• ensemble of the Royal Infantry Regiment of Baron Wernhardt: participating ensemble
• JEŠKO, Ludevít: director of ensemble

The Bohemia 16/12/1858 report announced that those attending this event would be able to participate in an amusement to compose a new orchestral potpourri polka. This would comprise five melodies selected by the Kapellmeister of the Wernhardt ensemble, Jeschko [Ješko], from the suggestions of the visiting audience which they had written on paper and placed in an urn. Jeschko would then put together a potpoutrri from the selected melodies. The anonymous Bohemia reporter felt that a better method would have been to allow the melodies to have been drawn as lots by a third party.

A similar report appeared in Prager Morgenpost 16/12/1858, noting that the audience attending the event would be asked to suggest 8-bar polka melodies. From these Jeschko [Ješko] would select the five he considered to be ‘most suited’ and put together and orchestrate a new polka that would be performed that very same evening. This same information together with details of the time, venue and official title of the entertainment was announced in an advertisement published by Morgenpost 18/12/1858 and repeated a day later.

Confusingly, the Tageskalender in Bohemia 19/12/1858 reported that the time of the dance entertainment in the Konvikt Hall on that day was 5pm and not 6pm as specified by the previous Morgenpost source. This same Tageskalender also stated that the ensemble of the Infantry Regiment of Baron Wenhardt was to participate in a musical rehearsal on ‘Sunday’ i.e. on 19/12/1858, in the Sophieninselsaale [Žofín Hall] at 5pm for the forthcoming Gesellschaftsball [Society Ball]. That this rehearsal did take place and that it occurred at the specified venue and included Wernhardt’s ensemble was confirmed by a brief review of the event published in Morgenpost 21/12/1858. That same issue of Morgenpost also included news of the Konvikt Hall event and confirmed the participation of Wernhardt’s ensemble. Therefore we may assume either that the time given by the Tageskalender on 19/12/1858 for the Konvikt event was inaccurate and therefore that the Žofín Hall rehearsal either lasted only a single hour, or that Wernhardt’s ensemble divided and appeared at both venues simultaneously from 6pm. Notably the personal participation of the Kapellmeister of Wernhardt’s orchestra, Ludevít Ješko, was only noted only in relation to the Konvikt Hall event. 

In relation to the Konvikt Hall event, the Prager Morgenpost 21/12/1858 report was specifically devoted to describing the new polka composition. Jeschko’s ‘expertise in the composition of dances was stimulated afresh, in that [from the motives that the audience had written and placed in a specially situated urn, he had chosen five and] ... he quasi-improvised during the production a Polka and orchestrated it, and as the last number it was played by the orchestra.’ The new piece was noted to have found general favour and was encored.