Music perception as a process of perception and learning of music may be explained from psychological, sociological and aesthetical point of view. It concerns not only subjective presuppositions and readiness of the percipients-listeners, but also their relation to social ambience and period taste. Receptive attitudes range from passive approach to music to active demonstrations, from positive acceptation to conscious rejection. The perception research presumes interdisciplinary background; besides systematic musicological disciplines the consciousness of historical associations is essential. An acceptation of contemporary composers’ creation represents in itself a specific problem in the research – in the sphere of musical as well as verbal interpretation.

Development of the Slovak music in the second half of the 20th century may be understood on the background of a relation of two cultural-genetic iniciatives – a selfidentificational and acculturative endeavour. A method of confirmation of national values through the consciousness of a tradition and continuity cannot appear as a sufficient one without cognition of values and acquirement of impulses from surrounding music-creative background. In the passed half-century two invigorating acculturative waves emerged in the Slovak music, when the perception of 20th century music was not restricted to individual cases, but it was comprehended as an organic part of domestic music-cultural needs for the change and expansion of the view. The contribution focuses on the genesis of the first wave and its inner differentiation, bound to the entrance of the generation of the Slovak music vanguard in the 1960s, reminding the views of a composer and publicist Oto Ferenczy.

The contribution focuses on a genesis, analysis and consequences of Zhdanov’s postulates of so-called socialist realism, which were dogmatically realized in the developmental and ideological ambience of the Czech music historiography in the 1950s. An anthology Socialist Realism and Music was published in 2004, Mikuláš Bek, Geoffrey Chew and Petr Macek (Eds.), Colloquia Musicologica Brunensia XXXVI (2001), Prague 2004, Koniasch Latin Press. It is devoted to socialist realism in music presenting the contributions of the researchers from Egham, Brno, Mannheim, Leipzig, Beograd, Uppsala, Toronto, Ústí o/Labe, Athens, Bristol, Hong Kong, Budapest, Ljubljana, Paris, Halle o/Sala, Chemnitz, Berlin, Joensuu, San Marco, Prague and Regensburg (ordered according to the content and order of the articles in the anthology). The first edition of the issue has 272 pages, B5 and it is a result of the cooperation of the publishing house Koniasch Latin Press with the Institute of Musicology of the Philosophical Faculty of the Masaryk University in Brno; it is devoted to Jiří Fukač in memoriam.

The contribution draws some similarities and distinctiveness between Slovak and foreign cultural surroundings in the sphere of perception of currentness and innovation in contemporary music. It focuses on socio-cultural and institutional context (infrastructure) as well as questions of the creation itself (aesthetics). It concerns the global changes in the paradigm of a creation and functioning of contemporary music in the latest two decades, distinctive differences between the past and the present practices and historical background of the present creation. The key notion is “innovative focuses”, demarcated geographically, culturally or mentally, representing in themselves imaginary nodes of current creativity (the vanguard) bound to a net, and – differently from the past – unfixed to a particular genre or form context. A conclusion presents several examples of current Slovak music poetics.

We use a notion “postmodern” not only when characterizing particular branches of artistic practice in the second half of the 20th century; it has its significance also for deeper sociological explorations of culture in total. Changes in the present music culture connected with music perception are bound to changes of social functions and intensification of contrasts. The wideness of informational channels, acceleration and massiveness of their influence affected globalization and uniformity of music culture, accompanied by an enfeeblement of consciousness of values. Consumerist way of life leads to a regression of perception, to non-selectivity and comfort at auditive contacts with music. High pressure of commercial musical genres, sucking up to low auditive taste not only decreases sensitivity to art, but it can affect human instincts and behaviour degradingly.

An abrupt human as well as scientific development of a Slovak musicologist Peter Faltin grew on journalistic and organizational assertion of contemporary music in the Slovak cultural surroundings in the 1960s. After forced emmigration Faltin succeeded to break through pretentious musicological conditions in Germany. He began to specialize on searching for the meaning of music, partly empirically by the way of experimental music psychology and partly theoretically, through philosophical and semiotic arguments. Impulses from the explorations of Hamburg school led by H. P. Reinecke and knowledge from L. Wittgenstein’s philosophical work were creatively reflected in Faltin’s monography Phänomenologie der musikalischen Form.

