The earliest composition by Josef Mysliveček (1737–1781), evidently written before he left for Italy (1763), was proved to be the occasional congratulatory cantata Alceste e Fileno, to an anonymous, allegorical pastoral text. The unanimous dating of the composition before 1757 is helped by a dedication, on the occasion of the election of the Zbraslav Cistercian Monastery abbot Desiderius Andres (in function between 1757 and 1770). The unique, undated copy of the cantata, in the music collection of the Osek Cistercian Monastery in north-western Bohemia, (deposited in the National Museum, Czech Museum of Music in Prague, shelf-mark CZ Pnm XXXII A 62) and procured by the local choirmaster Leonard Dont is presumably affiliated to the original source (perhaps the dedication autograph), from the Zbraslav music collection, today considered to be lost. The opening sinfonia, surviving in five other individual copies, suggests further hypotheses. It survives, amongst others, in the Waldstein music collection, in a group of Mysliveček’s early sinfonies, which are believed (by J. Čeleda, and R. Pečman) to be identical with the composer’s first works, which, according to the obituary, written by J. M. Pelcl, the composer had performed in an unspecified Prague theatre – probably, in fact, in the Waldstein Palace. The dating of the piece suggests that at the age of twenty, J. Mysliveček had already composed, and left Prague with certain compositional skills.
This article is meant, first, as a brief introduction to South African music studies and some of its specific problems for the Czech (ethno)musicological community, second, as a summary of some recent developments in the field, and third, perhaps most importantly, as a starting point for my research in the South African popular music culture. As a red thread, one basic idea goes through the whole text: the problem of essentialism and binary oppositions, how (if it is possible) to go beyond and what methods we can choose to reach this goal. Drawing on particular examples, I plead for a broadly based cultural analysis, new comparative approach and ethnographically informed local-scale studies. My findings and suggestions are based on my immediate experience with the South African environment – lasting more than fourteen months between 2005 and 2008 – as both a student and field researcher in popular music culture in South Africa and Lesotho.