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Approximately sixty lyrical songs were inscribed into the Folklore Archive of the National Museum during the field research in Brcko conducted by Bosnian writer and folklorist Alija Nametak as an employee of the Institute for Folklore Research in 1956, including a ballad about a mother who sacrificed her son to save her brother's life. This moving ballad has been inscribed at least twice more in Bosnia's north, and two variants of this song were recorded in Derventa - they are included in a large collection made by Smajl Bradaric and kept in the National Museum of BiH's Folklore Archive. The National Museum and the BiH Slavic Committee collaborated to publish this collection (Bradari 2018). The mentioned ballad was also discussed in Munib Maglajlic's 1985 study "Muslim Oral Ballads," in the section entitled Conflict in the Family, indicating its importance, but also a solid number of variants throughout Bosnia (Maglajlić 2018). The variants presented here, however, were not the subjects of Maglajlić's analyses, even though he found as many as nine versions of this ballad from various sources for his study. This paper will use the method of three-variant ballad promotion to see the oral poet from Bosnia's north in action. It will try to show and highlight the poetic achievements of the "northern" variants. The poetic shaping of key motifs will be considered in each recorded variant, and the difference between them will be established. Methods of interpretation and analysis will be used.

In this article, on the basis of the method of comparative analysis, the author examines the phenomenon of piano interpretation, touching upon the issues of performing interpretation using examples of the treatment of F. Chopin’s Ballad No.1 by three of the greatest contemporary pianists – A. Rubinstein, K. Zimerman and S. Neuhaus. The variability of perception of this work in their interpretations once again raises the problem of objectivity and subjectivity of performance, the degree of freedom of the performer. The interpretative and stylistic contrast of interpretation presented in the work allows us to consider some of the features of the evolution of piano traditions in the 20th century.

Although the nature of the ballad is not inherent to deal with the so-called historical events and historical figures, we can see from some examples that this oral literary genre is not unfamiliar with topics based on real people and true events, and even those of wider social significance. The Bosniak oral ballads discussed in this paper, show that the so-called historical ballads do not fundamentally betray history, although they reshape and poetically upgrade it in detail, following the poetic requirements of the genre to which they belong. Ballads about the Morić brothers and the death of Hifzi-beg Đumišić can provide a basis for claiming that the Bosniak historical ballad is, in fact, a medium of collective historical memory and that it sometimes chronically and surprisingly accurately remembered the circumstances of the actual events of wider socio-historical importance.

In the folklore culture, improvisation can be found within works belonging to three distinct branches, which also are in syncretic relation: the literary, musical, and choreographic branches. The doina and the ballad combine, in different ways, both poetic and the musical improvisation. The genres represented by the doina and the ballad – lyrical and epic, determine the structural and interpretative essence of both species. The poetic content is a defining element for the ballad, because between the melody and the poetic content, the latter defines the genre of the work – the epic genre. On the contrary, in the doina, the melody is in the forefront. In terms of content, however, both species can approach the same subjects. From a musical aspect, both the doina and the ballad are focused on free improvisation, based on the combination of some established traditional musical elements. This often leads to confusion in the interpretation of the given works.

The reception of the ballad “Hasanaginica” in German and Italian culture starts with Fortis’s discovery and translation of the ballad into the Italian language, which he publishes in his work Viaggio in Dalmazia”/ “The Way to Dalmatia” in 1774. Consequently, European readers had been given an opportunity to get acquainted with the Bosnian culture, especially that formed during the Ottoman Empire in Bosnia, when the ballad was created. Considering that Fortis along with the ballad, described the customs and mentality of the Morlaks, the people among whom he found this ballad, the European audience got acquainted with a forgotten and often stereotypically depicted South Slavic people. Although Fortis’s work was created during the period of Enlightenment, it already contained elements of pre-Romanticism, such as the originality, simplicity and humanity for which Fortis expressed a special sympathy while presenting the ballad. In the German-speaking countries, many intellectuals have been dealing with this ballad, but the most important for her reception in German culture was the famous Goethe, which was fascinated by the ballad not only because of its content and form, but also because of the fact that he could identify himself with Hasanaga, one of the protagonists of the ballad and because of his interest in the Islamic Orient and the psychological characterization of the woman. His translation into German is of great importance, since he managed to split the song into the strophes on the basis of composite ensembles, retaining the same rhythm that was present in the original version, although he did not know the language in which the ballad was created.