A cooperation of the Slovak composer Ján Cikker with a German musicologist Fritz Oeser, working in a publishing house Alkor in Kassel pertains to inspirations accompanying the culmination of the composer’s creative development. Their correspondence from the turn of the 1950s and 1960s documents an extent to which Cikker accepted Oeser’s recommendations in the interest of finishing a definitive version of the opera Resurrection, especially from the viewpoint of dramaturgical completion of a libretto and a relation between music and action. Recently available sources confirm, that an experienced theatrical creator Oeser discussed with Cikker plans for other opera projects, too – unrealized drama Meteor (after the Slovak playwright Peter Karvaš) and finally the fifth Cikker’s opera The Game of Love and Death by Romain Rolland. After 1968 the contact of both musicians presumably ended.

The article stresses an importance of a comprehension of different ways of perception in connection with several grades of listening. The music event is created by a set of structures inserted by a composer and by a performer; relations between them are explained by a recipient. We hear different relations by a perfunctory (e. g. influenced by a convention) listening than by an attentive and relaxed listening. There is a difference between a concentrated and an attentive listening. The concentrated listening is a selective one. Concentrated we cannot perceive abundance of simultaneously proceeding processes. We lift the piece (or its particular processes) out of the context of reality, on which we participate. By an attentive listening we enter the unknown, we cross our horizon. It is important to listen to the processes of the music events like for the first time, with an astonishment, curiousness and in a relaxed expectation. It is a new comprehension of a reality surrounding us. This reality is intensified by a creativity of all participating processes, whether compositional, performing or recipient ones. The writer of the contribution perceives the musical reality as vividly pervaded by extramusical reality. His endeavour is to accomplish such a pervasion both in his own compositional practice and by performing participation in ensembles Požoň sentimentál, Vapori del Cuore and others.

A Czech composer Vítězslav Novák penetrated European receptive surroundings in the first decades of the 20th century as a modern and informed musician. After 1918 his work and importance was restricted purely to Czech and Slovak music world. In Bohemia the spreading of Novák’s music competed with Josef Suk’s work and namely with Leoš Janáček’s one. Due to a study of several Slovak composers in the Novák’s class his creative aesthetical system based on romanticizing foundations might have affected inspirationally a formation of a professional compositional school in Slovakia. After 1945 in both national cultures a markedly falling line of interest in Novák’s music may be observed, which could not be stopped even by an initiative of a Novák’s Society, founded in 1980.

An opera director of the middle generation Miloš Wasserbauer coming from Brno was active in the Opera of the Slovak National Theatre in the period 1953–1960. It was his merit, that a tradition of production of the Leoš Janáček’s works was significantly revived in Bratislava. Wasserbauser’s productions of Její pastorkyně [Her Fosterdaughter (Jenůfa)] and Příhody lišky Bystroušky [The Adventures of the Vixen Bystrouška] were positively acclaimed by a period critique and worked as an impetus for remembrance of progressive values of Janáček’s music and usefulness of their penetration into the Slovak receptive ambience. For the director’s conception a precise guidance of actors was typical; it concentrated on symbolical expression of humanistic ideas in both operas. Thus it meritoriously eliminated a schematic period method of directorial realism. In accord with then excellent singers’ background of the Bratislava Opera House the Wasserbauer’s interpretation of Janáček was ingraved among exceptional cultural deeds of the 1950s.

The contribution is based on an assumption that some regularities occur in processes influencing the composers’ creation through outer determinants. There may be direct or indirect influences there; an inducement being the demands of the era, personal and culturally conditioned factors or an exchange of information in the form of Sheldrake morphic fields and resonances. These ways of thinking lean on a methodology of a system theory, as well as on regularities explored by synergetics. A different kind of explanation may be offered by a theory of transfer of cultural and mental informational units, called mems. These regularities may be observed also in an evolution of the Slovak music or of music in Slovakia since historical times till now.

