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CZECH REPUBLIC
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The geographical area of
the former Czechoslovakia has had a remarkable and long music
history; the line Berlin-Prague-Vienna-Budapest has been the
major location of new musical ideas from the 18th century onwards,
only recently eroded by Paris and the disruptions of the Second
World War and its consequences. The Czech musical tradition
has been continued in the 20th century, and, like that of Hungary,
is notable not just for the internationally-known composers,
but for the quality in depth of its lesser figures, who, while
never likely to achieve widespread attention, provide consistently
satisfying and invigorating musical experiences little matched
by countries of a similar size.
The recent division of
the former Czechoslovakia has left many, though not all, of
these composers to be claimed by the Czech Republic rather than
Slovakia (q.v.), in part due to the prominence of the musical
centres of Prague and Brno. The folk music of Bohemia and Moravia
has been especially rich and fruitful to 20th-century composers,
and it should be noted that the Moravian geographical sources
of such folk music are now divided by the Czech-Slovak boarder.
The other main legacy of popular music has been the tradition
(dating back to the 15th century) of the chorales of the Hussites,
who believed in the power of popular song and vernacular languages
in religious worship.
Modern Czech music can
traces its sources to the extraordinary resurgence of Czech
music in the second half of the 19th century, connected with
the rise of Czech nationalism within the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
The leading figure of this nationalist resurgence, in his tone
poems and his operas, was Bedřich Smetana (1824-1884),
whose tone poem cycle Ma Vlast (My Country, 1974)
is the quintessential Czech nationalist orchestral work, while
his The Bartered Bride (1866) is the classical Czech
national folk opera. As important to Czech musical life, Antonin
Dvořák (1841-1904) placed that nationalism into
an international context, in such works as his Slavonic Dances,
but even more prominently in his nine symphonies, a staple of
the international repertoire, of which the Symphony No.9
`The New World' (1893) is one of the best known of all symphonies.
The significance of the
two composers for Czech music was that, while following German
models, they established an overall tone that is specifically
and recognisably Czech, and which remains potent to this day:
deeply rooted in the Czech and Slovakian landscapes, it is characterised
by clarity and a joyful brightness, by a rhythmic surge and
excitement of happiness, preferring the optimistic, and, even
in tragic works, seeking the positive and the bright.
Their legacy was immediately
taken up by three composers working in a late-Romantic chromatic
idiom: Vítězslav Novák (1870-1949),
best remembered for his orchestral works; Josef Suk (1874-1935),
Dvořák's son-in-law and a celebrated violinist who,
in addition to orchestral works inspired by nature, produced
important chamber and violin works; and Josef Foerster
(1851-1959) whose choral works are of significance in the Czech
Republic. But by far the most significant Czech composer in
the first three decades of the 20th century was Leoš
Janáček (1854-1928), one of the four most
important opera composers of the 20th century. His musical language,
rooted in Moravian folk-music and patterns of speech, is completely
idiomatic and individual, and all the more remarkable in that
almost all his important works were written after the age of
60. With their social and psychological concerns, his operas
belong firmly to the 20th century.
The reaction to late-Romanticism
centred on Alois Hába (1893-1973) and his followers;
Hába started with atonal techniques and athematic works
(paralleling the path already taken by Schoenberg), but
in the search for a new harmonic language quickly adopted micro-tones,
intervals smaller than a semitone, while intentionally using
overall forms (the string quartet, for example) that emphasised
continuity. He then alternated works using elements of 12-tone
technique and those with micro-tones. An alternative reaction
to Romanticism was exemplified by Bohuslav Martinů
(1890-1956), who with Janáček is the major
Czech 20th-century composer of international import. Working
in Paris, he absorbed jazz and neo-classicism, and then, from
the middle 1930s, developed a powerful personal idiom that combined
the characteristics of the Czech tradition outlined above with
neo-classical elements. The overtly experimental was represented
by Emil Burian (1904-1959) a theatre and film director, a magazine
editor, and a jazz-band leader as well as a composer. After
studying with Foerster, he founded the Prague theatre
group 'D', directing it from 1939 until 1949, except for the
war years when he was imprisoned by the Nazis. In 1927 he developed
the 'voice-band' for choral recitation (speech set to music),
composing works for the group, notably May (1936). His
earliest music used Richard Strauss as a model, but he
soon became more experimental, incorporating jazz, negro-spiritual,
and Dadaesque influences. In turn, this gave way to a more obviously
Czech style, absorbing folk music (folk play with music The
War, 1935). With the post-Janáček opera Maryša
(1938), and especially in the post-war period his language became
more conventional, influenced by Martinů and Janáček,
notably in the fine String Quartet No.4 (1947). Miloslav
Kabelác (1908-1979) explored the influences of Oriental
and primitive folk-music, combined with Gregorian chant and
elements of 12-tone composition. The hallmarks of his symphonies
and a mass of choral and vocal music are conciseness and economy.
His instrumental skill is exemplified in the odd combinations
that his symphonies use: No.1 for string orchestra and
percussion (1941-1942), No.3 for organ, brass and timpani
(1948-1957), No.5 `Dramatica' for soprano and orchestra
(1960), No.6 `Concertante' for clarinet and orchestra
(1961-1962), No.7 for speaker and orchestra (Old Testament
texts) (1967-1968), No.8 `Antiphonies' for soprano, chorus,
percussion and organ (1969-1970). He was influential in introducing
younger Czech composers to electronic music and musique concrète.
Czech music was seriously
disrupted by the German occupation (1939-1945), with some composers
(notably Martinů) leaving, and others being imprisoned
or killed, notably Pavel Haas (1899-1944), who had combined
Hebraic and Moravian influences. But Czech music-making continued,
often with overtones of a nationalist resistance (Hába
even managed to continue teaching micro-tone music in Prague).
The establishment of communist rule in Czechoslovakia in 1949
further cut Czech composers off from European developments:
composers had to adapt to the demands of Socialist Realism,
and a younger generation (exemplified by Petř Eben,
born 1929) emerged unaware of serial developments, and thus
continued a mainstream Czech tradition. However, Czechoslovakia
slackened its cultural restraint earlier than many Eastern Block
countries, and knowledge of Webern and the European avant-garde
filtered through in the 1960s, so that Victor Kabeláč
(1908-1979) could start teaching the principles of electronic
music. The first electronic studios opened in 1964, following
French rather than German lines. New music compositional groups
sprang up, such as `Group A' in Brno, 1963, that included Ctirad
Kohoutek (born 1929); the Prague New Music Group, 1965, that
included Marek Kopelent (born 1932) and Zbyněk Vostřák
(born 1920); and the multi-art group Syntéza (`synthesis')
that included Václav Kučera (born 1929). Kohoutek
published a survey of modern western European musical techniques
in 1962. He employed a free tonality in the orchestral Velký
přelom (The Great Revolution, 1960), and serialism
to a children's work (Od jara do zimy [From Spring
to Winter]) in the same year, and his interest in children's
music led to the publication of his ideas on the application
of modern musical methods to the genre in 1966. At the same
time, he was developing his own methods of work, which he calls
`project music composition', and which includes the pre-planning
by graph of the formal structure, dynamics, and tone-colours,
before any purely musical ideas or realisations. Memento
(1967) for wind and percussion utilized this method, which he
has since increasingly applied to large-scale orchestral pieces,
culminating in the three-part Slavnosti světla (Festivals
of Light, 1974-1975). This rather quirky piece, with an
ideological base in revolutionary songs sifted through modern
techniques, is full of interesting ideas, orchestral textures
and bold effective colours that rescue moments of banality.
