Music in fifteenth-century Bohemia : between reform and identity building
"This volume seeks to liberate the musical culture of 15th-century Bohemia from the 19th- and 20th-century nationalist agenda and reassess its position in European music history. What was the musical culture like in a country in Central Europe that in the fifteenth century tried to restore the values of the early church, but earned the label 'heretical' and found itself isolated, needing to defend its identity politically, militarily, and intellectually? Bohemian theologians tried to return to the "roots" by promoting communion under both species and encouraging lay participation in worship by using vernacular language. The musical sources seem to go against the European trend of transmitting early-modern polyphony. In Bohemia late medieval chant and sacred songs were promoted, but contemporary polyphonic music was reflected as well. The phenomena occurring in fifteenth-century Bohemia were fully developed during the European Reformation. This book contains chapters on liturgy and song in fifteenth-century Bohemia, and the influence of the Hussite movement, with one chapter demonstrating how a fifteenth-century song was involved in the revival of Czech culture in the nineteenth century. The chapters concentrate on hitherto neglected topics as well as topics that were used to highlight the distinctiveness and long continuity of Czech culture in the modern historiography, freeing it from nationalistically tinged narratives and the marginalization caused by their apparent distance from the contemporary Western music, illustrating how fifteenth-century Czech culture dealt with the dichotomy of reform and identity. Edited by Hana Vlhová-Wörner and Jan Ciglbauer. Contributors: Eliška Baťová, Jan Ciglbauer, Rhianydd Hallas, Lenka Hlávková, Viktor Velek, and Hana Vlhová-Wörner"-- Provided by publisher
eBook, English, 2025
University of Rochester Press ; Boydell and Brewer, Rochester, Suffolk, 2025