Melodies of songs to the dance „roundandround“ represent a marked musical type in the context of Czech folk songs. In my second monography I present in detail its musical characteristics. The focus of the research was a complex musical analysis of 307 dance melodies from Czech collections of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century. Through the use of newly formulated methods of the structural analysis of musical types I study and describe the relationships between the individual struetures and functional aspects of the melody and the musical type as a whole. Melodies of songs „round and round“ are from the point of view of the basic form characteristics rather short, with inner division by two-bar and three-bar units. Characteristics seems to be the tending to symmetricalform that is, however, often being contravened (especially ecause of text). On the level of melodic segments (the smallest unit of composition – two-bar or three-bar) the periodicity is being employed, on the higher levels rather the linear ordination of motives and themes. The typical form A, B and A, B, C, possibly A, B, C, D. The research had confirmed a stable major-minor feeling, possibly in connection fith a fixed instrumentoi support, especially of the backpipe music. Unambiguously the dominant key is the major one. The melodies are predominantly only diatonic. Melodies of songs to the dance „round and round“ represent a distinctive melodic type. The Tone register is usually not very extensive. Priority is given to the sequence of second and third, rare are melodic leaps. The principal influence on the selection of tone material had been exercised by the possibilities of the most common accompanying instrument – the backpipe. Melodies of songs to the dance „round and round“ from the collections and manuscript sources of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century are exclusively of the triple time metre. The anacrusis does not appear in the recordings. On the other hand, characteristics is the inner change of the metre, the so called „swagger rhythm“ (two triple-time bars are in the text declaimed as three binary measure bars, with respective shifts of accents). The rhythm is rich, varied and is naturally related to the melody, text and declamation. In the inventory of the most often repeated rhythm motives there is a clear tendency to two- or one-figure. The tempo was, according to the accessible sources, agile, rapid or very rapid. The detailed musical analysis decidedly confirmed that it should be thought of the melodies of songs to the dance „round and round“ as a distinet musical type in the context of the Czech folk songs. The results of t and he individual levels of analysis reveal certain formal and composition archetypes and at the same time represent an unbiased probe to the whole of the Czech folk song repertoire.
Concluding study about the musical characteristics of Czech rotative dance round and round focuses on the relation of melody and text and the problem of declamation of dance songs. Dance tune, including the text, represents a complex web of relations on specific levels (rhytmical, melodical, tonal, declamatory). Innovation of one part is necessarily balanced by changes of other substructures, in order to preserve the aesthetical outcome. Change of the text can influence the rhythm of the song, but often is also being reflected in the form, metrics, melody and tonality. For the round and round tunes is characteristic the linear ordination of musical and textual motives. The rhyme schemes a-a, b-b and a-b, c-b prevail. Number of syllables in melodical segments depends on the number of bars and concrete rhytmical figures. Czech musicologists emphasize the fact that folk dance songs in general declaim perfectly. We checked this assertion on the example of round and round tunes. In considering the rhytmical-declamatory models, I distinguish between one-bar (O), two-bar (F) and three-bar (SV) types. Only in case of one-bar type (O) the musical accents correspond completely to verbal accents. However, other rhytmical-declamatory models did not originate by chance, but through deliberate playing with verbal accents on the basis of dance metrical pulsation. Our knowledge of the historical material enables us to consider the problem of development tendencies and construction archetypes of folk song. Aside of tables and schemes, there is an interesting collection of more than three hundred dance songs round and round that destacate by poetics as well as musical refinement.