Vostrák is one of the few Czech composers to be directly
influenced by the German avant-garde, notably Stockhausen,
and by the ideas of Boulez and Cage. In the 1950s
he concentrated on stage works (four operas and four ballets)
in a lyrical neo-classical style, but then started using serial
and 12-note techniques in the early sixties. In 1965-1966 he
studied at Darmstadt, and received wider attention with Zrozeni
měsice (Moon Birth, 1967) for chamber orchestra. His
interest in electronic music led to work in the Electronic Music
Studio of Prague Radio from 1977. Kučera is a leading figure
among Czech composers involved in electronic music and musique
concrète. Whereas most electronic composers have
followed German examples, the Czechs have been influenced by
the French, and in particular the ballet works of Pierre Henry
and his major collaborator, the choreographer Maurice Béjart.
This is exemplified in Kučera's Kinetic Ballet (1968)
- a major change from his earlier music, which had reflected
the requirement for Social Realism, incorporating folk and neo-Romantic
elements. His Obraz (Picture) for piano and large orchestra
won a prize in Geneva in 1970, and Invariant (1969) for
bass clarinet, piano and tape was heard at the London ISCM in
1971. Lidice, a `radio musical-dramatic fresco' for forces
that include reporters and electronic sounds, won the Prix d'Italia
in 1973 and is recommended. His recent works (for example, Maluje
Maliř for a cappella children's choir, 1985, or the
song cycle Hořké a Jiné Pisně
[Bitter and Other Songs], 1987) have seemed dull and
conservative in comparison.
Of the more conservative
composers of this generation, Jindřich Feld (born 1925),
initially influenced by Bartók, came to prominence
with a radio opera, Pohádka o Budulinkovi (A
Fairytale about Budulinkovi, 1955), which was followed by
a children's opera Poštáchká Pohádka
(The Postman's Tale, 1956). The Concerto for Chamber
Orchestra (1957) incorporated serial and 12-tone techniques,
though these have subsequently been assimilated into a fairly
traditional style. From the Concerto for Orchestra (1950)
he has specialised in the concerto form, and among his more
recent works the Harp Concerto (1985) is particularly
interesting for its integration of solo instrument and orchestra
in a modern idiom, and is recommended. The accordion has figured
prominently in a number of recent pieces. The earliest compositions
of Jaromir Podešva (born 1927) follow the line of Novák
and Janáček, and in the 1950s he wrote many
popular songs and a three-part symphonic cycle on communist
themes, while his concert music reflected an interest in poetry
(culminating in the Symphony No.3, 1966, which is subtitled
Parallels to ideas by M.Kundera and B. Hrabal).
In the sixties he developed a more individual and dynamically
vigorous style, with an element of introspection, progressing
from a free tonality to combining tonality with 12-tone techniques,
discussed in a treatise (The possibility of cadence in the
dodecaphonic field) in 1973. This was expressed in the String
Quartet No.5 (1965) and in a series of symphonies starting
with No.2 (1960-1961) of which the recommended Sinfonia da
Camera No.4, Hudba Soláně (Solan's Flute) is
an individually atmospheric and largely lyrical reflection of
the composer's native Moravia, laced with gritty harmonies and
prominent parts for flute and harpsichord. The idea of extra-musical
'parallels' was further developed in the movement titles of
Symphony No.7 (1984) and in the Symphonic Parallel,
The End of War (1985). During the 1950s the music of Klement
Slavický (born 1910, not to be confused with his son,
Milan Slavický, born 1947) was influenced by Moravian
folk-music, and its rhythmic subtlety and its sense of drama
attracted considerable debate in Czechoslovakia. His fine Sinfonietta
No.3 (1972) shows his expressive qualities and his use of
modern techniques, with at times motoric rhythms and moments
of hushed lyricism. It has recently (1984) been followed by
a fourth sinfonietta for unusual forces - soprano solo, reciter,
strings, keyboard and percussion instruments. Three of the meticulously
crafted works of Vladimir Sommer (born 1921) have entered the
regular Czech repertoire. The first was the melodic Violin
Concerto (1950), followed by the dramatic tragic prelude
Antigona (1956-7) for orchestra. But his best known work
is Vokálni symfonie (Vocal Symphony, 1957-1958),
setting Kafka, Dostoyevsky and Pavese. It is a dark, dramatic,
sometimes harrowing, innovative work, and undoubtedly effective
on first acquaintance, although on repetition its material is
too limited for its stridency. His more recent work, such as
the String Quartet No.3 (1981), is less dramatic and
more introverted. The Cello Concerto (1977) is a thoughtful
and affecting score, rather solemn and introspective, meticulously
structured and with fine string writing.
Since the 1960s Czech music
has fully caught up with European developments, and synthesised
them with their own Czech traditions. One younger composer who
deserves mention is Vojtěch Saudek, whose Piano Concerto
`Na pamět Gideona Kleina' (`In Memory of Gideon
Klein', 1987) is one of the most exciting of the second
half of the 20th century, influenced by Messiaen, but
of stunning impact in its use of virtuoso avant-garde piano
techniques and in its depth of emotional expression.
This vitality has been
supported by the considerable strengths of Czech music-making,
from the major orchestras to the opera houses. Czech radio quickly
established a wide network in the 1920s, and has been a major
influence in the dissemination of new music, while the gramophone
industry, nationalised as Supraphon (1946), has been exemplary
in issuing new music. The Prague Spring has become a major new-music
festival. The country has also been remarkable for its string
players (of whom the most notable has been Josef Suk, born 1929,
the grandson of the composer) and especially their string quartets.
Also notable is the Czech Nonet (founded in 1923), and the very
high quality of chamber music has partly been responsible for
the extent and range of new Czech chamber works.
Czech Music Information
Centre:
Ceského hudebniho
fondu
Besedni 3, CS-11800
Praha 1
The Czech Republic
tel: 43 2-530 546
fax: 43 2-539 720
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EBEN
FIŠER
FOERSTER
HÁBA
HANUŠ
JANÁČEK
JIRÁŠEK
KALABIS
KAPR
KOPELENT
KREJČI
MARTINŮ
NOVÁK
SLAVICKÝ
SUK
VÁLEK
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EBEN
Petř
born 22nd January 1929
at Žamberk (Bohemia)
died 25th October 2007
at Prague
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Petř Eben is one of
the better-known Czech composers of his generation, and is a
practising pianist (especially in chamber music) and organist
as well as a composer. He initially attracted attention in 1954
with Six Love Songs. His first major large-scale work,
Sinfonia gregoriana for organ and orchestra (1954), later
revised as an organ concerto, initiated a life-long interest
in Gregorian chant. He then concentrated on vocal music (including
children's songs and folk-songs, influenced by Silesian folk
music), but turned to a Piano Concerto in 1961, which,
within a conventional framework, has some powerful moments but
a rather indistinct individuality. It was followed by another
large-scale work, the oratorio Apologia Sokrates (1961-1967),
based on Socrates' trial and defence. His style is modern without
being extreme, with echoes of music of earlier periods; recent
works have included Landscapes of Patmos (1984) for organ
and percussion instruments. Recordings of his work have been
regularly available outside Czechoslovakia, and are worth hunting
out as representative of the general musical outlook of his
generation of Czech composers. He was imprisoned by the Nazis,
and many of his works reflect his strong religious faith; he
has taught at Charles University, Prague, since 1955.
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works include:
- symphony Nachtstunden
(Night Hours) for wind quintet and chamber orch.
- 2 organ concertos; piano
concerto; Vox clamantis for trumpet and orch.
- Prague Nocturne
for orch.
