Vladimír Helfert ve Státním ústavu pro lidovou píseň

Abstract

Vladimír Helfert's publishing activity in the field of musical folkloristics and ethnomusicology was not extensive. This study encompasses his work and organizational activities on the Moravian-Silesian Committee of the State Institute for Folk Song from 1924 to 1939. His timeless approach to this subject matter was given by his depth of knowledge and feeling for musical aesthetics and by the dynamic understanding of the folk song that he carried over from Otakar Hostinský. This was also the source of his long-term interest in the situation in the field and the records involving all song genres. Helfert brought a critical approach towards sources and a feel for their systematic, scholarly treatment to his work at the State Institute for Folk Song. Interestingly, he took the first steps in this direction together with Leoš Janáček, and this may also explain the fundamental transformation of his opinions in evaluating Janáček as an artistic phenomenon. Helfert brought a number of talented students from the Musicology Seminar at Masaryk University into the study of folkloristics, and many of them later distinguished themselves as important scholarly authorities in this field of research.

Keywords

• Vladimír Helfert
• Leoš Janáček
• folklore studies
• Státní ústav pro lidovou píseň (State Institute for Folk Song)
• Moravian folk song
• methodology