Dr. Richard Rybarič, CSc. (February 19, 1930 – November 30, 1989) belonged to a strong generation of the first musicologists-graduates from the Faculty of Philosophy of the Comenius University in Bratislava after World War II. He soon crystallized as a leading light among the historians. In the 1950s he began as a musical medievalist at the Institute of Musicology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences; he wrote relevant chapters of the first academic Dejiny hudby na Slovensku (History of Music in Slovakia), published in 1957. In the 1950s and 1960s Rybarič intensely devoted himself to a research of important sources to musical history in Slovakia (or in Hungary) since the Middle Ages till the 18^th century (Bratislava Notated Missal (Missale notatum Posoniense), Spiš Gradual of Juraj from Kežmarok, works of Johannes Schimbraczky (today known as Ján Šimrák – the author’s comment) and of Samuel Capricornus etc.). He published numerous fundamental studies concerning these subjects. In a co-operation with a Hungarian historian Janka Szendrei he prepared a source edition of the Missale Notatum Strigoniense ante 1341 in Posonio (1982) in a common Hungarian-Slovak series “Musicalia Danubiana”, establishing of which he assisted substantially; later he worked on source editions of the outputs of Samuel Capricornus and Johannes Schimbraczky, etc. In the 1960’s Richard Rybarič intensively devoted himself to conceptual questions of the Slovak musical historiography and in the period 1958–1966 he published a number of articles of an essential significance for the subject namely in the review Slovenská hudba (Slovak Music), influencing the next development of the Slovak musical historiography. In this second period of his research and publishing Rybarič concentrated on two basic points: 1/ on a deepening and enlargement of knowledge of Slovak musical history sources, 2/ on a solution of conceptual questions. Their essence resided in an integration of the Slovak musical history into the European context, in a solution of conceptual questions of “history in Hungary” and “history in Slovakia” as well as culturological aspects of musical history (focusing attention not only on music creation, still possessing a central place in a musical history, but also on musical life, conditions of existence of music etc.). Since the 1970s Rybarič crucially contributed to a new project Dejiny hudobnej kultúry na Slovensku (History of Music in Slovakia) and he personally prepared its first volume (Middle Ages, Renaissance, Baroque), published in 1984. In his third period (since the late 1970s) Rybarič published also other synthetical works, namely a handbook of musical paleography conceived in modern trends Vývoj európskeho notopisu (Development of a European Score,1982), which summarized his long-time teaching on the subject. The third one of his monographies Hudobná historiografia (Musical Historiography, 1994) was published only posthumously. Richard Rybarič stressed an international co-operation strongly, actually he iniciated a modern research on Capricornus, pursuing in Germany, France and USA so far and he published numerous studies at home as well as abroad, entries in encyclopedias (MGG, The New Grove etc.).

A development of a musical-historical research in Slovakia was preconditioned by its professionalization, concerning the Slovak musicology as a whole. Richard Rybarič played an extremely active role in establishing of professional Slovak musical historiography. The central idea of his scientific legacy is Slovak music forming an integral component of European, namely West-European and Middle-European musical eruditon. Music in Slovakia or Slovak music is one organic whole with its own historical continuity and its own spiritual and ethical dimension. Rybarič comprehended musical historiography as a synthetic discipline, a general view on Slovak and European musical history. Rybarič belonged to a generation of Slovak musicologists, who considerably contributed to a formation of professional musicology in Slovakia. For this two preconditions were fulfilled at the early 1950s: a regular tuition of musicology at Faculty of Philosophy of the Comenius University started, and a research on a musicological institute began. Although the latter one had originated already in 1943 in the Slovak Academy of Sciences and Arts, however, the genuine research work commenced only in 1951.

Unfortunately, both Seminar for Musicology of the PhFCU and Institute of Musicology of the SAS were gradually losing their independence and competence and they were integrated into ideologically and politically controlled aesthetic and art institutions. As the religious and church music formed a substantial part of the Slovak musical history, musicological work, namely musical-historical work was tolerated at most.

In 1957 the first synthetical history of music in Slovakia was published. Rybarič wrote the chapters on medieval music; thus his musicological career began. Several decades later he also finished it by a synthetical musical history: by the first volume of the Dejiny hudobnej kultúry na Slovensku (History of Music in Slovakia), in which he elaborated the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Baroque periods.