- trio Opponents
for clarinet, percussion and piano; string quartet; wind quintet;
nonet; other chamber music
- harpsichord sonata
- organ music including
Faust; The Windows for trumpet and organ
- vocal: Ovid's Epitaph,
Apologia Sokrates (Socrates' Defence), 5 lyrical
songs, Unkind Lieder, Ballades for mixed chorus, soloists
and orchestra; songs
- ballet Curses and
Blessings
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recommended works:
oratorio Apologia Sokrates
(1961-1967)
String Quartet (1981)
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FIŠER
Luboš
born 30th September 1935
at Prague
died 22nd June
1999 at Prague
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Fišer is an interesting
composer with a strong dramatic bent (even in such works as
the fine, if conventional, Sonata for solo cello, 1985).
His style shows an awareness of the modern techniques of such
composers as Ligeti and Penderecki, but his music
has also been influenced by Janáček's technique
of building up by short, pithy phrases. His violin sonata Ruce
(Hands, 1961) quickly entered the Czech repertoire, and
his Fifteen Prints After Dürer's 'Apocalypse' (1965)
brought international recognition; built on a six-note theme,
it is constructed in fifteen related episodes, and has a rugged
strength paired with a feeling of isolation or loneliness, especially
in the use of harpsichord and wood-block against the massed
orchestra. It formed the first of a triptych, of which the second
part, Caprichos, is inspired by Goya. The final section,
Requiem (1968) is a powerful work in its use of massed
sound and clusters contrasted with simple, ritual textures.
It opens with a long unaccompanied bass-baritone solo (creating
the atmosphere of liturgical rite) followed by a very extended
crescendo of superimposed choral clusters, creating an impression
of hundreds of tortured voices. His choral interests continued
in a large cantata, Nářek nad zkazow mesta Ur
(Lament over the destruction of the city of Ur, 1969).
Fišer is also noted in Czechoslovakia for his piano sonatas,
and the sonata form was recently employed for more unusual forces
in Sonata for piano, mixed chorus, and orchestra (1984).
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works include:
- 2 symphonies
- piano concerto; concerto
for two pianos and orch.; Albert Einstein for organ and
orch.
- Double and Fifteen
Prints After Dürer's 'Apocalypse' for orch.
- Riff for orch.;
Report for wind orch.; Kreutzer Etude and Pietà
for chamber ensemble
- sonata Ruce (Hands)
for violin and piano; Crux for violin, timpani and bells;
sextet for wind and piano and other chamber music
- piano sonatas
- Requiem; cantata
Nářek nad zkazow mesta Ur (Lament for the city
of Ur)
- television opera The
Eternal Faust; opera Lancelot; musical Dobry voják
Svejk (The Good Soldier Schweik)
- incidental music for
film and stage
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recommended works:
Fifteen Prints after
Dürer's 'Apocalypse' (1965) for orchestra
Requiem (1968)
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FOERSTER
Josef Bohuslav
born 30th December 1859
at Detenice
died 29th May 1951 at Nový
Vestec
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Foerster, a pupil of Novák,
has been overshadowed by his major contemporaries, (including
Novák himself). But his fine music is very much in the
Czech Romantic tradition, and worth the discovery, especially
his masterpiece, the opera Eva. His early work (pre-1897)
is unexceptional, but the very large corpus of music that followed
(influenced by periods spent in Hamburg and Vienna, and the
friendship of such composers as Mahler) combine a lyrical
nationalism with late-Romantic ideas. His handling of material
and orchestration is always thoroughly professional and sometimes
inspired, with assured command of large or massed forces and
often delighting in polyphony. His style remained essentially
consistent during a long working life, though it takes on a
new dimension in Eva, partly through the influence of
Moravian folk-music; the theme of the power of love as a spiritual
motivator appears throughout his work, expressed with an often
elegiac lyricism.
In the Czech Republic his
large number of choral works and songs for both professional
and amateur singers, with a close integration of text and music,
have been widely influential. Of these, his lyricism is exemplified
in the slow and lovely introduction, viola and harp prominent,
to the cantata Máj op.149 (May, 1936) for
baritone, reciter, male chorus and orchestra. A setting of a
section of the best-known poem by the most famous of Czech Romantic
poets, Karel Mácha (1810-1836), it is the farewell of
the condemned outlaw `the King of the Forest', who had become
an outlaw after killing his lover's seducer only to discover
that he had committed patricide. The cantata is dramatic (notably
the orchestral march of the condemned man being brought out),
warmly passionate, and combines a nationalist ecstasy with a
sadness of farewell, especially in the farewell baritone solo.
The Mass (1923) pre-dates Janáček's better-known
use of the ancient Moravian language, Glagolitic.
Outside the former Czechoslovakia
Foerster is probably more often encountered in orchestral works.
Of these, the finest is the Symphony No.4 `Easter' (1904-1905).
Its big, brazen opening movement, filled with Romantic tragedy,
Czech lyricism, and a tumultuous joy, describes the feelings
elicited in an adult by Easter (though the music has no particular
need of a programme since the symphonic logic is perfectly well
defined), and has a Mahlerian grandeur. The second movement
(Easter through the eyes of a child) has a lithe and very Czech
sense of the light and joyous dance, a natural continuation
of the kind of orchestral painting at which Smetana excelled,
building up into its own hymn-like grandeur. The slow movement
(`in praise of solitude and magic') is expansive, with a sense
of joyous triumph; the large and sometimes Mahlerian final movement,
which swiftly and powerfully changes moods, is suddenly and
unexpectedly illuminated by a solo organ playing a Czech chorale
(`On the third day was the Lord arisen') before the final orchestral
paean of praise. This symphony should be on the list of anyone
exploring major 20th-century symphonies, and for those wishing
to extend beyond Dvořák and Smetana there is no
better place to start.
The other orchestral work
most likely to be encountered is the symphonic suite Cyrano
de Bergerac op.55 (1903). Inspired by the play by Edmond
Rostand, it is divided into five movements describing various
events in the play, the opening movement assigning themes to
Cyrano and to his romantic ideal Roxana; if overlong, it is
sometimes grand, often contemplative, and full of Czech colour
and clarity. The Violin Concerto No.2 op.104 (1918-1926)
is also attractive, and unusual for a Romantic concerto in that
it has more in common with the form of the tone poem than with
a virtuoso work; indeed, the violin line seems to spin a story
in which it is only one of the characters.
Of Foerster's six operas,
the third, Jessica, is based on Shakespeare's Merchant
of Venice, but the most important, and the only one to have
remained in the repertoire, is Eva op.50 (1895-1897).
It launched Czech opera towards the 20th century, for although
the subject is a story of ordinary farming people, they are
treated entirely from within, as deeply drawn and very real
characters, in contrast to earlier `folk' operas (such as those
of Smetana) where we are essentially looking on at a colourful
story. This pre-dates Janáček's Jenufå,
usually considered to be the earliest employing such natural
portrayal (only the first act of Jenufå had been
completed at the premiere of Eva). It also provides a
musical link between Smetana and Janáček, and the
similarities with the latter are considerable. The libretto
is based on a play by Gabriela Preissova (as is Jenufå),
and as in Janáček, the concentration is on the psychological
drama; there is no attempt at a swathe of folk-colour or effect,
although (again like Janáček) the music is imbued
with the idiom of Moravian folk-music, which Foerster had collected.
