Corpus Musicae Popularis Slovacae is a national edition of folk songs and instrumental music from Slovakia and the environments of Slovaks abroad. It presents a parallel to extensive corpus editions issuing from multiple Central European countries (Hungary, Austria, Slovenia etc.). They consist of long-term edition projects with a conception derived from the character of domestic traditional song and music culture and thematically adjusts to their needs of presentation (regional, genre, and music-stylistic criteria, historical retrospective editions etc.). The corpus editions appear in the form of material editions with expert commentary, whereby multiple forms of media are currently used (print, sound, audio-visual). Their object is to bring traditional song and music closer to the public as part of national cultural inheritance.
The intention of preparing a corpus edition has appeared for the first time in Slovakia in the 1950s, at the Institute of Musicology of the SAS. During the time of publishing of the four-volume edition Slovenské ľudové piesne I – IV (Slovak folk songs I – IV, 1950 – 1964, ed. Konštantín Hudec, František Poloczek) with notated songs from the Department of Music Folklore / Department of Ethnomusicology archive, the whole edition additionaly leaned towards the idea of a corpus edition: the third volume (1956) includes the name of the edition Corpus Musicae Popularis – Cantiones Populares Slovacae. Tomus III. The Slovak folk songs edition has, in its four volumes, included small repertoire monographs of selected localities from multiple regions of Slovakia.
The Department of Ethnomusicology at the Institute of Musicology, SAS has followed up the idea of a national corpus edition since the early 2000s. In 2002, the first volume of Corpus Musicae Popularis Slovacae appeared, including transcriptions of folk songs and instrumental music from Podpoľanie. This first volume was composed on the basis of a new conception, which publishes folk song and music materials by regions.
Volumes up to present day:
Podpoľanie. Ľudové piesne a hudba. (Corpus Musicae Popularis Slovacae I.) Ed. Oskár Elschek, Lýdia Mikušová. Zvolen : Podpolianske osvetové stredisko, 2002.