Hudba v školskej hre piaristov na Slovensku v 17. a 18. storočí
Music in the Piarists’ School Drama in Slovakia in the 17th and 18th Centuries

Summary/Abstract: This article addresses the question, hitherto very little studied in Slovakia, of the Piarist theatre and the part played in it by music. The Piarist school drama, while it has a number of features in common with that of the Jesuits, also differs from the latter in several respects. There is not only a wider thematic scope and a greater stress on secular themes but also a different structure of the school drama in detail. We take as our starting point the relevant passages concerning drama in Vita poetica (1693), an authoritative textbook on poetics by Fr. Lucas Mösch a S. Edmundo SchP. In our text we provide a concise analysis, based on primary and secondary sources, of the level of the Piarist theatre, seen in terms of the musical component, in the individual colleges (the most important of which were in Podolínec, Prievidza and Nitra). A number of performances must have attained an excellent standard musically. The Piarists (like the Jesuits) in the beginning had prominent musicians collaborating in their dramas. However, from the 1770s the musical component of the Piarist theatre fell into gradual decay.

• Details
• Contents