The crucial difference is that Foerster rewrote the prose of
the stage drama into poetry, toning down the dialect, while
Janáček in his folk-opera retained the prose and
the flow of speech that went with it. The story is of a poor
young woman, Eva, who is in love with a young man, Mánek,
whose mother (who holds the inheritance of the family farm)
does not think Eva is good enough for her son. Eva agrees to
accept the love of another admirer, the furrier Samko. In Act
II she is living with Samko, having had a baby by him that has
died; she is however still in love with the now married Mánek,
and he with her; they decide to leave together. In Act III they
have moved away from the village and are living together beside
the Danube, unmarried but happy except for Eva's doubts and
premonitions, when Mánek's mother arrives to tell them
that his petition for divorce and remarriage has been refused
by the village council. Mánek must return, and Eva throws
herself into the river Danube in despair. The core of the opera
is the internal tension of the three main characters: Eva's
constant turmoil, her shame over her unmarried state, and despair
over her dead baby; Samko's infatuated love and eventual frustration
at his sharing a life with a woman who does not love him; and
Mánek's inability to take decisive action against his
mother. These are strongly drawn in both text and music, with
a free flow of action and interaction only occasionally broken
for a more extended aria. Eva's final song of despair before
she commits suicide is one of the finest passages in Czech opera.
It builds in a constant flow, the orchestra reflecting each
emotion, from a sad regret through remorse to a vision of redemption
as she sees her child and her parents. The orchestra arrive
at a great emphatic climax, and suddenly, accompanied only by
an organ, Eva's voice soars twice on the words `I see paradise'
as she dies, before Mánek returns for a final moment
of self-realisation and a close of all passion spent. Not the
least fascinating aspect of Eva are the many pre-echoes
of Janáček, in the passages of dialogue, in the
use of brass and brass phrases, and especially in the magnificent
ending (which surely must have influenced the ending of Jenufå,
and its climactic moment the ending of Janáček's
Sinfonietta). It would be invidious to claim that Eva
is of the same quality as Jenufå, except in its
closing pages, for the more conservative Foerster did not have
the inimitable idiomatic genius of Janáček, but
it is a most convincing opera that deserves to be well-known
outside the former Czechoslovakia; this should be possible now
that surtitles can overcome the problem of the language, since
the words are crucial in such a drama.
Foerster was an accomplished
visual artist and music critic, and worked as a teacher and
critic in Hamburg (1893-1902) and in Vienna (1902-1918) before
becoming Professor and then Director (1922) at the Prague Conservatory.
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works include:
- 5 symphonies (No.4 Easter)
- cello concerto; 2 violin
concertos; Capriccio for flute and orch.
- Tragic Overture
for orch.; 6 suites including Cyrano de Bergerac and
4 symphonic poems for orch. and other orchestral works
- cello sonata; 2 piano
sonatas; 3 piano trios; 4 string quartets; wind quintet and
other chamber works
- piano sonata and other
piano music
- song cycles Clear
Morning, Love Songs (of Tagore) and many other song
cycles and songs; 6 cantatas including May for baritone,
chorus and orch. and Mortuis fratribus; Stabat Mater;
4 masses including Mass in the Glagolitic language and
many other vocal works
- melodrama Amarus
- operas Bloud (The
Simpleton), Deborah, Eva, Jessica, Nepremonzeni
(The Invincible), and Srdce (The Heart)
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recommended works:
opera Eva op.50
(1895-1897)
cantata May op.159
(1935)
Symphony No.4 Easter
op.54 (1904-1905)
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HÁBA
Alois
born 21st June 1898 at
Vizovice
died 18th November 1973
at Prague
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Alois Hába is one
of those awkward but important figures whose place in the history
of music is assured, but whose own works employing his innovations
have never captured the public imagination. After an early interest
in folk-music (his father was a Moravian folk-musician), he
studied with Novák, and then in Vienna and Berlin
with Schreker, whose ideas greatly influenced him, and
through whom he learnt of Schoenberg's harmonic developments.
His early works, such as
the Symphonic Fantasy for Piano and Orchestra op.8, explored
atonality, but also athematicism (the lack of developed or repeated
themes) which became characteristic of his work. For Hába
the new musical ideas were associated with the philosophy of
the theosophist Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), whose concept of
`anthroposophy' sought (through cognitive development) to return
people to the spiritual realities from which they had become
divorced since the rise of ancient myth-making. This influence
culminated in the symphonic fantasy Cesta života (The Path
of Life, 1933) and in the still-unperformed anthroposophist
opera New Earth. Hába saw thematic development
and repetition as a legacy of primitivistic instincts that needed
to be overthrown for full personal development.
At the same time, Hába
continued to explore Moravian and Slovak folk-music not for
their melodies and harmonic progressions, but for their use
of micro-tones, intervals smaller than the Western semi-tone.
Whereas for Schoenberg the natural development from atonality
was the 12-tone system, Hába decide to integrate the
use of such micro-tones in his own music, as intervals of equal
importance to more usual intervals, and not (as so often in
Moravian folk-music) as inflections or decorations to the main
melodic line. This was developed in the quarter-tone String
Quartet No.2 (1921) and String Quartet No.3 (1922),
and then in the orchestral Symphonic Music for Orchestra
(1922) and the Choral Suite on Onomatopoeic Folk Texts
(1923). The culmination of this period was the quarter-tone
opera Matka (The Mother, 1929-1930) and the sixth-tone
opera Thy Kingdom Come (1938-1942). Matka is perhaps
Hába's major work, and would be interesting even without
the athematic progression and the use of quarter-tones (including
a quarter-tone piano). The story, in ten scenes, is of the realities
of farming life, influenced by Hába's own childhood experiences.
It opens with the death of the wife of the farmer Křen,
worn out by heavy work; he, burdened with six children, manages
to find another wife, and these first four scenes the emotional
requirements of the characters prevail. The rest of the opera
concerns the growth of the family until a balanced family life
is achieved, not without its tribulations and four new children;
the motivator for this is the new wife, Maruša, the mother
of the title, whose vocal characterisation is drawn with sympathy
and psychological understanding. In the final scene the old
couple look back over their life. The opera has an almost Expressionist
intensity, launched by the orchestral opening, whose strange
colours are created by the use of quarter-tones. The ear is
quickly accustomed to these by a rising quarter-tone phrase
or row in the strings, which, although the opera is otherwise
athematic, returns from time to time and is eventually given
in a full scale. The realistic intensity of the story is enhanced
by the use of quarter-tones, as are the colours to match the
darker sides of a farming life, and the combination makes this
the most effective of his quarter-tone works.
In the 1930s Hába,
while continuing to utilise micro-tones, also started to use
elements of 12-tone techniques in such works as the Toccata
quasi una fantasia (1931) for piano, and Cesta života
(The Path of Life, 1933) for orchestra. This symphonic
fantasy is in one movement, divided into seven sections; the
12-tone influence is mainly in the melodic progression, spinning
a flow of lines of non-repeated notes, rather than in the accompanying
ideas, where rhythmic vitality and repetition, reminiscent of
the neo-classical Stravinsky, propels the momentum. The
effect is of a rather angular and unsettled idiom, with lean
textures and a variety of percussion, as if the traditional
elements had been distorted by a concussion. The athematic Nonet
No.1 (1931) also uses 12-tone melodies, and again is in
one movement, divided into four sections corresponding to a
classical four-movement structure, the pattern of the first
corresponding (by use of a new theme at each traditional point)
to the progression of sonata form. It is a lithe and engaging
work alternating moments of dissonant harmonic tension with
harmonic repose, but with the rhythms and the continuous new
thematic material ensuring a more unsettled energy even in the
sonorous slow section. The tauter one movement Nonet No.2,
written in the same year (1931) uses 7-tone rows in a similar
cast, which gives it at attractive oriental hue (Hába
was aware of the affinities of his musical interests and his
philosophies with those of the East).
In the 1950s Hába
continued alternating 12-tone works (such as Violin Concerto,
1954, and Viola Concerto, 1956) and micro-tonal works,
but also introduced more orthodox folk-music elements in such
works as the Wallachian Suite (1952) for orchestra. The
jaunty, jazzy and improvisatory little Suite for Solo Bass
Clarinet shows a similar return to simpler idioms, while
remaining athematic.
