Since 1996 the Jewish Museum in Prague has been researching certain Czech and Moravian synagogues that were supposed to contain the so called genizot (sg. genizah). These are the places where damagedand cast off writings andsynagogual objects that might had contained the Hebrew name of God. Such objects were habituolly considered as needing protection from the incompetent hands. This was accomplished exactly through their retention in genizot, or thorugh their rituál burial. Up to now, bigger or smaller genizot háve been found in Luže, Bezdružice, Všeradice, Úsov,
Březnice, Zalužany, Kdyni, Janovice n. Úhlovou, Rychnov n. Kněžnou and Holešov. The textile objects were disinteredfrom six of them. The greatest collection contained the genizah in Luže that
included also an extraordinary collection ofbig synagogual textile (curtains and mantles) and a great number of personál objects (smáli talii ts and cidakles). Next to this one, as far as the extent is
considered, are the collections from Březnice and Rychnov n. Kněžnou, single textiles had showed up in Zalužany, Holešov and Bezdružice, in other localities the textile objects were not found. The oldest textiles dáte back to the middle of the 17th century, the youngest to the end of the 19th century. To the most important findings of the synagogual textile belongs the curtain from Luže from the year 1652, collection of mantles from the same locality, from theyears 1688 and 1691, or a beau-tiful mantle from Březnice from 1758, with linen lining decorated with bound batik. These objects
represent for us important evidence of the decoration and technology, ušed in given time period especially in the country. An extraordinary importance has the circumsicion apron from Luže, the
only onepreserved in the country, and the collection of cidakles, smáli tallits worn over the clothes, that in all localities také the form of a smáli vest with elaborated buttoning. Also these cidakles had
not showed up in our collections before. Concerning the technologies and textile production, the evidences of bound and vax batik are wery interesting, even though these might had been ušed
secondarily, and objects made from the remainders of cotton prints containing identification stamps of the producers.
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.