Ľubica Ballová

PhDr. Ľuba Ballová, CSc. was a Slovak musicologist, music publicist, and expert in the field of music museology. She studied musicology in combination with aesthetics at the Faculty of Arts of Comenius University in Bratislava (her thesis was titled Tance na Slovensku v 17. storočí – Dances in Slovakia in the 17th Century, 1958), and she belonged to the strong post-war generation of graduates alongside Vladimír Čížik, Alica and Oskar Elschek, Ladislav Mokrý, and Pavol Polák. 

After completing her studies, she spent one year as an assistant at the Institute of Music Education at the Pedagogical College in Prešov, and later worked as an editor and reporter in the music-educational editorial team of Czechoslovak Radio in Bratislava. She contributed to the creation of several programs and radio series, such as Pre priateľov opery, Hudobné spravodajstvo (For Opera Friends, Music News), and, in collaboration with Zdenka Bernátová, the series Dialógy s hudbou (Dialogues with Music). She collaborated with the radio throughout her life as a scriptwriter and external consultant. She also prepared several programs for Czechoslovak Television in Bratislava, such as Musica viva and Hudba z Bratislavy (Music from Bratislava).

A quarter-century of her professional career was linked with the Slovak National Museum – Music Museum. She was involved in its founding in 1965 and became the first head of its department. Later, she served for many years as deputy head of the department, held the position of expert researcher, and was curator responsible for the documentation of early musical history. Within the museum, she organized numerous exhibitions, conferences, lectures, presentations, and published extensively.

In her curatorial and collection-building specialization, Ľuba Ballová focused on the music of Slovak Baroque and Classicism. She engaged in documenting historical music sources (especially from the earliest history of Slovakia up to the Baroque period), their processing, cataloging, and presentation. She also contributed significantly to the establishment of the permanent exhibition of the Museum of Musical Instruments at the manor house in Dolná Krupá.

She was one of the founders of the Slovak Catalogue of Historical Music Sources, alongside Darina Múdra and Pavol Polák. A long-term focus of her research was the connection between Ludwig van Beethoven and Slovakia. The results of this research were published in the book  Ludwig van Beethoven a Slovensko (Ludwig van Beethoven and Slovakia, Martin, 1972), and she conceptually prepared exhibitions titled Beethoven a Slovensko (Beethoven and Slovakia, 1966, 1974), Rané tlače z diel Ludwiga van Beethovena na Slovensku (Early Prints of Works by Ludwig van Beethoven in Slovakia, Dolná Krupá, 1978), and organized a conference dedicated to Beethoven (1970).

Ľuba Ballová authored exhibition scripts such as Treasures of Musical History (1968, on the occasion of the Prague Spring Festival), and the script for the Ludwig van Beethoven Memorial in the manor grounds in Dolná Krupá (1992). In cooperation with Ján Albrecht, she prepared for print as editor the Hudobného tureckého Eulenspiegela (Musical Turkish Eulenspiegel – vocal compositions, folk dances, sonatas, suite) – 5 volumes between 1971 and 1980, as well as the Baroque opera Castor et Pollux by Johannes Patzelt (Bratislava, 1989). She also authored the exhibition script Putovanie Daniela Speera po Šariši a Zemplíne (The Journey of Daniel Speer through Šariš and Zemplín, 1988).

In 1990, she began working at the Bratislava City Museum, where she actively promoted Slovak musical history to the broader public. There, she organized numerous events and exhibitions, for example on the works of J. N. Batka Jr., J. N. Hummel, or J. K. Mertz. In 1991, she became a founding member of the Johann Nepomuk Hummel Foundation in Bratislava and was actively involved in the creation and establishment of what was initially a local piano competition—now the International Johann Nepomuk Hummel Piano Competition. She was a long-time member of the committee of the musicological section of the Slovak Music Fund.