Richard Rybarič

Dr. Richard Rybarič, CSc., was a Slovak musicologist, music publicist, editor, and university professor. The focus of his lifelong work was the field of music history, characterized by an exceptional breadth of scope. Richard Rybarič studied the musical culture of Great Moravia, medieval music, Renaissance and Baroque music, all the way up to 19th-century music.

His studies on significant Slovak musicians—such as Ján Šimrák, Samuel Capricornus, Štefan Monetarius-Cremnicianus, Zachariáš Zarevutius, and Ján Kusser Sr.—became exemplary scholarly monographs in Slovak music historiography. Drawing on his extensive practical experience with archival research into Slovak sources and his in-depth knowledge of foreign scholarly literature, he authored the book Vývoj európskeho notopisu (The Development of European Music Notation, Opus, Bratislava 1982), enriched with examples of transcriptions of sources of Slovak origin.

The pinnacle of his scholarly research was the project Dejiny hudobnej kultúry na Slovensku (History of Musical Culture in Slovakia), which he developed in collaboration with colleagues at the Slovenská akadémia vied (Slovak Academy of Sciences) in the early 1980s. This culminated in the unique and original synthetic monograph Dejiny hudobnej kultúry na Slovensku I. Stredovek, renesancia, barok (History of Musical Culture in Slovakia I: Middle Ages, Renaissance, Baroque, Opus, Bratislava 1984).

He also addressed theoretical problems of music historiography—developing a modern concept of Slovak music historiography based on a universalist and cultural-historical understanding of musicology as a philosophical-historical discipline. In his final synthetic work, he presented his own systematization of music historiography, characterizing its sub-disciplines and scholarly methodologies.

Richard Rybarič authored approximately 250 scholarly studies, book chapters, articles, encyclopedia entries, lectures, reports, reviews, critiques, and essays published in various Slovak and foreign (German, Hungarian, Polish, Czech, etc.) academic anthologies and journals. He was also a scriptwriter for public broadcasting and collaborated on several radio and television music programs.

He was a member of several Slovak and international musicological boards, including the Scientific Council of the Musica Antiqua Europae Orientalis congress, the Scientific Council of the Hungarian-Slovak edition Musicalia Danubiana, and the societies International Musicological Society and Internationale Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Hymnologie.

Rybarič was a scientific editor and regular contributor to the most important Slovak musicological anthologies and journals: Hudobnovedný sborník, Hudobnovedné štúdie, Musicologica Slovaca, Hudobný archív, and Slovenská hudba. He also served as the scientific editor of the sheet music edition Stará hudba na Slovensku (Early Music in Slovakia).

For many years, he lectured at the Faculty of Arts of Comenius University in Bratislava and at the Academy of Performing Arts (VŠMU), educating several generations of new musicologists. 

He received several awards for his work.

(Adapted text by PhDr. Janka Petőczová, CSc.)