fieldwork informed by his life as a working musician. Drawing on his own close personal and professional interactions, Bidgood charts how Czech bluegrass put down roots and looks at its performance as a uniquely Czech musical practice. He also reflects on "Americanist" musical projects and the ways Czech musicians use them to construct personal and social identities. Bidgood sees these acts of construction as a response to the Czech Republic's postsocialist environment but also to US cultural prominence within our global mediascape.  
Call Number: ML3520 .B529 2017
Czech Music Around 1900 by Lenka Krupková (Editor); Jirí Kopecký (Editor) Czech musical culture around 1900 saw itself as the culminating phase of the development of Czech national music. At the same time, however, it exhibited many contradictory phenomena mirroring the inexorable dissolution of unified Czech patriotic life, which especially in the second half of the nineteenth century had encountered resistant forces in the Germanophilic environment of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. The extraordinary dynamics of the period of about two decades before the outbreak of World War I were determined by the rise of a young generation of composers who now accepted the "global" character of Czech music as a matter of course, thanks to the international success of works by Bedrich Smetana (the opera The Bartered Bride) and Antonín Dvorák (works for orchestra and chamber ensembles, large choral works). Composers like Leos Janácek, Josef Bohuslav Foerster, Josef Suk, and especially Vítezslav Novák had extraordinary talent, received good training, and gradually won support from influential publishers. With courage and critical perspective they came to terms with the bequest of the "fathers", the "founders" of Czech music, as well as with the works of their own more famous contemporaries like Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler, and Gustave Charpentier. They gained successes abroad. Reactions by the public, critics, and their colleagues, however, were mixed, as though Czech society were not capable of accepting divergent approaches to artistic creation. Many works (if not many composers) came out of this "battleground" weakened and fell by the wayside. One of the aims of this book, Czech Music Around 1900, is to draw attention to some unjustly forgotten treasures of Czech music.
Call Number: ML247 .C925 2017

Listen to Czech Music!

Online Resources

The Czech and Slovak Music Society
The Czech and Slovak Music Society is an international organization started in 1987 and dedicated to the serious study and greater understanding of the music of the Czech and Slovak Republics. The Society embraces all musical venues, from 19th-century Czech nationalism to the folk traditions of the Slovak Republic, from 17th-century liturgical music to Ježek's Bugatti-Step and all areas between.
Czech Music Database
This site (Czechmusic.net) is a continuation of the project started on a different domain, Hudba.cx, in 1997. The original intention was creating of the most complete database on all sorts of Czech music.
Czech Music Information Center
We maintain the archive of sheet music and records, publish magazines and CDs, manage concerts and promote current czech music.
Kapralova Society
The Kapralova Society is a Canadian non-profit arts organization. Founded in Toronto in 1998 by Karla Hartl, the Society's mission is to promote the music of Czech composer Vitezslava Kapralova (1915-1940) and to build awareness of women's contributions to musical life. To this end, the Society publishes research on Kapralova and other women in music in its online journal and on its website, and assists projects that make Kapralova's music available in print and on record (only premiere releases).
Prague Conservatory Library & Archives
The library and the archive of the Prague Conservatory is one of the richest of its kind in Middle Europe. It is unique for its collection of 19th century documents, but it also contains unique items dating back to even earlier periods. The activity of this highly specialized library ranges from obtaining musical publications and documents, cataloging them, and making them accessible to users—both in printed and electronic form—to providing research services and preserving sheet music. It's academic activity is focused on cataloging Czech as well as foreign sheet music and, by gradually transferring data into electronic databases, on making the items widely accessible to scholars and laymen alike.

Map of Czechia

Citation (2)

Facts in Brief

Capital: Prague

Official language: Czech

Location: The Czech Republic (Czechia) lies in Central Europe and comprises the Czech Lands of Bohemia and Moravia, and part of Silesia. Its neighbours are Poland to the north, Germany to the north-west and west, Austria to the south, and Slovakia to the east.