The hylozoistic idea of matter as the visible side of everything there is attractive for the Romanticism’s mythopoetic concept of animated and dynamic nature of the universe and man as its projection. In this paper, the hylozoistic idea is interpreted in relation to Erben’s ballads. Two main research directions are outlined: the depiction of the Romantic landscape and its anthropomorphic incarnation through metaphorical rhetorics, and the genre specifics of the literary ballad. Its dominant place in the poetry of the first half of the 19th century is a reflection of the return to folklore and the mythological perceptions of the spiritual constants of life, so typical for this time. In the context of Erben’s poetry, the first aspect is visible most cleary in his ballad Záhořovo lože, while the latter one can be found in nearly all of his ballads where the real and the supernatural worlds meet. Instead of interpreting Erben’s poetry in the specific national context of the Czech Renaissance (an aspect that has been studied in detail by Czech scholars), our aim is to situate Erben’s poetic world and the genre model of his ballads within the European context. It is in this space that the hylozoistic idea proves very fruitful both for the Romantic writers’ concept of landscape and for their genre preference of ballad.

Early versions of the ballad of the sacrifice („the walled - in woman”) in the South of the Danube, in collections of Bulgarian folklore The 250 variants of the Bulgarian ballad of the sacrifice („The walled - in woman”) were only partially reported in Romanian non-fiction literature, only around 35 ballads being translated into Romanian. Under the guidance of Professor Silviu Angelescu, from the University of Bucharest, the Ph. D candidate Gheorghiţă Ciocioi endeavours to compile a bilingual and critical collection of these Bulgarian and Macedonian ballads of sacrifice. The present texts, most of which collected between 1860 and 1861, have now been translated in Romanian for the first time. The bilingual presentation – in both Romanian and Bulgarian – aims to capture certain elements in their original contexts and the changes caused by the influence of the cultural systems, with their various codes – language and laws –, on the one hand Romanian, on the other Bulgarian and Turkish – the presence of Turkish words, archaic and regional terms in these ballads

Tadeáš Salva was one of the most interesting and prolific Slovak composer of the last century. His inventive approach in connection with audiovisual and electroacoustic media brought to Slovak music extremely original works, first of their kinds. The first composition which name is Radio oratorio was one of first Slovak electroacoustic composition. Another strictly vocal work is Slovak first Radio Oratorio Margita and Besná. Salva is also author of opera Weeping, specifically composed for radio broadcasting. The opera consists of only two voices – soprano and basso and its performance demands quadrophonic performance from one part voice increasing to twelve in culmination point. This contributions dealing with above-mentioned works, their genesis, analysis and the partial problematic of application of new media and the principle of total artwork in Tadeáš Salva's compositions.

The article presents a juxtaposition of the following two brilliant poems Tamten (from the collection of poems entitled Napój cienisty, 1936) and Kilkunastoletnia (from the collection of poems entitled Tutaj, 2009) that employ the same idea of an encounter with oneself – an adolescent person (in the former poem) and a teenage girl (in the latter). The poems exceed the literary convention of just a lyrical reminiscence of the past, they rather form a particular dialogue with the narrator as he/she was years ago, or even propose a kind of a confrontation. Both poems indirectly feature reflections on the passing time and on the author’s identity. The poem written by Leśmian fits perfectly into his poetical system, both in terms of the introduction of metaphysical threads and the application of the elements of a love poem and in terms of the plot outline, somewhat reminiscent of his ballads. Szymborska’s poem also concurs with her own poetics mostly due to the characteristic subtle auto-irony.