In this paper the author tries to excerpt from Peter Faltin’s published reviews, articles, reflections, discussion statements, and scholarly papers, which were published in the 1960s (before he went to exile in Germany) in Slovakia, the key motives, theses and principles. She sees their maturing, multidimensionality, capability of theoretical comprehension, and at the same time, authenticity of human utterance. The author finds their roots in the stimulating environment of Peter Faltin’s family and school (in Tatranská Lomnica and Kežmarok), drawing the information from authentic witnesses who were in touch with him and for whom the remembrance of him is vivid up to the present time. In an outline of Peter Faltin’s music-theoretical journey, the author tries to indicate the intricacy of the Slovak intellectual’s destiny, who, not yielding to the “demon of approval”, was able to escape from political pressure and restrictions, but in fact was impoverished by the absence of domestic cultural environment.

It has often been noted that composers active in the Federal Republic of Germany in the 1950s and 1960s consciously chose compositional techniques that were prohibited on the eastern side of the Iron Curtain. But it is not often noted that many of the most influential figures in the West concealed their aesthetic choices behind a historical ideology that was just as deterministic as historical materialism, the model of history in the East. Looking for a way to justify their preferred compositional materials, composers in West Germany turned to the supposedly objective dictate of progress, with all its world-historical import. As they explored new aspects of sound, they saw themselves realizing the design of world-history and continuing its forward push. They presented their historiography in theoretical writings on material and form. This essay outlines this historiography through explicit references to the writings of postwar composers active in West Germany. It also shows how their ideas about history followed from the theoretical essays of Theodor Adorno and were later preserved in the historical essays of Carl Dahlhaus.

In German Baroque the development of viola da gamba brought with itself several distinctive features, concerning not only the construction and tuning of the instrument, but also its usage in musical practice. The construction became stabilized in a unique shape of the instrument; the most interesting aspect being the existence of instruments without the bridge. In the time of early Baroque five-string instruments dominated. German consorts were four-part ensembles, and in their repertory the arrangements of songs and motets prevailed almost exclusively. Especially travelling artists from England excelled in virtuoso playing. In solo music literature trio sonatas featuring soprano voice, viola da gamba and basso continuo were the most popular, as we can see in the work of Dietrich Buxtehude, Johann Philipp Krieger or Georg Philipp Telemann. The most popular line-up is solo with basso continuo, typical for the music by Johannes Schenck, August Kühnel, Conrad Höffler and Ernst Christian Hesse. A special form used in the late German Baroque were sonatas for viola da gamba and obbligato harpsichord. In them the harpsichord almost lost its accompanying function and became the equal melodic partner of viola da gamba. These sonatas are almost exclusively polyphonic. Johann Sebastian Bach, Johann Matthäus Leffloth and Christoph Schaffrath belong to the top masters of this kind of sonatas. In the late German Baroque viola da gamba asserted itself as a concertante instrument accompanied by strings with basso continuo, or in double concertos, where often a recorder was the second instrument. However, pieces for solo viola da gamba were also very popular. The latest great master, German player on the viola da gamba was Karl Friedrich Abel, who spent most of his life in London.

St. Franz Xaver Piarist Church (originally a Jesuit one) and the parish Church of the Nativity of Mary the Virgin were important music centres in the city of Trenčín in the period of Classicism. The piarist monastic order should be credited with that, as it searched for gifted young students and brought them up as educated musicians in the grammar school.
The musician Tobiáš František Fučík, a student at the piarist grammar school in Trenčín, was not only a violinist at the church, but also an organist, music composer and copyist. As a composer he focused on church works, rarely also on secular compositions, mostly dedicated to piarist choir and orchestra. Passed by the hands of organists the copies of his works got also to nearby towns – Pruské, Dubnica nad Váhom, Ilava. Being a younger collaborator of Augustín Smehlík – the master of music, choirmaster and organist – he copied the compositions of European music masters. Ján Fučík – presumably the older brother of Tobiáš František Fučík – was also a student of the piarist grammar school in Trenčín. He played the violin at the parish church. He composed for piarists, and as a copyist he helped Tobiáš František Fučík and Augustín Smehlík. Later he married Mária Roth with whom they probably had a son named Ján, another student of piarist grammar school in Trenčín. The father of both, Tobiáš F. Fučík and Ján Fučík, was likely Martin Fucsik, a teacher [organ player] working in Cífer and in the subdivision Pác. Thanks to their close collaboration with Augustín Smehlík both brothers contributed to the music life in Trenčín in the Classical period. Their devoted work helped the performances of famous European compositions, which they accommodated to their conception as well as the choral and singing facilities, and created a model of music life in Trenčín which spread also in the Trenčín vicinity.
The submitted study brings the cumulation of all existing accessible information about both significant musicians Tobiáš František Fučík and Ján Fučík. It deals with the genesis of the surname “Fučík” and assembles various used forms of their signatures occurring in the miscellaneous sources. We attempted to gather the most extensive amount of their biographical data, various associations, family relationships. We posed various questions in the interest of gathering the maximum of valuable information, and searched for answers in the interest of gathering the maximum of valuable information, and searched for answers in the researches of music historians, in general history and genealogy, as well as in the results of our own research within the music source literature.
The study offers the comparison of manuscripts (typical shapes of signs) of Tobiáš František Fučík and Ján Fučík which should help the future research in designation of the writer or author of a document. We tried to solve the problem of the usage of typical orchestration, composition style, used music genres, typical ways of notation and the issues concerning its reading. We bring the information about some of the water marks found in their compositions, about the compositions of Tobiáš František Fučík and Ján Fučík with designated authorship, titles of the pieces, dating, various numbering, orchestration and the present state of preservation of the music monument. The aim of the study is to uncover the music culture of Považie, mostly near Považská Bystrica, in the period of Classicism.