Emanuel Meliš

Emanuel Antonín Meliš Zminský (Zminný, near Pardubice, 1831 – Vršovice, Prague, 1916) was one of the first writers on music in nineteenth-century Czech Bohemia. He abandoned the study of law in Prague to devote himself to journalism, and soon turned towards music criticism with an essay published in the journal Lumír in 1857.

In 1858 he founded and edited Dalibor, the first regularly published Czech music journal, which appeared between 1858 and 1864 and again in 1869. Its pages carried valuable historical articles and the first biographies of Smetana, in 1863, and of the Slovak Ján Levoslav Bella, in 1869. His bibliographical work made him a leading reference lexicographer of music, and he contributed entries on Czech musicians to the encyclopaedias of the period. He also served on numerous commissions concerning church music, military music, opera and choirs.

Around the 1870s his interests shifted towards economic questions: he promoted an experimental farm and an agricultural journal, and he went on to run an inn. His legacy endures above all in his guides and bibliographical repertories, such as the one devoted to Czech printed songs between 1800 and 1862, which remain a useful source for the study of his country's music.