Issue 4, Vol. 103 (2016)

This essay takes the term choreomusical as a starting place for discussion of attention to the study of music and dance relationships within ethnomusicology and ethnochoreology. Extending this neologism, choreomusicology has been proposed as a distinct disciplinary perspective on its own. Recent publications advocating for the usefulness of this joint research perspective have begun to establish this terminology more generally. Explicit studies of music-dance as a unitary phenomenon in performance, however, long predate this development, particularly in the closely connected fields of ethnomusicology and ethnochoreology. This history is here acknowledged, tracing interest in this research topic to major founding figures in both disciplines, as they took shape in the 1950s. An examination of the application of the choreomusical perspective to the particular case of European and American dance fiddling provides examples of how such inquiry has been carried out and identifies emergent methods which make use of advances in digitally based sound and movement analysis. A more nuanced usage of the terms is advocated.

Since the beginning of the 1990s we can observe an increasing number of festivities in the Czech Republic which are constructed after a historical shape of the rural carnival. They reveal the needs and intentions of contemporary urban society that manipulates with elements of the carnival in the context of contemporary activities. We focus on the way the structural units of the festivity are selected and appropriated by people within the construction of its contemporary form. The ethnomusicological and ethnochoreological approach enables us to reflect the cognitive process of the participants that makes visible their personal as well as collective experience of the festivity and gives us information about social relationships, culture and collective memory produced together with imaginaries of the time. The qualitative field research took place in several districts of Prague and its suburbs based on relationships between place and interests.

Since the early 1990s, an increasing number of festivities in the Czech Republic can be observed, constructed after a historical form of the rural carnival (“masopust”). They reveal
the needs and intentions of contemporary urban society, which manipulates elements of the carnival in the context of
contemporary activities. We focus on the way the structural units of the festivity are selected and appropriated by people
within the construction of its contemporary form. The ethnomusicological and ethnochoreological approach enables
us to reflect the cognitive process of the participants who makes visible their personal as well as collective experience of the festivity and provides us information about social relationships, culture and collective memory produced together with
images of the time. The qualitative field research took place in several districts of Prague and its suburbs, based on
relationships between place and interests.

The long-term research of the
characteristics of Czech folk dance melodies
reveald that the songs and instrumental
melodies from the collections from the
19th and 20th centuries be divided into
several distinct musical groups. Besides the
already described types of triple meter,
“round and round”, „ländler“, „mazurka“
or polonaise-like rytmical.melodical
structures there is also a distinctive musical
type, minet or folk minuet. The present
study aims to confirm the subjectively
perceived musical quality of Czech
minets through the method of computer
structural analysis and to present them in
the context of so far published historical
researches and musicological analyses.

This paper examines the construction of archives and in particular dance archives with special focus on the National Dance Archive of Ireland. The paper provides a contextual background to the establishment and workings of the archive and explores issues relating to postcoloniality. It suggests that proactive archiving and applied ethnochoreology within the context of dance archives can potentially play an important role in contributing to postcolonial agency in the construction of social and cultural identities.

Study of rituals can rarely do without the examination of music which constitutes an important non-verbal part of their structure. The process of rituals correlates with music which determines the rhythm of changes. The study is based on field research of the annual spring ritual cycles in Bohemia, Slovakia and Basel, Switzerland, which are compared. Music in rituals can be applied in two forms: as protocolar (becoming the identifier of the ritual) or arbitrary. The processes of the Shrovetide rituals are interpreted according to Gennepov classification of transitional rituals with the key feature of the liminal (threshold) phase; in the same way Victor Turner’s terms such as communitas and anti-structure are applied.

Report about conference, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan

Reviews of the Monograph on the Subcarpathian Ruthenia in Czechoslovak history 1918–1946

Review of the book

Conference Report "Woman, Religions and Gender Relations" (Università di Torino – Campus Luigi Einaudi, 9. – 11. 11. 2016).