However, the bulk of Hába's
micro-tonal ideas are to be found in the piano music and the
string quartets. The micro-tonal piano music is virtually impossible
to encounter, as special pianos are required to play it: Hába
had three quarter-tone pianos especially constructed, as well
as other instruments (brass, guitar, harmonium) to play micro-intervals.
Of his sixteen string quartets, the first is conventional, some
use 12-note rows (Nos 7, 8, 9, 13),
some are in quarter-tones (2, 3, 12), others
in sixth-tone (11), while No.16 is in fifth-tones.
The works in conventional intervals present few problems, and
are interesting for their athematic construction as well as
their rugged, expressive qualities. The middle sections of the
philosophically programmatic String Quartet No.13 `Astronautic'
(1961), for example, draw melodic material in the continuously
changing thematic lines from a 12-tone row, and the quartet
draws on both tonal and atonal harmonic ideas. With the micro-tonal
works problems do occur for listeners (as well as players required
to play in sixth-tones). The danger is that the micro-tones
are perceived as poor intonation, especially as, the micro-tones
and the athematic treatment apart, the general layout, the melodic
cast, the interactions of the instruments, the rhythmic processes,
are relatively conventional. The opening movement of the String
Quartet No.11 (1968) in sixth-tones illustrates these dangers,
although the micro-tones add a colour shading to the slow movement.
But in the fine String Quartet No.12 (1960) in quarter-tones,
written in part in reaction to the international tension that
led up to the Cuba missile crisis, such criticisms are less
valid, as the micro-tones take on cluster-like effects in the
opening, and moments of repose are created by moving away from
the quarter-tones. The impassioned middle movement is especially
effective, with its sonorous shades, chordal effects, and movements
a quarter-tone away and back; this quartet looks forward to
micro-tonal shadings of the avant-garde period.
Hába taught his
micro-tonal and athematic principles at the Prague Conservatory
(1924-1945) and the Prague Academy of Music (1945-1951), and
headed the `5th of May' Opera company (1945-1948). He wrote
widely on his musical ideas. His brother Karel Hába (1898-1972)
was also a composer and violinist, and was influenced by his
brother's theories.
───────────────────────────────────────
works include:
- viola concerto; violin
concerto; Symphonic Fantasy for Piano and Orchestra
- symphonic fantasy Cesta
života (The Path of Life); Symphonic Music for
Orchestra; Wallachian Suite for orch.
- Suite for Solo Bass
Clarinet; Suite for Cymbalom; 16 string quartets;
4 nonets;
- piano sonata; Six
Compositions for Piano; 6 suites for quarter-tone piano
and other piano music
- Choral Suite on Onomatopoeic
Folk Texts and other choral music
- operas Matka (The
Mother), The New Earth and Thy Kingdom Come
───────────────────────────────────────
recommended works:
opera Matka (The
Mother, 1929-1930)
Nonet No.2 (1931)
String Quartet No.12 (1960)
String Quartet No.13 (1961)
───────────────────────────────────────
HANUŠ
Jan
born 2nd May, 1915 at Prague
died 30th July, 2004 at
Prague
───────────────────────────────────────
Jan Hanuš has been
active in Czech music as an organiser (notably in the Prague
Spring Festival) and as a musicologist (including work on the
critical edition of Dvořák's music), as well as
a composer, and after the collapse of communism he became head
of the Czech League of Composers. His music has a direct appeal
in an undemanding Czech idiom, full of light, colour and Czech
melodic progressions in the tradition of Smetana and Dvořák.
His harmonies are only occasionally touched by a more dissonant
idiom, though he has more recently used modern devices (in such
works as Poseltvi [The Message, 1969], for baritone,
chorus, two prepared pianos, electric guitar, percussion and
tape, and the Concertino, 1972, for two percussionists
and tape). He is noted as a symphonist, exemplifying a continuation
of a Czech idiom within conventional forms, although the Symphony
No.6 (1979) shows a similar trend of introducing unusual
instruments (including the flexatone and electric bass guitar)
and sonorities within a traditional framework. He recently reconstructed
the lost choral finale of the Symphony No.1 (1943) from
memory. The Symphony No.2 (1950-1951), written during
a period when Hanus was inspired by St.Francis of Assisi, has
an infectious spring-time bounce and a very Czech lyricism within
a conventional format. The lively and attractive scherzo employs
a Bohemian folk-dance and has the vigour of similar works by
Martinů, and while not traversing any weighty matter,
this is an attractive work. Among his most recent large-scale
works has been a major oratorio (1½ hours long) Ecce
Homo (1977-1980) for soloists, reciter, choruses, orchestra,
organ and electronics, and an admired Glagolitic Mass
(1986). He has a special interest in music and musical studies
for children (exemplified in the cantata, The Czech Year,
1949-1952). Recordings of his music have been quite widely available
in the U.S.A.
───────────────────────────────────────
works include:
- 6 symphonies
- Concertante Symphony
for organ, harp, timpani and strings; double concerto for oboe,
harp and orch.; concerto piccolo The Swallow for chorus,
flute and cello; concertino for percussion and tape
- Variations and Collages
for orch.
- Fantasy for string
quartet and other chamber music
- songs and song cycles
inc. Umbrella from Picadilly; oratorio Ecce Homo;
cantatas and masses; choral music
- ballets including Salt
is More Precious than Gold; operas including Plameny
(Flames), Sluha dvou pánu (The Servant of Two
Masters), Pochoden Prometheova (Prometheus' Torch), Pohádka
jedné noci (A Night's Fairytale)
───────────────────────────────────────
recommended work:
Symphony No.2 (1950-1951)
(see text)
───────────────────────────────────────
JANÁČEK
Leoš
born 3rd July 1854 at Hukvaldy
died 12th August 1928 at
Moravská Ostrava
───────────────────────────────────────
Leoš Janáček
was a composer of genius, whose operas, alongside those of Richard
Strauss, Benjamin Britten, and Alban Berg,
form the basis of the 20th-century operatic repertoire. His
completely individual idiom is all the more remarkable because
the music he composed before reaching the age of forty is relatively
conventional, if well constructed, and most of his finest and
most individual works were written after he was sixty.
Those earlier works were
initially in a Romantic style, and then from 1888 came under
the influence of Moravian folk-music, which he had begun to
collect. But, heralded by the cantata Amarus (1897),
the opera Jenůfa (c.1894-1903, later revised) introduced
his personal voice, and after 1918 it became internationally
recognized as a masterpiece, boosting Janáček's
own compositional confidence.
The key elements of Janáček's
mature style are tension, a sense of yearning, and a constant
feeling of a momentum that is on the edge of unbalance. All
the aspects of his idiom reflect these characteristics. Melodic
lines are built up from short units, often shifted out of step
with their accompaniment to create a tension in the flow. The
harmonies increasingly omit key signatures, but while including
whole-tone passages (an influence from the French Impressionists)
and sometimes scales drawn from folk-music, are founded on a
tonal base. The tension and edge that his harmonic colours so
often invoke are created first by the characteristic melodic
progression of 4ths, 5ths and 2nds, and second by pitting blocks
of contrasting harmonies against each other, sometimes with
dissonant elements.
His structures and rhythms
follow a similar pattern. Janáček rarely used traditional
forms or motifs, and there is little use of counterpoint. Instead,
structural tension is created by the contrast of disparate ideas
placed against the main blocks, and by the use of ostinati rhythms.
Structural progression is achieved by changes in these contrasts,
and by repetition with alteration to the material. Repeats of
melodic ideas are often accompanied by changes of rhythm, which
themselves are often mirrored (repeated back to front - a technique
found in Moravian folk-music). The result is a constant shifting
of the flow of similar material to give an urgent sense of progression.