Richard Rybarič substantially contributed to an establishment of basic preconditions of source-critical research. It resulted in a number of newly discovered sources, in their critical analysis and accessibility in editions as well as in an interest of the next generation of musical historians in research in the earlier history of music in Slovakia.

Ethnomusicological and musico-historical research at the renewed Institute of Musicology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences began to evolve only after the entrance of a new generation of graduates from the musicology mostly from the Faculty of Philosophy of the Comenius University in Bratislava. They followed up with the traditions of the notable personalities from the University: Dobroslav Orel, Konštantín Hudec and namely Jozef Kresánek. Musico-historical research in that period was hampered also by the fact that most of sources were scattered on the whole territory of Slovakia. Following the closure of monasteries the sources were handled with in a very uncivilized manner and a great part of monuments lacked care and evidence. The research was also hindered by an unfavourable position of a musical historiography as a research discipline at the Musicological Institute of the SAS itself. It took some time, till the reconnaissance, registering, stowing were distinguished from scientific processing of the sources. To a great extent it was helped by a foundation of a specialized institute at the Slovak National Museum, today called Musical Museum of the SNM, as well as a boost of musico-historical activity of the Matica Slovenská.

Richard Rybarič intended to elaborate the history of music in Slovakia since the first preserved sources till the early 20^th century. From such a demanding plan he gradually omitted the themes elaborated by his colleagues-historians. The order of the themes reflected in his scientific studies was determined also by circumstances which accompanied his approaching of certain musical monuments: Dejiny banskobystrického hudobného spolku z 19. storočia (History of Musical Society in Banská Bystrica in the 19^th century, 1959), Sekvencie Spišského graduálu Juraja z Kežmarku (Sequences from the Spiš Gradual of Juraj from Kežmarok, 1960), Z problematiky oponickej zbierky piesní a tancov (On the Problems of Oponice Collection of Songs and Dances, 1966), Primitívna polyfónia a gregoriánsky chorál (Primitive Polyphony and Gregorian Chant, 1969), Ján Šimbracký – spišský polyfonik (Johannes Schimbraczky – a Spiš Polyphonist from the 17^th Century, 1973), Štefan Monetarius Creemnicianus a jeho hudobný traktát (Štefan Monetarius Creemnicianus and his Musical Treatise, 1974), Najstarší notovaný kódex na Slovensku (The Oldest Notated Hymnbook Preserved on the Territory of Slovakia, 1982), Slowakische Musikhistoriographie, Ergebnisse, Probleme, Perspektiven (Slovak Musical Historiography, Results, Problems and Perspectives, 1986). Rybarič was characteristic by his scientific realism; his methodology was syncretic and it followed the development of the European musical historiography.

A research concentrated on questions of sacred songs formed a part of the Slovak musical historiography since its beginnings. Zdenka Bokesová published a study in 1937, focusing on musical aspect of the Tranovský’s odes collection and of the Cithara Sanctorum hymnbook. In the late 1940s Konštantín Hudec wrote one chapter of a synthesis Development of the Music in Slovakia, in which he mostly devoted himself to a domestic sacred song. In this study he leaned on facts presented in the hymnological articles by Ján Mocko, Ján Ďurovič, Ján Vilikovský and others. In the 1950s a new generation of Slovak musicologists emerged, characteristic by their efforts to equal the European, mostly German musicology. In his article on a sacred song, which was part of a book Music in Slovakia in the 17^th Century Ladislav Burlas struggled for its integration into wider social and historical relations. Ladislav Mokrý was another researcher, who was interested in sacred song in his monograph on Pestrý zborník from the Levoča’s musical collection. European hymnology evolved then into a level, on which an international co-operation was indispensable, what led in 1959 to an origin of the international society Die Internationale Arbeitgemeinschaft für Hymnologie (IAH). Although some of the Slovak musicologists were in contact with this society (Richard Rybarič, Jana Terrayová), we missed a personality with a crystallized interest to research in the field of a sacred song. Such a research particularly in the recent three decades of the 20^th century was based on knowledge resulting from the elaboration of the sources. They are reflected in a synthesis of Richard Rybarič in the 1^st volume of the History of Music in Slovakia. The precondition for a further advance of the Slovak historiography in the field of the sacred song research is an active contact with IAH and a confrontation of methodological approaches with the developed German musical historiography and knowledge of the researchers from neighbouring countries.

