Music of Slovakia - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The music of Slovakia
Slovakia
The Slovak Republic is a landlocked state in Central Europe. It has a population of over five million and an area of about . Slovakia is bordered by the Czech Republic and Austria to the west, Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east and Hungary to the south...

has been influenced both by the county's native Slovak

Slovaks

The Slovaks, Slovak people, or Slovakians are a West Slavic people that primarily inhabit Slovakia and speak the Slovak language, which is closely related to the Czech language.Most Slovaks today live within the borders of the independent Slovakia...

peoples and the music of neighbouring regions. Whilst there are traces of pre-historic musical instruments, the country has a rich heritage of folk music

Folk music

Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....

and mediaeval liturgical

Liturgy

Liturgy is either the customary public worship done by a specific religious group, according to its particular traditions or a more precise term that distinguishes between those religious groups who believe their ritual requires the "people" to do the "work" of responding to the priest, and those...

music, and from the 18th century onwards, in particular, musical life was influenced by that of Austria-Hungary

Austria-Hungary

Austria-Hungary , more formally known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen, was a constitutional monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in...

. In the 19th century composers such as Jan Levoslav Bella

Ján Levoslav Bella

Ján Levoslav Bella was a Slovak composer, conductor and music teacher, who wrote in the spirit of the Nationalist Romantic movement of the 19th century.- Life :Bella was raised in a Roman Catholic family...

began to write romantic music

Romantic music

Romantic music or music in the Romantic Period is a musicological and artistic term referring to a particular period, theory, compositional practice, and canon in Western music history, from 1810 to 1900....

with a Slovak character. In the twentieth century there were a number of composers who identified with Slovak culture. After the fall of communism in 1989–90 the country also began to develop its own popular music

Popular music

Popular music belongs to any of a number of musical genres "having wide appeal" and is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. It stands in contrast to both art music and traditional music, which are typically disseminated academically or orally to smaller, local...

scene in Western style.

History of music in Slovakia

The term Slovak music is sightly confusing; many peoples lived over the ages in the territory now represented by the state of Slovakia, and the history of the region's music is therefore not merely the history of music of the Slovaks.

Earliest times

Bone

Bones are rigid organs that constitute part of the endoskeleton of vertebrates. They support, and protect the various organs of the body, produce red and white blood cells and store minerals. Bone tissue is a type of dense connective tissue...

pipe

Pipe (instrument)

Pipe describes a number of musical instruments, historically referring to perforated wind instruments. The word is an onomatopoeia, and comes from the tone which can resemble that of a bird chirping.-Folk pipe:...

s dating from the Early Bronze Age (about 3000 BC) have been found in the Nitra

Nitra

Nitra is a city in western Slovakia, situated at the foot of Zobor Mountain in the valley of the river Nitra. With a population of about 83,572, it is the fifth largest city in Slovakia. Nitra is also one of the oldest cities in Slovakia and the country's earliest political and cultural center...

region, testifying to the early role of music in the Celt

Celt

The Celts were a diverse group of tribal societies in Iron Age and Roman-era Europe who spoke Celtic languages.The earliest archaeological culture commonly accepted as Celtic, or rather Proto-Celtic, was the central European Hallstatt culture , named for the rich grave finds in Hallstatt, Austria....

ic 'Nitra Culture'. Such instruments were produced continuously, albeit with more sophistication, up to the medieaval period. Other early instruments found include drum

Drum

The drum is a member of the percussion group of musical instruments, which is technically classified as the membranophones. Drums consist of at least one membrane, called a drumhead or drum skin, that is stretched over a shell and struck, either directly with the player's hands, or with a...

s dating back to the Palaeolithic period, iron

Iron

Iron is a chemical element with the symbol Fe and atomic number 26. It is a metal in the first transition series. It is the most common element forming the planet Earth as a whole, forming much of Earth's outer and inner core. It is the fourth most common element in the Earth's crust...

and bronze

Bronze

Bronze is a metal alloy consisting primarily of copper, usually with tin as the main additive. It is hard and brittle, and it was particularly significant in antiquity, so much so that the Bronze Age was named after the metal...

