A History of Music in the Czech Lands

In a collection of essays from prominent music scholars both in the Czech Republic and abroad, this book provides a nuanced overview of major topics connected to the history of musical culture in the Czech lands (Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia) from the Middle Ages to the present. Whereas most previous English-language musicological scholarship on the Czech lands focused solely on music that was understood as ethnically Czech, this book also considers musical cultures of non-Czech groups that lived, and sometimes still live, in the geographical area, most importantly people of German, Jewish, and Romani backgrounds. Spanning over a thousand years, this book combines innovative approaches to present nuanced perspectives on a complicated musical tradition. Not only is such an inclusive overview of music in the Czech lands unprecedented, but there is also no other English-language survey of the region's musical developments, and, for that matter, there are no English-language surveys of the history of specifically Czech music either.