Mária Jana Terrayová

PhDr. Mária Jana Terrayová was a Czech and Slovak musicologist, editor, music publicist, and dramaturge. She studied organ performance at the conservatory and musicology in Brno, where she worked after graduation as a librarian at the Music Department of the Univerzitná knižnica (University Library).

In the 1950s, she was one of the pioneers of music-historical research in Slovakia. At the Ústav hudobnej vedy (Institute of Musicology), she carried out numerous field studies, transcriptions, and cataloguing projects. She also introduced younger colleagues to this field. Her research focused on the musical history and historiography of Slovakia, and on basic source research into the history of Slovak music, with a particular focus on the Renaissance and Baroque periods.

Mária Jana Terrayová discovered rare manuscripts in Štítnik, worked on the music of Franciscan composers Jozef Pantaleon Roškovský, Edmund Pascha, and curated the estate of Mikuláš Schneider-Trnavský. She co-authored the permanent exhibition script at the Dom hudby Mikuláša Schneidera-Trnavského (House of Music of Mikuláš Schneider-Trnavský) in Trnava, authored the catalogue of the Levočská zbierka (Levoča Collection), contributed entries to the Encyklopédia Slovenska (Encyclopedia of Slovakia), and wrote monographic studies on the Franciscans and dance music of the 17th–18th centuries in Slovakia. She also published the Uhrovská zbierka (Uhrová Collection) from 1742 and the anthology Musica antiqua slovaca III.

She also published articles on opera performances and organ concerts.

Terrayová was also involved in reviving Slovak historical music, collaborating on the production of six LP recordings with leading Slovak and Czech performers for Supraphon and Opus, as well as eleven television and short films and radio broadcasts. Some works of Slovak music history, which she helped popularize, became widely recognized — such as the Vesperae Bacchanales by Slovak late-Baroque composer Jozef Pantaleon Roškovský, or the Harmonia Pastoralis / Vianočná omša F dur by Father Juraj Zrunek, originally attributed to Edmund Pascha.

In the field of film production, she worked as a dramaturge on the 1964 film Štítnicky objav (The Štítnik Discovery), directed by V. Andreánsky, and the 1970 film Harmonia pastoralis, directed by Martin Ťapák.