At the outset of his career in the 1950s a Slovak musical historian Richard Rybarič critically touched also contemporary Slovak music. He was then subjected to oversimplified standards of the period journalism, what motivated him to restrict his research interest predominantly on the field of earlier history of music on the territory of Slovakia. After that he returned to contemporary music only occasionally. In a contribution determining a genesis of 20^th century composers’ interest in electrogenic material he found an origin of this interest in an acoustic ideal of Romantic music. While writing a synthetic study on the history of the Slovak music since the ancient times till present days, published in 1979, Rybarič had to assess a development of the 20^th century Slovak music, too. He profited from the then domestic literature, more or less critically evalu                                                                                                                          ated and he subordinated his statements to a simplified vocabulary of the 1970s. In the last years of his life he devoted to methodological problems of the musical historiography, what resulted in a more precise definition of a category of national music and its competence for a characterization of particular developmental periods, among them also the latest ones.

Doctrine of the affections is the most important aesthetic doctrine of the Baroque period. Doctrine of the affections substantially influenced instrumental music as well as instrumentation of vocal Baroque works. For J. S. Bach similarly to other Baroque composers viola da gamba was an inseparable component of his instrumentarium. He used it both in his instrumental and vocal music; in vocal works he utilized it in church as well as secular cantatas and in Passions.

Out of roughly 200 preserved church cantatas viola da gamba is used only in four, either as a solo instrument or in a combination with other instruments: Die Himmel erzählen die Ehre Gottes BWV 76, Gottes Zeit is die allerbeste Zeit (Actus tragicus) BWV 106, Tritt auf die Glaubensbahn BWV 152, Mein Herze schwimmt im Blut BWV 199. We may find it in two secular cantatas: Laß, Fürstin, laß noch einen Strahl BWV 198 and Zerreißet, zersprenget, zertrümmert die Gruft BWV 205.

The usage of viola da gamba in Bach cantatas is closely connected with their affections. The composer payed attention to a unity of text and music to a great extent. It is manifested in an architectonical structure of music numbers with viola da gamba, in a utilization of various rhetorical figures, in a choice of keys and harmony, but chiefly in usage of a basic affection of viola da gamba, affection of grief, and as a symbol of nobleness and dignity. In a combination with other instruments this acoustic ideal was extensively aesthetically effective. From the technical point of view viola da gamba may be replaced by a modern cello in cantatas, but it is not possible to substitute its affectual, symbolic and aesthetic effect on a listener. Instrumental spacing of viola da gamba in Bach cantatas fully respects its melodical-chordal substance; the composer presented himself as a great connoisseur of its instrumental possibilities.

The author is analyzing a cycle Il sogno di Poppea for soprano and piano, written by a notable Slovak composer Juraj Beneš (1940–2004) in 1984, inspired by an opera Il corronazione di Poppea by Claudio Monteverdi. She points out the ways by which the composer confronts the libretto, music and poetics of Monteverdi’s piece and she tries to explain a function or a meaning of this confrontation. Songs from this Beneš’s cycle are following the opera libretto, nevertheless, the composer combines freely lines of various characters aiming at immediate confrontation of both plots, which are consistently separated in Monteverdi’s opera: a plot of immoral love relation between a tyrant Nero and a courtesan Poppea and a plot of a tragical, occasionally even tragicomical line of stories of other opera characters, reflecting destructive results of the immoral relation. Quotations from Monteverdi’s music, usually set into estranged, often parodic contexts, play an important role in the cycle. Beneš secures a musical unity of the cycle by the structural basis formed by a three-tone pre-cell and a specific vocal diction of the cycle, evoking an effect of dreaming. On the basis of comparative music analyses and an analysis of a cycle dramaturgy the author concludes that one of the central Beneš’s ambitions was to point to a negative potential of the topic and an ambiguous effect of Monteverdi’s work. Finishing she claims that despite all the quotations and style resemblances Beneš’s piece possesses its own musical language; although the awareness of the relations between the song cycle and the opera helps to elucidate the composer’s intentions, it is not a necessary precondition for a comprehension of the cycle.

[The contribution is available only in Slovak language in the printed version of the revue.]

[The contribution is available only in Slovak language in the printed version of the revue.]

[The contribution is available only in Slovak language in the printed version of the revue.]