A History of Music in the Czech Lands

by Martin Nedbal (Editor), Kelly St. Pierre (Editor), Hana Vlhová-Wörner (Editor)

Overview

In a collection of essays from prominent music scholas both in the Czech Republic and abroad, this book provides a nuanced overview of major topics connected to the history of musical culture in the Czech lands (Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia) from the Middle Ages to the present. Whereas most previous English-language musicological scholarship on the Czech lands focused solely on music that was understood as ethnically Czech, this book also considers musical cultures of non-Czech groups that lived, and sometimes still live, in the geographical area, most importantly people of German, Jewish, and Romani backgrounds. Spanning over a thousand years, this book combines innovative approaches to present nuanced perspectives on a complicated musical tradition. This is the first overview of music in the Czech lands to provide such an inclusive view of the region's musical developments.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781009168656
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	11/30/2025
Series:	Elements in Experimental Political Science
Pages:	550
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 1.50(h) x 9.50(d)

About the Author

Martin Nedbal is Professor of Musicology at the University of Kansas. He has authored two monographs: Morality and Viennese Opera in the Age of Mozart and Beethoven (2017) and Mozart's Operas and National Politics: Canon Formation in Prague from 1791 to the Present (2023).

Kelly St. Pierre is Professor of Musicology at Wichita State University. She has authored numerous publications, including a monograph on Bedřich Smetana (2017). Her newest research, exploring trauma and memory in Czech folksong scholarship, has been supported by a Fulbright Grant and by Prague's Center for Theoretical Studies.

Hana Vlhová-Wörner is a Czech musicologist. She has widely published on Czech medieval music, with focus on liturgical poetry and fifteenth-century vernacular chant. She is author of the four-volume edition of tropes Repertorium Troporum Bohemiae Medii Aevi and general co-editor of the critical edition of the Jistebnice Kancionál.

Table of Contents

Table of contents; List of musical examples; List of figures; List of tables; Acknowledgements; Introduction; Part I. Before 1800: 1. Medieval traditions of plainchant in Bohemia Hana Vlhová-Wörner; 2. Medieval music and Czech national identity Viktor Velek; 3. Liturgical music of the Bohemian reformation Martin Horyna; 4. Music at the royal and imperial court in Prague Erika Honisch; 5. Music in the Catholic reformation of seventeenth-century Bohemia Geoffrey Chew; 6. Music in Bohemian royal coronations and opera in Prague in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Marc Niubò; 7. Aristocratic patronage of music in the Bohemian crownlands: a series of vignettes Jana Perutková; 8. The Bohemian Kapellknaben ensemble of Dresden's Catholic court church Janice Stockigt; Part II. The 'Long' Nineteenth Century: 9. Bohemian public music institutions and national politics Martin Nedbal; 10. The emergence of Czech national opera tradition in the nineteenth century Jiří Kopecký; 11. Women and opera in the Czech lands Judith Mabary; 12. Bohemian salon culture in 1820s and 1830s Teplice Anja Bunzel; 13. 'The Very Bosom of our Nation': the dialectic of folk and art music in Bedřich Smetana's Hubička and Dvě vdovy Christopher Campo-Bowen; 14. Choral music and modernity in the Bohemian crownlands in the nineteenth century Karel Šima; 15. Symphonic music in nineteenth-century Czech lands Eva Branda; 16. The politics of Bohemian music criticism and historiography from the late eighteenth to the late twentieth century Martin Nedbal and Kelly St. Pierre; 17. Public music education and the Prague conservatory Lenka Křupková; Part III. The Twentieth Century and Beyond: 18. The mutual exclusion society: musicology and criticism in early twentieth-century Prague Brian Locke; 19. Janáček's Jenůfa and operatic modernism Jiří Zahrádka; 20. Avant-garde aspects of Czech interwar music Miloš Zapletal; 21. The Jewish musical experience in the Czech lands Michael Beckerman; 22. Czechoslovak musicians in North American exile Brian Locke and Martin Nedbal; 23. Categorizing music, classifying people: music research and race studies in the Czech lands Kelly St. Pierre; 24. The nation's image in songs: folk music research and revival in the twentieth century Matěj Kratochvíl; 25. Romani music in the Czech Republic Zuzana Jurková; 26. Decolonial resonances in Czech opera after 1948 Tereza Havelková; 27. Jazz as sound for the stage: the liberated theater and its progeny David Vondráček; 28. Understanding Czech rock from the period of normalization Jan Blüml; 29. Czech film music Aleš Březina; 30. Czechs in search of Slovak music Vladimír Zvara; 31. Twentieth-century Czech female composers in cultural and political context: the pre-1989 music of Ivana Loudová and Sylvie Bodorová Miriam Blümlová; 32. Czech classical music in a global world: Jakub Hrůša in conversation with Aleš Březina Aleš Březina and Jakub Hrůša; Bibliography.