THE PRESENT STATE IN THE FIELD OF RESEARCH ON FOLK MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS IN SLOVAKIA

The 70ties and 80ties document an intensive fieldwork in organological research. The development has been interrupted in the 90ties especially for greater research teams in fieldwork. The changes took place continuously. The decline started by loosing the systematic financial base and the dropout of possibilities to modernize the movable audiovisual studio (AVIA) in the mid of the 90ties. Single researchers supported by grants and sponsors allowed only restricted fieldwork. Nevertheless some of the greater projects concerning musical instruments and instrumental music could continue - especially on the Slovak folk dance and dance music, instrumental ensembles, monographic research concentrated on some important instrumental types as the bagpipe, flutes, dulcimer, accordion, strings, children's instruments etc. Studies have been devoted to Slovak, Middle European and European instruments in general, provoked by topics on national and international conferences, workshops, seminars, festivals and many other events. Moreover audio and audiovisual documentation remained an important part of the continuing research, which has been directed to the technology of making instruments, to foremost players and endeavor of the young generation of instrumentalists. Referring to this state the coming aims for Slovak ethnoorganology are presented: they involve further project of field work and documentation, special studies on technology, distribution, transcription, acoustics, ensemble music, style of interpretation and analysis. A positive process is the growing interest of universities and by the students in general. It is documented in a bibliography and a list of Master-, Diploma and Dissertation issues (1990-2002) attached. Last but not least also the numerous editions on Cassette, CD's and Video series as well as monographs gives some perspective for the future development of Slovak ethnoorganology.