His orchestration supports
this approach. Blocks of the orchestra regularly overlay each
other, with an intentional lack of merger. Further expressiveness
is created by the use of instruments in their extreme registers.
The use of those favourite Czech sections of the orchestra,
woodwind and brass, is especially effective. His operatic structures
reject the traditional aria, preferring dramatic progression
through a flowing vocal line (foreshadowed in Czechoslovakia
by Foerster's Eva, first performed in 1899, which
anticipates aspects of Janáček's operatic idiom).
This developed into an avoidance of overlapping voices, and
the substitution of a realistic concentration on a single voice
at any given moment, sometimes contrasting with a chorus who
are often offstage. The most revolutionary aspect of this idiom
is the use of what Janáček called `speech melody':
the use of the irregular patterns and musical structures of
everyday speech. This led to the use of prose (as opposed to
the poetry that was then standard for librettos) and vernacular
expression. Another characteristic that contributes to the sense
of tension and flow is his habit of ending vocal phrases on
a weak rather than an emphatic beat. All his operas are relatively
short, a reflection of the taut dramas they employ and the high
tension of so much of their material. An anomaly in his some
of his operas is the presence of minor inconsistencies and contradictions
in the plots, reflecting the concentration on the psychological
and social comment rather than story-line. A personal stylistic
device is the quick repetition of a crucial phrase (something
Janáček employed in his own speech).
Janáček's exploration
of Moravian folk-music was reflected in a series of collections
of arrangements of folk-songs in the late 1880s and early 1890s,
and emerged in an orchestral suite, the lively Lachian Dances
(1889) for orchestra with organ. It is heavily influenced by
Dvořák's Slavonic Dances, and not as accomplished;
some of the dances were then incorporated into the ballet Rákocz
Rákoczy (1891), which is designed mainly to showcase
folk-dances. A similar influence runs through Janáček's
various orchestral arrangements of Moravian dances.
Janáček had
already completed his first opera, Šárka
(1887-1888), based on a play (drawn from a poem) by Julius Zeyer.
The story - of the love-hate of two enemies, Ctirad and the
Amazonian Šárka - is a kind of Czech myth with
Wagnerian overtones, and the failings of the libretto, as well
as Janáček's inexperience, have relegated it to
being completely overshadowed by the opera of the same title
and subject by Zdeněk Fibich (1850-1900). His second, The
Beginning of a Romance (1891), is also marred by its libretto,
based on a short story by Gabriela Preissová. The folkish
tale tells of the love of a shepherd's daughter and a Count's
son, and is very much a 19th-century treatment, peasants viewed
from the city, complete with the moral that people should marry
their equals. Fortunately the best of the themes found their
way into the Suite for Orchestra op.3 (1891), and this
four movement work is a good introduction to Janáček's
earlier style, especially as hints of the later maturity emerge
(for example, in the haunting opening to the second movement).
The third movement uses an extended version of one of the Lachian
Dances. The major transitional work is the cantata Amarus
(1897, revised 1901, 1906) for soprano, tenor, baritone, chorus
and orchestra, which was simultaneously being set by Foerster
as a melodrama. It tells of Amarus, forced as a young man to
become a monk, who longs for a life beyond his vows. He is foretold
the hour of his death, and arrives at it after following a young
couple into the churchyard and seeing them embrace with the
joys of love denied to him. It lacks the rhythmic pungency and
rapid juxtaposition of orchestral blocks that makes his mature
style so idiomatic, but the melodic lines anticipate his later
work.
Nonetheless, the development
of an original idiom in his next opera, Jenůfa (c.1894-1903),
is remarkable. It was inspired by a folk play by Gabriela Preissová,
who (in contrast to her earlier short story) presented the characters
as real people, whose concerns and psychology involve us regardless
of their origins, as opposed to the then-usual treatment of
ordinary villagers as objects of a colourful, distant life-style
(Eva, another of her plays, had similarly inspired Foerster,
with equally emphatic stylistic results). Central to those concerns
is the tension between social norms - or rather the patterns
of thought they have produced - and the individual desire for
self-fulfilment; here, and in other Janáček operas,
this is connected to the constraints placed on women, and the
social message batters at 19th-century morality to take us into
the 20th. At the same time shows the redeeming power of the
partnership of love based on that self-fulfilment, as opposed
to the more archetypal Wagnerian conception of redemption through
love. Jenůfa is in love with a young mill-owner, Števa,
whose step-brother Laca is in love with her. Jenůfa's step-mother,
the Kostelnička (a nickname reflecting her position as
church-warden) forbids her to marry Števa without a year's
engagement, unaware that Jenůfa is already pregnant by
Števa. Jenůfa tries to hold Števa to his
obligations, but he flirts with other women, and Laca, scorned
by Jenůfa, slashes her cheek. In Act II Jenůfa has
had her baby, and is ostensibly working as a maid in Vienna
but in fact is being kept hidden away for shame by Kostelnička.
Števa is told, in the hopes he will marry her, but is
now not interested and anyway already engaged. Kostelnička
tries to persuade Laca to take Jenůfa, but he is put off
by the fact of the baby. Kostelnička tells him that the
child has died, and to turn fiction into fact, and caught in
the madness of her proprieties, she drowns the baby in the river,
telling Jenůfa it had died while Jenůfa was herself
bedridden with a fever. Jenůfa accepts Laca, but Kostelnička
is haunted by her deed. Act III opens with the impending wedding,
but at that moment the body of the baby is dragged from the
river, and Laca has to save Jenůfa, who admits the baby
is hers, from the fury of the villagers. Kostelnička steps
forward to announce her guilt, Števa's fiancée
rejects him, and at this moment in the opera Janáček
builds the orchestra into a stunning, urgent, emphatic climax,
and it seems quite clear that the curtain is about to fall.
Instead, to delicate orchestral strains, completely changing
the focus in one of the most moving moments in opera, Laca turns
to Jenůfa and offers her his hand in spite of all that
has happened. Jenůfa has learnt the true meaning of love,
and the real close to the opera arrives, to music of magnificent
warmth and fulfilment.
Janáček's next
opera Osud (Fate, 1903-1906) is an oddity, being
the rather bizarre story of an opera writer and his unfinishable
opera, and was closely connected with actual events and people
in Prague. Its verse libretto destroys its credibility as a
stage work, in spite of later attempts to improve it, though
the music shows many of Janáček's hallmarks. Janáček
then turned to works that showed a growing political and social
awareness. The rather unpianistic piano sonata Sonata 1.X.1905
`On the Streets' (1905) reflects the violent suppression
of a Czech nationalist demonstration (the cycle On the Overgrown
Path, 1901-1911, is a much more effective piano work). The
third movement is missing as Janáček tore it up
at the final rehearsal for its premiere. He then wrote three
major short choral works of importance inside Czechoslovakia,
but little known outside, all based on nationalist poems by
Petr Bezruč attacking a thinly disguised Archduke Ferdinand.
They are for unaccompanied male voice choir, an idiom at which
Janáček excelled, with his sense of the impulse
of rhythm and sonorous chordal polyphony. Kantor Halfar
(Schoolmaster Halfar, c.1906, revised 1917) tells the
(apparently true) story of an assistant schoolmaster whose use
of Czech (as opposed to the required Polish) prevents him finding
a full teaching position, and leads to his losing his fiancée
and to his committing suicide. Maryčka Magdónova
(1906, second version 1907) is about an orphaned woman whose
miner father died in a drunken fall, and whose mother was crushed
by a coal-wagon. She steals wood from the Baron's estates to
keep warm, but is caught, and to avoid the shame of having to
face the aristocracy, she throws herself into the river and
is drowned. Seventy Thousand (Sedmdesát tisíc,
1909, rewritten 1913) is a revolutionary work, and perhaps the
most effective of the three: the 70,000 are those left who have
not abandoned their native language, but will have to if they
are to survive. The text is direct and heavily spiced with irony,
as are all three works, the music of hope and protest overlaid
with a resignation, tenors at the top of their range adding
anguished phrases, the words `seventy thousand' made urgent
by repetition.
