Bohuslav Martinů’s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 4 (1956) has several special features: the work stands apart from Martinů’s other concertante works by consisting of only two movements, by its title „Incantations“, and by its free form and highly exalted mood, full of fantastic shimmering timbres and eruptive changes. The reviewers’ first response was, however, negative. On one hand, they praised its ingenuity, brilliant instrumentation and imaginative virtuosity; on the other, they dismissed the composition as eclectic and lacking formal homogeneity – their valuation was based on conventional formal and structural criteria.
The Japanese Hossô-monk Jôkei (1155-1213) is one of the better-known contemporaries of the famous Hônen (1133-1212), whose Pure Land School (Jôdo-shû) became so influential in medieval Japanese society. The Tôshôdaiji shaka-nenbutsu ganmon of Jôkei, however, is an interesting example for the often overlooked renaissance of the Japanese Vinaya School (Kairistu-shû) at that time. Being the second in a series of translations of important texts by Jôkei, the present article tries also to discuss this ganmon in the context of Jôkei´s thought.
The subject of the presented article is the processing of archaeozoological finds from the Early Middle Age settlement in Brno-Medlánky. This relatively small set consists of two different groups of osteological material. The first represents fragments of bones and teeth coming from the so-called kitchen waste. This set was processed by standard methods consisting in determining the anatomical affiliation, species, age, or sex, and the evidence of traces of manipulation (cutting, chopping, biting). The second group of finds representing several complete skeletons of animals is quite significant, as some of the animals were not consumed. Within the three features, 3 canine (2× a dog, 1× a wolf?), a horse and a pig skeleton in the secondary position were captured. Even in these cases, the basic characteristics of the animals were recorded, including age, sex, height, and post-mortem manipulation. The presence of preserved animal bodies from the settlement in Medlánky was compared with other documented finds of skeletons of animals from this period.