Ján Levoslav Bella is arguably the most prominent figure of the 19^th century Slovak music. His aesthetic thoughts on music subsume two main topics: the reform of church music and the problem of so-called national music. Both of them belong to the most discussed topics in the 19^th century music in Central Europe. Together with his study for Matica slovenská, the basic source of understanding of Bella’s views are his articles that appeared in various contemporary periodicals in the 1860s and 1870s.

Since Bella’s thoughts on the reform of church music have met with much less attention in the secondary literature up to now than his thoughts regarding national music, one of the goals of this study is to bring some new information with respect to this aspect of Bella’s as a publicist and composer based on a broader primary source research. For a better understanding of the context in which Bella formulated his ideas on the reform of church music, in one of the chapters we focus on outlining the ideals of the movement and its inspirational background.

The same effort at outlining a broader context is made with regard to Bella’s better-known articles presenting his ideas on national music. Again we find this context useful for summarizing Bella’s inspirational sources and a tentative problematizing of their existing interpretation. In the appendix we bring two articles and journalistic contributions of Bella’s not mentioned in the available secondary literature up to now.

This study is not meant to be a synthetic work aiming at bringing a conclusive list of Bella’s articles and journalistic contributions and their evaluation. Its main goal is rather to fill in the blank space with regard to understanding this important figure of Slovak music and culture and serve as a possible inspiration for further research and study of Bella’s legacy.

The contribution presents new appearances of an open work in the current compositional and improvisation practice. Its main subject is the transformation of the roles of performer and listener. The existence of an author is observed through the prism of composition and improvisation relations embodied in one performer. The essence of these relations is revealed in the nascence of a work which emerges during a concert performance or a studio recording, while its “final” appearance needn’t be necessarily the “ultimate” and “single” version of the work.

The following analytical probe into the video opera An Eye for an Eye presents particular compositional-performing and improvisation principles on the level of specific musical material.

The study deals with the complex analysis of Lover’s Leap, the first out of seven parts of the piece Supper’s Ready, composed and performed by Genesis music group. The analysis encompasses broader aspects, like the background of its origination, genre and lyrics content, as well as a more concentrated view on purely musical aspects, like tectonics, tonality, harmony, melody, rhythm, instrumentation and other relevant components, which should appear in every complex analysis.