Janáček's next
opera might have been expected to follow a similar socially
potent subject, but instead he turned to a satirical work in
which the target is a certain type of his fellow countryman.
The Excursions of Mr.Brouček to the Moon and the Fifteenth
Century (1908-1917, usually known simply as The Excursions
of Mr.Brouček) has the element of fantasy and unusual
mental and physical environments that were to be a feature of
the last three operas. The story is based on a novel by Svatopluk
Čech, and its complicated libretto history ended up with
a work in two parts, with parallel subsidiary characters played
by the same singers in each half, who are also contemporary
characters in the tavern of the opening and close. The central
character is a type unusual in opera, but no less cogent for
that: an ordinary, self-satisfied, comfortably middle-class
philistine, so apparently inimical to the vitality of any culture,
Mr. Brouček himself. In the first part, Brouček, who
has fallen into an inebriated sleep, is transported to the moon,
where his materialistic outlook and stodgy mental views are
the derision of the highly refined moon people. In the second
half, dramatically more effective, Brouček is dropped into
the middle of the Hussite rebellion, and finds himself expected
to fight. The Excursions of Mr.Brouček has been
overshadowed by Janáček's other major works, in
part because of the oddity of the story, whose satire needs
a close following of the words, but its neglect is not justified.
The delightful music is wide ranging, from hard-hitting satire
to the glory of the Hussite chorale, and the combination of
fantasy and satire is dramatically effective, especially in
recording where the fantasy can be visually conjured up by the
listener. In particular, Mr.Brouček emerges as a character
whom we can condemn, but for whom at the same time we can have
a sneaking sympathy and elements of affection, as if Janáček,
in spite of his avowed intent to satirize, could not help showing
that all people, even the most philistine, are worthy of understanding.
However, Janáček
did then turn to another patriotic subject in the tone-poem
Taras Bulba (1915-1918) for orchestra with organ. In
part inspired by the desire for Czech nationalism during the
First World War, the grim story (based on Gogol) is of a Ukrainian
Slav hero who loses his two sons, one by his own hand, in a
siege of a Polish-held town, and is himself captured, nailed
to a tree, and burnt. This storyline has more in common with
a 19th-century aesthetic than his operas, and the symphonic
fantasy is perhaps the last great surge of 19th-century Romanticism
in Janáček's output, even if the means have many
of the features of his mature style. Divided into three movements
(the death of each son and the death of the father), the score
is Janáček in his most pungent Czech idiom, graphically
vivid, with tender love themes, judgemental or raucously martial
brass, dissonant blocks, interjectory or ostinati percussion,
and the gloriously uplifting, all cast within Janáček's
ability to create a continuously tense flow.
The end of the First World
War, when the composer was already 68, also marks the beginning
of Janáček's final compositional phase of intensity
and illumination, in part inspired by his love for a much younger
married woman, Kamila Stösslova, which lasted from 1917
until his death. His love was not requited (though a close friendship
was), but this does not seem to have been crucial: it was the
intensity of loving that generated much of the following music.
The first musical outcome was one of the finest of 20th-century
song cycles, The Diary of One who has Disappeared (1917-1919)
for tenor, contralto, three off-stage women's voices and piano.
The 22 poems that form the diary were ostensibly by an industrious
farmer, and were discovered after his disappearance; the actual
authorship has never been conclusively determined. The poems,
in a quasi-arch form, tell of the infatuation of the farmer
for a gypsy, his torment in his desire, her seduction of him,
and (in a poem consisting just of punctuation) their consummation.
He is torn further away from his farmer's life by his continuing
desire, and when she bears his child, he leaves, giving himself
up to his fate. Janáček's treatment, especially
with the extra voices, makes it a kind of compressed opera for
the concert platform, and he provided instructions for darkened
lighting and the entry of the alto onto the stage only in the
seventh song. The tone is immediately set by the tense opening,
describing the meeting, encapsulating the suppressed energy
and physical excitement. The vocal lines are free, following
the natural lines of the verse, impassioned, often full of pent-up
agitation; the piano writing is mostly light and delicate in
texture, sometimes word-painting (fire-flies, the wind in the
cornfield, the cock's crow), but usually following or anticipating
the vocal line. Some of the songs are grouped without interruption,
and there are thematic links between various of the songs. The
wordless thirteenth poem is set for piano alone, starting lightly,
but becoming more earthy, disjointed, and urgent in describing
the consummation. The song cycle encapsulates the passions of
infatuation, the words providing the context and development,
the music every nuance of the fervour and the torment.
The opera Katya Kabanova
(1920-1921) is based on the powerful play The Storm by
the Russian A.N. Ovstrovsky. Set on the banks of the Volga,
it tells of a woman (Katya) married to a weak man and dominated
by his mother. Suffocated by this situation, Katya falls in
love with the cultured Boris, himself plagued by his drunkard
uncle. However, she refuses to be unfaithful to her vows, in
spite of the encouragement of a friend who is herself having
an affair. When her husband goes on a business journey, and
resists her pleas to take her along with him, she succumbs to
her passion for Boris. But she is stricken by her conscience,
and in the storm of the play's title, confesses, and commits
suicide in the Volga. Thus the theme returns to Janáček's
preoccupation with the tensions between personal realities and
social requirements, and the ambivalent tug between a hollow
duty and desire. Again, the plot is relatively simple, and the
focus is on the psychology of the characters. Janáček's
score is the most warm and lyrical of all his operas, with a
flow of glowing colours, especially in the purely orchestral
writing, where the strings are more in evidence and the brass
less; the sound of the troika pervades the first act. This is
combined with an intensity of vocal writing and characterisation:
Katya is vividly portrayed, making this one of the great singing-acting
roles. The intoxication of love and the counter-pull of a kind
of spiritual duty suffuse the work, and time and time again
the orchestral writing caresses and inflames the passionate
vocal lines, and when they become so overwrought as to be on
the verge of breakdown, the orchestra lets them sink back into
the warmer flow. Knife-edged domestic tensions have rarely been
so well caught as in the first Act, and the meeting of the lovers
in Act III has something of the qualities of the end of Jenůfa
with a sensuous edge.
Janáček then
turned to a subject that was a combination of pure fantasy and
down-to-earth symbolic reality, and dramatically one of the
most magical of all operas, one of those rare works of art whose
apparent simplicity appeals to children, and whose actual psychological
complexity captivates adults. The Cunning Little Vixen
(Liška Bystrouška, 1922-1924) is Janáček's
tribute to Nature as the generator of all things, including
human emotions. The libretto originated in a series of drawings
by Stanislav Lolek in a newspaper, to which Rudolf Těsnohlídek
wrote prose stories in the dialect of the local lumberjacks.
The central character is the vixen of the title, living in a
world filled by butterflies, crows, a dragon-fly, a mosquito,
a frog, a badger, the forester, a game-keeper and his dog, and
other creatures of the woods, all portrayed on stage. In the
first Act this magic scenario is set, and the vixen as a cub
is caught by the game-keeper as a pet for his children. The
lonely vixen (missing her freedom) and the dog talk of love,
and the vixen is hit by a friend of the son of the game-keeper.
