... einem ersamen Rath verehrt : über Widmungen der Musikalien an mährische Städte ca. 1560–1620

Abstract

The musical sources of choirs and parish churches in Moravia region from the period 1550-1620 were not preserved with a few exceptions. The same applies to music inventories, which are not available for all cities. Because of this basic information about the performing practice of parish churches is often provided by books of municipal and church accounts, books with city correspondence and other documents. Sending of musical compositions, other philosophical and historiographical texts or glorious poems to city councils, but also to abbots or bishops, was a typical phenomenon of the early modern period. In the case of four Moravian royal towns (Brno, Znojmo, Jihlava, Olomouc), the surprising is frequency of records about remunerations provided to composers for dedicated compositions or purchases of music collections. The dedication of compositions can be understood as a personal author's promotion; by donating their work, the composers not only achieved their own presentation and dissemination of this music collection, but also expected some financial reward for the provided gift. The amount of remuneration then varied according to the financial possibilities of the recipient. If we compare the discovered information across Moravia and across the Central European area, we often come to interesting parallels that will be presented in this paper.