Official name: Ceska Republika (Czech Republic)

National anthem: "Kde domov muj? ("Where is My Home?")

Area: 78,867 sq km (30,451 sq miles)

Current Population: 10,693,939

Climate: Warm summers and cold winters it most regions; lowlands are warmer than mountainous areas.

Money: Czech Koruna

Main Religion: Christianity

Citation (3)

Traditional Czech Music

Bohemia:

Vocal Music: Bohemian traditional song has been influenced by instrumental music and characteristic features are chordal motifs together with the elongation of a single syllable over several beats. It uses a declamatory vocal style and has links with dance, trumpet signals, military marches, Gregorian chant and other types of church singing. Song melodies from Bohemia and west Moravia are dominated by the major triad. The overall structure, mainly based on the repetition of identical phrases (either at the same pitch or in sequence) consists of 16 bars divided into four four-bar phrases; these can be further subdivided into two-bar sections.

Instrumental Music: The character of a melody is to a certain extent determined by the instruments on which it is played. The most common instrumental combination was the bagpipe and violin, later complemented by clarinet as a ‘small barn band’. This combination is still used in the Chod district of west Bohemia. In addition to large professional and semi-professional ensembles, there are smaller bands consisting of two flugelhorns, clarinet, tenor horn, baritone, accompanying trumpet in F, tuba and percussion. Their repertory is based on the lidovka, and on arrangements of folksongs, polkas and waltzes.

Moravia and Silesia:

Vocal Music: Moravian and Silesian songs are characteristically arranged in stanzas and have regular rhyming patterns. The greatest part of the repertory consists of love songs; this theme also crosses over into other genres such as military songs, wedding songs and ballads. Epics, which have lyrical elements, include legends and ballads depicting family and social life. Brigand songs found in eastern Moravia suggest links with the musics of the Carpathians.

Instrumental Music: Early iconography depicts a pipe and small drum, and, from the 13th century onwards, the bagpipe, which was widely used for both solo performances and in ensembles. In the second half of the 19th century traditional bands began to play the ‘Streich’, in which string instruments were completed by wind or brass instruments. In some regions, such as Moravian Slovakia and Silesia, wind bands, usually consisting of two clarinets, bugle, bass bugle, two trumpets and helicon, replaced dulcimer bands. Wind bands flourished in the mid-19th century when musicians returned from military service where they had played in military bands. The fiddle tradition has been perpetuated by professional and amateur string bands.

Citation (4)

Streaming Video: Dvořák Festival

Streaming Video: Dvořák Festival: Slavonic Dances Series Two, Opus 72

Composer Highlight: Bedřich Smetana

Bedřich Smetana headshot

1824-1884

Czech composer, conductor, teacher, and music critic often described as the ‘father’ or ‘inventor’ of Czech national music. While his first language was German and his first nationalist compositions were based on Swedish narratives, Smetana asserted himself as composer of specifically Czech music from the 1860s, and his music posthumously became synonymous with a Czech national musical style. After his death, Smetana was transformed in the minds of his audiences and advocates from a composer of nationalistic music to a national symbol himself; he and his works became enduring points of reference for Czechs’ ever-shifting borders, politics, administrations, ethnicities, and imagined futures through the 20th century. The composer’s supposed greatness, genius, Czechness, tragic deafness, and heroism all give voice to the shifting needs, anxieties, and interests of his audiences as much as to the composer himself.

Ottlová, M., Pospíšil, M., Tyrrell, J., & St Pierre, K. Smetana, Bedřich. Grove Music Online. Retrieved 24 May. 2021, from https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-3000000151.

Bedřich Smetana: String Quartets

Citation: Bedřich Smetana: String Quartets [Streaming Audio]. (2006). Arcodiva. (2006). Retrieved from Music Online: Classical Music Library database.

International Music Resources by Country: Czechia (Czech Republic)