Unprecedentedly diverse and ambiguous in terms of genre, style and the politics of authorship, the music of Iva Bittová presents a real challenge for musical analysis. This is probably the reason why Bittová’s work, despite having received considerable acclaim around the world, has not become the subject of serious musicological interest yet. In the present paper, I will address some fundamental methodological issues that I have faced in the course of writing the first ever monograph on the Czech-American female composer and performer. Also, I will give examples of some specific analytical problems and their solutions. Special attention will be paid to the question of style (potential continuity with Janáček and his school; influences of the 1960s Brno avant-garde, minimalism and reductionism, new wave and no wave, and the 1990s alternative music) and formal organization of musical material (metro-rhythmic structures; modality and ‘flexible diatonic’), particularly with regard to their ties to Moravian musical folklore and to the paradigm of ‘Moravian music’. As a starting point for further analytical and hermeneutical investigations of her music, I use the Miloslav Kabeláč’s concept of the ‘umbilical cord’: stretched to the limit, yet connecting the composer to his/her folklore. As Bittová expressed it herself (via email, 2021): ‘I believe […] that Moravian music has existed since the time of the Great Moravian, and it is necessary to dig deep into its roots. This is what really pulls me so much when playing and composing: to reach deeper, perhaps even more than we can...’