The Dvořák Society’s Journal of Czech and Slovak Music (JCSM) is a more formal and substantial publication than the quarterly Newsletter and is issued periodically as availability of articles permits. Contributors are generally internationally acknowledged experts in their fields. The contents deal with various aspects of Czech and Slovak music and its personalities, performers and performances. The journal also includes book reviews.
Availability of the JCSM
Members of the Dvořák Society receive copies of the journal on publication of each issue. Otherwise copies are lodged with United Kingdom national deposit libraries and certain other municipal and music libraries. It is possible to purchase copies (subject to availability) from our our E-shop or from our Sales Manager.
Website abstracts
Abstracts of some issues of the JCSM can be viewed on this website by clicking the relevant links below. The Dvořák Society is grateful to members Bill and Vera Marsden and Patrick Devine for producing these abstracts. There is also cumulative index to Czech Music and other society Journals: 1974 to 2023 here.
Volume 8: includes material on :–
• ‘Goethe and Tomášek’
• Josef Bohuslav Foerster
• Dvořák, Josefina and the Cello Concerto
Volume 9: includes material on :–
• Slovak Music: A Introduction (1)
• Slovak Music: A Introduction (2)
• Dvořák’s Australian Success
Volume 10: includes material on :–
• Smetana’s Achievement: A Centenary Survey
• Otakar Ostrčil: Part One
• Otakar Ostrčil: Part One
Volume 11: includes material on :–
• Dvořák’s financial difficulties in America
Volume 12: includes material on :–
• The composer Alexander Moyzes
• The composer Josef Suk
Volume 13: includes material on :–
• Dvořák and the Basset Horn
• Fact and fiction about Czech Composers
Volume 14: includes material on :–
• Viktor Ullmann’s last opera • The Emperor of Atlantis
• Reicha’s Wind Quintets
• Czech Melodrama
• The Slovak composer Eugen Suchoň
• Janáček’s attitudes to, and relationships with, women and the effect on his compositions
• The Czech incarnation of the water nymph myth as Rusalka
• The Moravian composer Antonín Tučapský
Volume 15: includes material on :–
• Dvořák and the Symphony
• Antonín Rejcha’s music for wind instruments
• The notion of a Czech national opera • Janáček as a campaigning composer for the Czech cause
• Introduction to Janáček’s Kát’a Kabanová
• Versions of Janáček’s Violin Sonata
Volume 16 No. 1: includes material on :–
• Petr Eben’s views on contemporary music and his own approach to composition
• Contemporary music in Brno
• Bohemian musicians in Great Britain in the second half of the 18th and the 19th Centuries
Volume 16 No. 2: includes material on :–
Martinů’s Search for the Meaning of Life and for Truth
Martinů’s links with London in the 1930s
The early reception of Dvořák’s music abroad
Dvořák’s Rusalka on film and video
Volume 17 No. 1: includes material on :–
The relationship between Smetana and Dvořák (and between their supporters)
• Musical influences by other composers on Dvořák
• Dvořák’s inner world
• The influence of Dvořák on Elgar.
Volume 17 No.2: includes material on :–
• Misconceptions about Dvořák’s “naïvety”
• The Vodník in Czech culture
• Martinů’s opera “Julietta”
• Preissová’s drama “Gazdina Roba”
• Beecham and Dvořák.
Volume 18 No.1: includes material on :–
• The myth about Dvořák the apprentice butcher
• Dvořák and the 19th century oratorio
• Dvořák and Josefína Kounicová
• Smetana’s “Libuše” and Dvořák’s “Vanda”.
Volume 18 No.2: includes material on :–
• Dvořák’s early musical education
• Dvořák, black Americans and native Americans
• Dvořák’s association with Spillville in the United States
• American musical influences on Dvořák
• The American journalist James Creelman
• The financial aspects of Dvořák’s stay in the United States
• Arguments for and against the quality of Martinů’s music.
Volume 19: includes material on :–
• Harmonic experimentation in Dvořák’s music
• Whether certain compositions of Dvořák are American or Bohemian in character
• Dvořák and the clarinet
• Musical relationship between Mahler and Smetana
• Mahler and Czech culture
• The 18th century composer Kammel
• Martinů’s accident in Tanglewood
• The contribution of Fibich to Czech music
The “Asrael Symphony” of Suk
Musical influences on Foerster.
Volume 20: includes material on :–
• The dumka in the music of Dvořák and Janáčék
• American National anthem and Dvořák • Retouches and alterations in Smetana’s “Má Vlast”
• Relationship between Martinů and Vítězslava Kaprálová
• Martinů and the death motif
• Martinů in Cleveland
• The 18th century composer Štěpán
• Benda’s singspiels and Mozart
• The melodramas of Suk
• Popular melodramas in the Czech lands
• Czech and Slovak musical philately.