bell

Bell (instrument)

A bell is a simple sound-making device. The bell is a percussion instrument and an idiophone. Its form is usually a hollow, cup-shaped object, which resonates upon being struck...

s from the 3rd or 4th century AD. Other folk instruments of the region whose early development must remain largely conjectural include the fujara

Fujara

The fujara originated in central Slovakia as a large sophisticated folk shepherd's fipple flute of unique design. It is technically a contrabass instrument in the tabor pipe class....

and the Slovak versions of bagpipes

Bagpipes

Bagpipes are a class of musical instrument, aerophones, using enclosed reeds fed from a constant reservoir of air in the form of a bag. Though the Scottish Great Highland Bagpipe and Irish uilleann pipes have the greatest international visibility, bagpipes of many different types come from...

and the jaw harp. They certainly existed in the 15th century.

The mediaeval period

From the mediaeval period onwards writers identify a number of principal streams of music in Slovakia. The principal classifications include church music, folk music, and instrumental music heard in towns and courts. Each of these has of course numerous subsidiary classifications.

Some of the oldest recorded forms of music in Slovakia are liturgical

Liturgy

song (in Old Slavonic

Old Slavonic

Old Slavonic may refer to:*Old Church Slavonic language*Common Slavonic language...

) from the time of Great Moravia

Great Moravia

Great Moravia was a Slavic state that existed in Central Europe and lasted for nearly seventy years in the 9th century whose creators were the ancestors of the Czechs and Slovaks. It was a vassal state of the Germanic Frankish kingdom and paid an annual tribute to it. There is some controversy as...

n empire (9th century), from which developed much of the sacred music of later centuries. Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

plainsong

Plainsong

Plainsong is a body of chants used in the liturgies of the Catholic Church. Though the Eastern Orthodox churches and the Catholic Church did not split until long after the origin of plainchant, Byzantine chants are generally not classified as plainsong.Plainsong is monophonic, consisting of a...

was also widespread in the region at this early period, especially after the incororation of Slovakia into the Kingdom of Hungary

Hungary

Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...

in 1218. Early codices

Codex

A codex is a book in the format used for modern books, with multiple quires or gatherings typically bound together and given a cover.Developed by the Romans from wooden writing tablets, its gradual replacement...

include the 'Nitra Gospels' of c.1100, and the 'Pray codex' (c. 1195). From the 15th to the 17rh centuries, polyphony

Polyphony

In music, polyphony is a texture consisting of two or more independent melodic voices, as opposed to music with just one voice or music with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords ....

was practised and developed at many urban centres, including Bratislava

Bratislava

Bratislava is the capital of Slovakia and, with a population of about 431,000, also the country's largest city. Bratislava is in southwestern Slovakia on both banks of the Danube River. Bordering Austria and Hungary, it is the only national capital that borders two independent countries.Bratislava...

, Bardejov

Bardejov

Bardejov is a town in North-Eastern Slovakia. It is situated in the Šariš region and has about 33,000 inhabitants. The spa town, mentioned for the first time in 1241, exhibits numerous cultural monuments in its completely intact medieval town center...

, Levoča

Levoca

Levoča is a town in the Spiš region of eastern Slovakia with a population of 14,600. The town has a historic center with a well preserved town wall, a Renaissance church with the highest wooden altar in Europe, carved by Master Paul of Levoča, and many other Renaissance buildings.On 28 June 2009,...

and Kežmarok

Kežmarok

Kežmarok is a town in the Spiš region of eastern Slovakia , on the Poprad River.-History:...

.

In 1526 when Slovakia became part of the empire of the Habsburg

Habsburg

The House of Habsburg , also found as Hapsburg, and also known as House of Austria is one of the most important royal houses of Europe and is best known for being an origin of all of the formally elected Holy Roman Emperors between 1438 and 1740, as well as rulers of the Austrian Empire and...

s, Bratislava became a coronation city, and this was to greatly influence the development of formal music in the country's towns. In the countryside, folk music developed in a more insular manner in the country's various regions.

Seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

As elsewhere in Europe, the Church and the aristocracy became the main patrons of formal music during this period. Church composers were active throughout the country; e.g., in the polyphonic tradition, Andreas Neoman who worked at Bardejov

Bardejov

and elsewhere in the early 17th century, Ján Šimbracký (d. 1657), organist

Organ (music)

The organ , is a keyboard instrument of one or more divisions, each played with its own keyboard operated either with the hands or with the feet. The organ is a relatively old musical instrument in the Western musical tradition, dating from the time of Ctesibius of Alexandria who is credited with...

at the Protestant church in Spišské Podhradie

Spišské Podhradie

Spišské Podhradie is a town in Spiš in the Prešov Region of Slovakia. Its population is 3,826.Spišské Podhradie is situated at the foot of the hill of Spiš Castle. It had a Zipser German settlement, with its own church and priest, in 1174...

, and Samuel Marckfelner (1621–1674), organist at Levoča

Levoca

. In the larger towns, especially in Bratislava, the influence of the Italian concertante style was felt, composers in this vein including Samuel Capricornus (1628–1665) (who eventually became kapellmeister

Kapellmeister

Kapellmeister is a German word designating a person in charge of music-making. The word is a compound, consisting of the roots Kapelle and Meister . The words Kapelle and Meister derive from the Latin: capella and magister...

for a prince of Stuttgart

Stuttgart

Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....

), his successor at the Protestant church in Breatislava, Johann Kusser

Johann Kusser

Johann Sigismund Kusser or Cousser was a German composer who settled in Ireland.-Life:...

(1626–1696).

By the eighteenth century, Catholic musicians began to take the musical lead over their Protestant colleagues. A highly rated composer was František Xaver Budinský (1676–1727), who appears to have been a Jesuit lay brother and worked in Trnava

Trnava

Trnava is a city in western Slovakia, 47 km to the north-east of Bratislava, on the Trnávka river. It is the capital of a kraj and of an okres . It was the seat of a Roman Catholic archbishopric . The city has a historic center...

, Prešov

Prešov

Prešov Historically, the city has been known in German as Eperies , Eperjes in Hungarian, Fragopolis in Latin, Preszów in Polish, Peryeshis in Romany, Пряшев in Russian and Пряшів in Rusyn and Ukrainian.-Characteristics:The city is a showcase of Baroque, Rococo and Gothic...

, Košice

Košice

Košice is a city in eastern Slovakia. It is situated on the river Hornád at the eastern reaches of the Slovak Ore Mountains, near the border with Hungary...

, Trenčín

Trencín

Trenčín is a city in western Slovakia of the central Váh River valley near the Czech border, around from Bratislava. It has a population of more than 56,000, which makes it the ninth largest municipality of the country and is the seat of the Trenčín Region and the Trenčín District...

, and elsewhere in Slovakia. His compositions include three symphonies, the earliest known to have been written in Slovakia.

Nineteenth century

In the first half of the 19th century, a national musical tradition began to develop around Slovakia’s impressive folk heritage. Modern Slovak music drew from both classical and folk styles. A key figure who began this fusion is Ján Levoslav Bella

Ján Levoslav Bella

, born in Liptovský Mikuláš

Liptovský Mikuláš

Liptovský Mikuláš is a town in northern Slovakia, on the Váh River. It lies in the Liptov region, in Liptov Basin near the Low Tatra and Tatra mountains...

(1843–1936), a contemporary of Antonín Dvořák

Antonín Dvorák

Antonín Leopold Dvořák was a Czech composer of late Romantic music, who employed the idioms of the folk music of Moravia and his native Bohemia. Dvořák’s own style is sometimes called "romantic-classicist synthesis". His works include symphonic, choral and chamber music, concerti, operas and many...

and Leoš Janáček

Leoš Janácek

Leoš Janáček was a Czech composer, musical theorist, folklorist, publicist and teacher. He was inspired by Moravian and all Slavic folk music to create an original, modern musical style. Until 1895 he devoted himself mainly to folkloristic research and his early musical output was influenced by...

