The Musical Culture of Czechs in Vienna 1840-1939

The project `The Musical Culture of the Czechs in Vienna 1840-1939` belongs to the field of research of musical cultures in a metropolis, one of the traditional musicological topics. Even though the Czechs in Vienna were the biggest national minority around the year 1900 and made up one tenth of the capital`s population, this important part of Vienna`s music history is utterly unknown. Over the decades an interior structure of associations evolved. Those associations had nationally motivated cultural and political goals. The classification of such minority cultures in the metropolis`s as well as their own culture is rather difficult and one has to choose different criteria for each national group to examine their identity. So far there has been no critical evaluation of that era`s music scene, which was particularly concentrated in associations, choirs and churches. Up to 1918 that music scene was mainly organized by enthusiastic laypersons, later only intermittently by musicians and composers, and after the Second World War it was stopped due to political reasons. The `target group` of that project are the `Czechs in Vienna` [Wiener Tschechen], the coordinated and nationalist enclave with a distinct connection to the Czech National Revival with Prague as its centre. This project will focus on the time of the Czechs` national consolidation in the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries (the `Czechs in Vienna` [Tschechen in Wien] with their outstanding and cosmopolitan character during baroque, neoclassicism and early romanticism will not be dealt with). The critical evaluation of the materials will be preceded by a thorough `discovery phase` in the archives and an editing of the information on Czech music in Vienna. That information can be found in the Czech (music) press and the press of the Czechs in Vienna. Thus it will be possible to realise the objectives: 1. Chronological overview on the musical activities of the Czech minority and its leading personalities 2. Arrangement and documentation of the musical records in the archives of Czech associations in Vienna; 3. A catalogue of compositions of Czech composers in Vienna; 4. An encyclopaedia of Czech composers and musicians in Vienna. The project aims to close existing gaps in the Czech and Austrian music encyclopaedias, in the music history of the two countries as well as in the documentation of the Czechs in Vienna`s archives. The history of the Czechs in Vienna is a shared heritage of the two republics and the research has thus to be conducted in both Czech and Austrian libraries and archives. The cooperation with archives of the Czechs in Vienna, such as Lumr, the school union Komensk and the contemporary press of the Czechs in Vienna is vital for the realisation of the project. On account of his thorough research on the music of the Sorbs (Wends) in Lusatia Viktor Velek, M.A. has the appropriate experience. Furthermore, he has already done considerable preparatory work for the present project and has published his results in several articles.

The project represents the first complex treatment of the subject falling within the Czech musicology (musical culture of Czechs abroad) as well as the Austrian musicology (music history of Vienna). Partial results of the project were presented at scientific conferences, lectures for the Czech minority in Vienna, in the press, and on the radio (ORF, Cesk rozhlas). The online portal www.musikkulturderwienertschechen.poddubem.com presents the results obtained during the project: 1. The "Czech Vienna" Music Archive and The "Czech Vienna" Audio Archive 2. The Music Encyclopedia of Persons and Institutions "Czech Vienna" 3. "A Music History of Viennese Czechs 18401939" 4. The Collection of Compositions by Viennese-Czech Composers ad 1: The Music Archive (physically located at the Forschungszentrum für historische Minderheiten in Wien) gathers donated or copied archive materials in one place (correspondence, scores, photographs, diplomas, posters/programmes, etc.). It contains several hundred items. Thanks to contacts with the Czech minority in Vienna, the archive is still growing; the Audio Archive has been created for rare audio recordings. ad 2: The Music Encyclopedia is a special online music bilingual lexicon; most entries are still only in Czech. It covers individuals and institutions from the minority musical culture as well as the participation of non-Czech musicians in it. The entries are accompanied with iconographic material. It supplements both main relevant dictionaries: Austrian Music Encyclopedia and Czech Music Encyclopedia of Persons. ad 3: Research into periodicals and literature (including concert programmes, annual reports, etc.) was necessary to obtain data not only for the lexical part, but also for the Music History. The intended chronological retrospective will be based on more than 1,600 Word pages with the results of the research: they became the basis for the publishing activity, which is completely available online. ad 4: The Collection is a virtual library of works by Viennese-Czech composers. The research has helped to discover and sometimes even preserve many valuable sources. This has significantly increased our knowledge of previously little-known sources. The collected data has been converted into an online form only partially. There are two reasons for this: Field research, research into literature, and the subsequent processing were more time-consuming; some Czech institutions demanded the presentation in two languages as a condition of the online presentation of their archive materials: this improves the user service, but it also means twice as much work on dictionary entries. Copyright for scores and iconographic and audio sources was obtained in most cases. The change in the schedule did not allow the creation of the intended comprehensive retrospective (Music History); this is sufficiently substituted by the publishing activity (.pdf) on the aforementioned web portal. The Music Archive is continuously catalogued, and the most valuable items are gradually digitized.