Volume 21: includes material on :–
• The early years of the Dvořák Society
• Missing bars in Martinů Symphony No. 4
• The Moravian contribution to Czech Music
• Janáček and the lyricist Ozef Kalda
• Dvořák’s music in 19th century Melbourne
• Czech & Moravian court and household Orchestras in the 17th to 19th Centuries
• The life and music of Vítězslava Kaprálová
• Kaprálová’s Partita and Martinů
• Martinů’s Moravian pupils Vítězslava Kaprálová and Jan Novák
• Smetana’s operas
• Karel Husa
• The choral music of Antonín Tučapský
• Musical persecution under Nazism and Communism.
Volume 22: includes material on :–
• Changes along the Overgrown Path: Janáček’s Attitudes to Smetana
• Josef Suk
• A Half Century with the Music of Bohuslav Martinů
• Josef Suk’s Non-Obstinate Ostinato Movements : A Study of Harmony and Style
• Myth, Legend and a Little Poetic Licence
• Johannes Sperger: A Neglected Composer from Valtice
• Charlotte Martinů (1894-1978): A Faithful Heart
Volume 23: includes material on :–
• Martinu’s “Impressive Quiet”
• Places of Residence of the Young Antonin Dvořák and His Parents, 1841-1860
• Bedřich Smetana
• Josef Bartoš’s View of Dvořák
• Dvořák as Criticised in the Periodical Smetana and in the Writings by Members of its Editorial Circle
Volume 24: includes material on :–
• Seamless, Original and Czech: Smetana’s Struggle to Produce a National Opera
• The Kostelnička: A Life Before and After
• The Fights over Dvořák as Reflected in Josef Suk’s Correspondence
• Antonín Dvořák
• Dvořák’s Abodes and Travels during his Bacherol Years, 1860-1873: Physical and Human Environments for his First Major Outpouring of Works.
• Nejedlý’s Critique of Dvořák as an Opera Composer
• 1941: The Dvořák Centenary Celebrations in London and Elsewhere in the United Kingdom
• Rudolf Firkušný in Concert Hall and Studio
Volume 25: includes material on :–
• The Piano Rhapsodies of Jan Václav Voříšek
• Smetana’s Illness Unravelled
• Dvořák’s Abodes and Travels During the First Years of His Marriage (1873-77)
• Talich: On the Problem of National Purification (Part 1)
Volume 26: includes material on :–
• A first supplement to the Vilém Tauský discography
• Towards a stemma of the MS sources of Dvořák’s Mass in D
• Czech music through the eyes (and ears) of an Englishman
• Uncovering early Martinů
• The November 1943 London production of Smetana’s The Bartered Bride (Prodaná nevĕsta)
• Václav Jan Tomášek’s Goethe lieder • Oskar Nedbal (1874–1930)
• Talich: On the problem of national purification (Part Two)
• A second supplement to the Rudolf Firkušný discography
Volume 27: includes material on :–
• The power of advocacy in music: The case of Vítězslava Kaprálová
• A ‘forgotten’ recording of the Martinů Cello Sonata no.1
• Petr Altrichter: A discography
• Vilém Tauský’s ‘uncles’: 1 – Leo Ascher
• The significance of music in the birth of the Czechoslovak state
• The forgotten generation
Volume 28: includes material on :–
• The ‘Stamitz’ caprices for solo flute
• ‘Rare in a generation of remarkable women’: Mildred Hill, Dvořák, Black
street cries and the making of ‘Happy Birthday’
• The United Kingdom career of Jarmila Novotná in the late 1920s and 1930s
• The Panocha Quartet: A catalogue of recordings
• The position of Martinů’s music in Great Britain
• The role of the motto in Dvořák’s Requiem
• Ferdinand Sabathil, Bohemian flautist and composer (1852–1937)
Volume 29: includes material on:–
• Gideon Klein: Rediscovering the rediscovered
• Antonín Kammell and his English patrons
• The position of Martinů’s music in Great Britain
• Sigmund Goldschmidt (1815–1877): Piano virtuoso, composer and banker
• Kaprálová as a Composer of the Week: The BBC interview
Volume 30: includes material on:–
• A note about the cover photograph
• Recent interviews with Czech women composers, part 1
• Antonín Dvořák and the concept of Czechness
• Musica Antiqua Bohemica
• Zdeněk Fibich as viewed by Leoš Janáček
• Petr Eben’s Lidové písnĕ a koledy [Folk Songs and Carols]
• The many loves of Antonín Dvořák: A personal voyage of discovery
• Joseph Küttel (c1809–1857), leading flautist in Prague
Volume 31: includes material on:
• Leopold Lion from Prague
• Jan Novák revisited
• Hans Winterbertg: Designated survivor
• Czech patriotism in an overture inspired by Brahms: Dvořák’s Husitská
• Recent interviews with Czech women composers, part 2
• On the tracks of Leoš Janáček: An Englishman’s quest to uncover Czech sources and gain access to the composer’s letters to Kamila Stösslová in the Brno archives in the late 1970s
• Philipp Broch (1812–1864), notable Jewish violinist and composer
• On the genesis of Janáček’s piano cycle On an Overgrown Path