DOBROSLAV OREL A SLOVENSKÝ HYMNOLOGICKÝ VÝSKUM

Dobroslav Orel, in the context of his work as a teacher in Bratislava in the years 1919–1938, focused attention on questions of the history of musical culture in Slovakia. Issues on which he directed attention included the hymn. His central concern was the gathering and cataloguing of Slovak music sources, including both Catholic and Lutheran hymnbooks and collections. His research, however, contributed principally to Czech hymnology. In his approach to the history of the Czech hymn, he took his departure from the wider concept of “folk spiritual song”, which supposedly had continuity with the pre-Reformation period, and which encompassed not only hymns but also paraphrases in the Czech language of the Latin singing of Gregorian chant, medieval cantos, and even humanist odes. Orel extolled principally the older, pre-baroque sources of the hymn. He attempted to apply a similar approach to the Slovak tradition also, which he thought of as a Czech offshoot; here, however, the period before the 17th century was accounted for only by a very narrow circle of sources.