Edita Marenčinová

PhDr. Edita (Dita) Marenčinová is a Slovak musicologist, teacher, music publicist, and performer. She studied piano performance at the Conservatory in Košice and later musicology and ethnography at the Faculty of Arts of Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Brno (now Masaryk University), where she also earned her doctoral degree (PhD.) in musicology.

Immediately after graduation, she began working as a teacher of piano and recorder at the Ľudová škola umenia (People’s School of Art). She contributed to gaining equal recognition for the recorder as a main instrument alongside other wind instruments. With her students, she won numerous awards in national competitions of art schools.

In 1976, she joined the Conservatory in Košice on Timonova Street, where she taught music theory subjects (music history, history and literature of vocal music, history and literature of theatre for singers and actors) until 2011. She also served as the deputy director of the conservatory, led a seminar on musical aesthetics, and supervised graduation theses. Under her guidance, students collected approximately 500 folk songs and rituals. She concluded her active teaching career in 2015. (Since 2001, she had been teaching in retirement.)

 In addition to her teaching career, Dita Marenčinová has consistently worked as a publicist, lecturer, and researcher in the field of musicology. She studied folk songs from the area of Brumovice in Moravia and collected folk traditions in the Moravian Kopanice region. Several of these songs were published in the book Proměny jihomoravské vesnice. Národopisné studie z Brumovic (1981). She also collected songs from the Zemplín villages of Cejkov and Malý Horeš, subjecting their musical structure to comparative analysis (Master’s thesis, Faculty of Arts, Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Brno, 1980). A partial study was published in Sborník příspěvků z 12. etnomuzikologického semináře: Lidový tanec, píseň a hudba. Krajské kulturní středisko v Brně (the conference proceedings of the 12th Ethnomusicological Seminar: Folk Dance, Song, and Music, 1983).

Dita Marenčinová also focuses on opera and musical theatre. She reflects on, researches, and documents the history of opera at the State Theatre Košice and the Jonáš Záborský Theatre in Prešov. She prepared detailed analyses of their activities, particularly on the occasion of anniversaries, which were presented at conferences and published in proceedings. She participated in the national research project Opera in Košice from 1948 to 1985, coordinated by the Slovak Academy of Sciences. She authored over 60 entries for the two-volume Encyklopédiu dramatických umení (Encyclopaedia of Dramatic Arts, 1989, 1990), covering opera singers from the Košice Opera and operetta/musical performers from the Jonáš Záborský Theatre in Prešov, as well as the histories of both institutions. She has written over 450 reviews of musical theatre and concerts.

Marenčinová also contributes to Slovak Radio and studies its history. She produced radio programs on the regular music broadcasts of Košice Radio since 1927, in celebration of its 90th anniversary.

She leads the Circle of Friends of the Arts at the State Philharmonic Košice and serves as its regular music reviewer. Currently, she is working on a monograph titled The Musical Past of the City of Košice from 1850 to 1918. She publishes in academic journals, edited volumes, and daily newspapers, and regularly participates in academic conferences.

She is or has been a member of several associations and societies, including the Slovak Association for Music Education, the Czech Music Society, the Union of Slovak Composers (Musicological Section), the Czech Society for Early Music, and the Union of Dramatic Artists in Slovakia. Within the latter, she served on the selection committee for operetta and musical theatre productions, including works in the musical-entertainment genre, recommended for national (Czechoslovak) showcases.