Z HISTORIE ETNOLOGICKÉHO ÚSTAVU AKADEMIE VĚD ČESKÉ REPUBLIKY: SBĚRATELSKÝ PODNIK ,,LLDOVÁ PÍSEŇ V RAKOUSKU" V LETECH 1905--1918.

The beginning of the collecting activity "Folk Song in Austria" of the years 1904 (in the Czech lands from 1905) constitutes a key event for the study of folks songs in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia. From this year, when an order was given for the formation of "work committees," we can talk about systematic and organized collecting, publication and scientific analysis of folk songs, instrumental music and dances, of the Czechs as well as the Germans. At the same time, there began a history of the institution that through gradual transformation came to the nowadays institute of Ethnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences. In the lead or at the boards of four of these work committees were employed many important figures, among them university professors O. Hostinsky, A. Hauffen, G. Jungbauer, O. Zich, Z. Nejedly, J. Polivka, V. Helfert; the Moravian committee was founded and led by the musical composer L. Janacek. The committees organized a systematic collecting and instigated expert discussions about the methods of collecting of folklore material, its organization, categorization, and publication. In the period of 1905-1918 many thousands of items had been collected and the phonographic recordings had been made. The sound recordings were in the last years digitalized, treated with modern technologies and published. From the written recordings of songs and dances, however, only a small part was published, by the successional institutions – State Institute of Folk Song (since 1919), Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences (since 1953), Institute of Ethnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences (from 1999). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]