After his emmigration (1956) to West Europe a Hungarian composer György Ligeti significantly contributed to compositional richness of the world contemporary music by his creative originality. He demonstrated as early as in the early days of his development in Hungary that even in unfavourable cultural and social surroundings authentic music may be created, marked by a perceptive respect to great personalities of the 20^th century European music as well as by an ability to reevaluate their message. Namely the output of Béla Bartók was an inspiration for Ligeti – 14 piano bagatelles served as a model for Ligeti’s cycle Musica ricercata. Through an analysis of particular movements of the cycle a genesis of several invariables of the ripe composer’s style may be identified – reduction of the devices, nonacademical rationality of compositional process, rhythmical ostinato, fondness for humour.

Initial development of the musical historiography in Slovakia is connected with the Department of Musicology of the Philosophical Faculty of the Comenius University in Bratislava. Its historically oriented graduates and later also graduates of other universities were offered a possibility to work at the Department of Music Manuscripts of the Matica Slovenská in Martin and at the Music Department of the Slovak National Museum Historical Museum in Bratislava. Later they were joined by other museum workplaces in Trnava and Banská Bystrica. The research strategy shifted since the 1960s from the broad-spectral historical views to specialized themes and historical periods. This enabled the Slovak musical historiography to pass from analysis to synthesis and from mapping the national musical past to its classification and integration into the European cultural contexts.

A development of the Slovak pop and jazz music after 1945 was marked by isolation from the world events, lack of regular information, of sound media and literature needed. In the 1980s after the entrance of a new generation sporadic appearances of Slovak pop-musicians and jazzmen occured on Czech and foreign stages or performances of foreign musicians in Slovakia. Their interest in permanent live confrontation of the Slovak and foreign music was rewarded only after 1989. Then the conditions for more regular and purposive exchange of information were formed and a character of reception was modified in a postmodern aesthetic surroundings. Besides medial and market offer participation of personalities and bands from abroad in domestic events represented a specific informational level for the Slovak scene.

The article focuses on a reflection of 20^th century music in the textbooks of music education for elementary schools in Slovakia after 1948. On the basis of an analysis of the subject’s curriculum in the social and cultural context from the 1950s to 1980s we identified three historically conditioned determinants, influencing most noticeably the perception of music after 1948 in the milieu of school education:

1. A strong ideological connection of the sphere of education with the state constitution was detected, which had influenced the character of educational process, its content and methodical and organizational aspects (the content of the curriculum, its structure, formulation of educational aims and tasks etc.)
2. The existent period conditions and character of pedagogical disciplines, in the truest sense of the word of the musical-pedagogical knowledge affected restrictively education and competence of teachers, their choice and usage of methods and organizational forms of work.
3. Intricacy of evolution of musical creation in the examined period and unreadiness to its evaluation aroused problems in the context of musical pedagogics, related especially to didactic principles of progression and adequateness of explanation.

Concluding we formulate a hypothesis on a relation between qualities of information acquired at school and genuine interest in music.

A share of the 20^th century music in professional education of musicians on the Bratislava Faculty of Music may be investigated on several perceptive levels: from the synopses of educational plans through themes of the students’ theses to orientation of compositional and performing activities of students. Each one of these levels reveals an increased interest in contemporary Slovak as well as foreign music during the recent 15 years. This interest is most markedly apparent in a concert activity to which a specialized student festival Orfeus (founded in 2000) contributed, too. Even the results of the questionnaire among the students demonstrated their positive relation to contemporary music alongside with their awareness of limits of its wider audience reception.

The training of future music teachers at the Prešov University collides with insufficient background of students in the field of Slovak as well as European 20^th century music. The University study enables them to fill the void not only by a study of relevant literature and listening to music; they have an opportunity to acquire an emotionally receptive relation to the music by way of their personal participation in artistic ensembles at school.

Comparing the level of music education at Slovak schools with the situation in Germany and Austria we notice that in Slovakia the subject is continuously emasculated. Despite some initiatives older concepts of education focused on schemes of verbal information and offering only modest space for more pretentious models persist. In German speaking countries the school music education is naturally connected with new trends in music pedagogics as a scientific discipline and it is based on an elaborated structure of music educational institutes. The range of themes in the subject of music education is not centrally controlled and share of 20^th century music is increasing proportionally to the pupils’ age.

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