Slovenská hudba, Vol. 48, No 4, p.316-339, 2022

A Czech-German Project of the Modern Concert Melodrama

The following essay describes the efforts of its authors to encourage the creation of concert melodramas by German composers to Czech texts. This effort became the subject of the project “Czech composers set German texts to music and German composers set Czech texts to music”. The authors are aware of the historical context that causes the minimal existence of German melodramas on Czech texts and with their current project suggest a way to change this situation. This path has always been accompanied by the willingness of both the Czech and German sides to communicate about common cultural intentions, and so the outcome of the project is positive. The following text also provides a scientific reflection on the project. Among the authors are the names of Michaela Augustinová, Michael Emanuel Bauer, Holmer Becker, Frédéric Bolli, Jiří Bezděk, Kamillo Andreas Horn, Robert Schumann, Bedřich Smetana, Pavel Trojan.