. Slovak modes and melodies can be heard clearly in his third string quartet

String quartet

A string quartet is a musical ensemble of four string players – usually two violin players, a violist and a cellist – or a piece written to be performed by such a group...

, as well as in many of his other works. He also wrote the first opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

to be performed in Slovak, Kováč Wieland (Wieland the Smith), written in German in 1880-1890, but premiered in Slovak in Bratislava in 1926.

Modern times

Well-known works from the 20th century include the compositions of Eugen Suchoň

Eugen Suchon

Eugen Suchoň was one of the greatest Slovak composers of the 20th century.-Early life:...

, Alexander Moyzes

Alexander Moyzes

Alexander Moyzes , was a Slovak 20th century neoromantic composer.-Biography:Moyzes was born into a musical family in 1906 at Kláštor pod Znievom in present Slovakia. His father was the composer and educator Mikuláš Moyzes...

, Alexander Albrecht

Alexander Albrecht

Alexander Albrecht was a composer, an important exponent of the Slovak music in the first half of the 20th century.- Biography :...

and the operas of Ján Cikker

Ján Cikker

Ján Cikker was a Slovak composer, a leading exponent of modern Slovak classical music. He was awarded the title National Artist in Slovakia, the Herder Prize and the UNESCO Prize .-Life:...

Musical ensembles and festivals

Amongst the most significant contemporary orchestral ensembles are the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra

Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra

The Slovenská filharmónia is a symphony orchestra in Bratislava, Slovakia.Founded in 1949, the orchestra has resided since the 1950s in the Baroque era Reduta Bratislava concert hall constructed in 1773...

of Bratislava, the State Philharmonic Orchestra of Kosice, the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra

Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra

The Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra is a symphony orchestra based in Bratislava, Slovakia....

, the Slovak Chamber Orchestra (known as the Warchalovci after their founder Bohdan Warchal

Bohdan Warchal

Bohdan Warchal was a Slovak violinist, a member of the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra and founder, chief conductor and soloist of the Slovak Chamber Orchestra....

), and the chamber orchestra Capella Istropolitana

Capella Istropolitana

The Cappella Istropolitana, sometimes spelt Capella Istropolitana, is a Slovakian chamber orchestra based in Bratislava, Slovakia.The orchestra was formed in 1983, and in 1991 the Bratislava City council appointed the orchestra as the Chamber Orchestra of the City of Bratislava.- External links :**...

. There are opera companies in Bratislava, Košice and Banská Bystrica

Banská Bystrica

Banská Bystrica is a key city in central Slovakia located on the Hron River in a long and wide valley encircled by the mountain chains of the Low Tatras, the Veľká Fatra, and the Kremnica Mountains. With 81,281 inhabitants, Banská Bystrica is the sixth most populous municipality in Slovakia...

. Music festivals include the annual Bratislava Music Festival
Bratislava Music Festival
The Bratislava Music Festival is an international festival of classical music that takes place annually in the city of Bratislava, Slovakia. It is a major Slovak musical event...

(Bratislavské hudobné slávnosti), Indian Summer in Levoča
Levoca
Levoča is a town in the Spiš region of eastern Slovakia with a population of 14,600. The town has a historic center with a well preserved town wall, a Renaissance church with the highest wooden altar in Europe, carved by Master Paul of Levoča, and many other Renaissance buildings.On 28 June 2009,...

(Levočské babie leto), Festival of Piešťany
Pieštany
Piešťany is a town in Slovakia. It is located in the western part of the country within the Trnava Region and is the seat of its own district. It is the biggest and best known spa town in Slovakia and has around 30,000 inhabitants.-History:...

(Piešťanský festival), one of longest established festivals, dating from 1955, and many others.

External links

Audio clips: Traditional music of Slovakia. Musée d'Ethnographie de Genève. Accessed November 25, 2010.

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