In 1843 the German travel writer, Johann Kohl, commented on the curious fact that although several German states border Bohemia, a large degree of mystery and misunderstanding lay between them; in doing so he cited a common German expression: ‘Dieß ist mir so unbekannt wie die böhmischen Dörfer’ [sic] (this is as unknown to me as a Bohemian village). Despite the centrality, innovation and importance of Bohemian and Moravian musicians in the Baroque era (and before and beyond, of course) a good deal of it has, alas, remained remote to mainstream Western musicology. This situation has, however, improved dramatically over the 50 years since Early Music first went to press. For simple reasons of space this overview is limited to Bohemia and Moravia (modern-day Czech Republic–Slovakia warrants its own retrospective), and to the period from the middle of the 17th to the middle of the 18th century.