She bites him and tries to escape but is tied up and then teased
by the farm-yard animals, especially the cock and hens. The
vixen kills the cock, and manages to escape and run into the
forest. In the second Act, the vixen tries to find a home in
the badger's set, and a parson and a schoolmaster are introduced,
themselves discussing lost loves. The gamekeeper shoots at the
vixen, missing, and the vixen meets a fox, who tries to seduce
her. He soon succeeds, and the woodpecker announces their forthcoming
marriage. In the last Act, the vixen and her new cubs evade
a trap set for her, but she is hit by a shot from the game-keeper
and killed. The humans in the inn discuss these events, and
in the last scene the game-keeper is alone, seeing a little
fox-cub and reminded of the vixen, and catching a frog who is
a grandson of the one in the first scene; he muses on the miracle
of rebirth. Again, the central theme of a female caught in an
inappropriate social situation (the farmyard) is reiterated,
but here with the celebration of her freedom, even if it will
lead to her eventual death, and of the continuing cycle of that
freedom (the fox-cubs). Again it is a natural, realistic relationship
that provides fulfilment. The animal figures and psychologies
are closely intertwined with the human (the badger and the schoolmaster
are sung by the same singer), and act as psychological archetypes
as well as having their own sharply drawn characters. Musically,
it is the opera in which Janáček most suffused into
his idiom the Czech qualities of bright light and clarity, and
the happiness of sunlight and nature pervade the score, the
rhythms often gently lilting, the occasional moments of folk-song
more direct than was his custom. It is also full of gentle humour
and satire, from the gaggle of crows raucously commenting on
events to the bantering and tipsy anxieties of the humans, but
its primary emotion, which keeps recurring, is tenderness. The
Cunning Little Vixen is not often staged, for it requires
a large cast including children and brilliant set designs, and
the writing for sopranos is often exceptionally high and demanding,
but it is a magical experience not to be missed.
Janáček's next
opera had another, but much more rigorous, sense of the fantastic.
The Makropulos Case (Věc Makropulos, 1923-1925),
is based on the play by Karel Čapek. It revolves around
an inheritance litigation, Prus v. Gregor, which, if it turns
out against the Gregor family, will leave Albert Gregor with
no choice but to commit suicide over his debts, as his father
had done. The verdict depends on a will lost a century ago,
and a young and beautiful woman, Emila Marty, says she knows
where it is; she wants some old Greek papers that were with
it. The will is found, but mentions an illegitimate son, and
Emila says she will prove that this is Albert's father. The
details and complexities of this case are laid out in Act I.
In Act II, the Prus claimant, who, like Albert, has fallen under
Emila's spell, finds out the surname of the illegitimate son
was Makropulos, and his mother Emila Makropulos. He also has
the Greek papers, which he will give to Emila in return for
her giving herself to him. In the beginning of Act II she has
done so, ice-coldly, and the document identifying Ferdinand
is discovered to be a fraud. Emila is the key, and her luggage
is ransacked, and found to be full of letters addressed to various
women with the initials E.M. Emila then declares the truth -
she was born in Crete in 1575, and has been kept alive and young
by a potion developed by her father. She has had to keep changing
her name over the years, and she was Emila Makropulos, the mother
of Ferdinand. She declares that such a long life has no meaning,
and that she does not want the Greek papers with the formula;
neither does anyone else, and they are burnt, as Emila rapidly
ages and dies, at peace at last. This complex story (the above
is only the outline) provided the framework for Janáček's
most acid opera, exposing the petty meanness and avarice of
the lesser characters, and the spiritual bankruptcy and cynicism
of Emila, whose characterisation in text and music is so magnificent
as to negate the story's dryness. The central theme, shown by
its opposites, is of the sufficiency and wonder of life as it
is; it also allowed Janáček to produce a portrait
of a different kind of woman, more sophisticated, eventually
world-weary, but in the end suffering a similar tension between
natural fulfilment and the constraints of circumstance as his
earlier portrayals. The ending, as Emila reveals her secret,
stunning and subduing her listeners, and then, changing from
a young and beautiful woman into an ancient and withered old
lady, is of compelling force, turning into a kind of cathartic
redemption, and the whole of the rest of the opera necessarily
leads to this point. Such is its power that the grotesqueness
of the basic tenet of story - a 300-year old woman - is completely
forgotten.
Janáček's final
opera, From the House of the Dead (1927-1928) has as
its material one of the most unlikely of operatic sources, Dostoyevsky's
novel of a prison camp, a work of epic scale and a very large
number of characters. Yet Janáček's treatment turns
it into one of the most harrowing and yet most uplifting of
all operas. There are no concessions to the audience - this
is not an opera to see for its story or melodies - with no plot
as such and no single major character. Instead, it is a kind
of extended musical portrait of the camp, in which, in short
episodes, various prisoners recount their life experiences or
tell apposite tales, and undertake camp tasks. Throughout is
the spectre of the containment of freedom and man's inhumanity
to man, but, in a most unusual fashion, for the music is not
often lyrical and never sentimental, an extraordinary ethos
emerges from this portrait, of the power and wonder of life
even in the most adverse of circumstances, of the primacy of
the human spirit. A good production (and for its full impact
it needs to be seen as well as heard) is an uncomfortable, unforgettable
and exceptionally moving experience by which few can failed
to be affected. From the House of the Dead, with great
prescience, stands as the opera which condemns so much of the
worst of the 20th-century, while still celebrating hope and
the power of the spirit.
The extraordinary vitality
of Janáček's last two decades also produced four
non-operatic masterpieces. The Sinfonietta (1925-1926)
is Janáček's finest orchestral work, that developed
from a set of fanfares into a full-length work ecstatically
celebrating the force of life. The first movement is a series
of fanfares that fold over each other, theme engendering theme,
using nine trumpets, two tenor tubas, two bass trumpets and
two pairs of timpani. The lighter second movement involves the
whole orchestra, while the third is nocturnal, spinning short
woodwind figures in a description of night around the old monastery
at Brno. The fourth acts as a scherzo, while the final movement
returns to the wonderful fanfares of the opening. Throughout,
Janáček's technique of short phrases, switching
around the orchestra, is used to pump power, momentum and excitement
into the flow in a culmination of his orchestral technique.
Equally remarkable are his two string quartets, especially as
chamber music forms such a limited part of Janáček's
output; as might be expected from a composer with such a dramatic
instinct, both are programmatic in inspiration (though there
is no direct correlation between programme and content) and
passionate and expressive. The String Quartet No.1 (1923)
- an earlier quartet of 1880 had been lost - was inspired by
Tolstoy's story, Kreutzer Sonata, itself inspired by
Beethoven's violin sonata (Beethoven's first-movement second
theme is echoed in the slow movement of the quartet). The quartet
had an intended message: Janáček said it was a protest
against men's despotic attitude to women. It contrasts darker
colours and tenser writing with a sense of the dance, the edgy
with the uplifting, moments of aggression with passages of tenderness,
and its ending is questioning. The String Quartet No.2 `Intimate
Letters' (1928) is Janáček's most personal expression
of his theme of the experience of love, given passion and unerring
musical logic, and which encapsulates the emotions of love from
anguish and nostalgia to great beauty, from turbulence to the
joy of the dance. It is one of the finest quartets ever written,
combining purely abstract musical satisfaction, notably the
range of string colours and effects, with the most intense expression.
The Glagolitic Mass (Glagolská mše,
1926) for four soloists, chorus, orchestra and organ, is a setting
of the Mass in Old Slavonic, the five parts divided by orchestral
interludes with a fanfare introduction and, to end, an Intrada
preceded by an organ postludum. This highly-charged work is
the choral equivalent of the Sinfonietta, in its general
stylistic features, in its celebration of the Slav spirit, and
especially in its atmosphere of fervent uplift; in it Janáček
seems to be exalting not so much a specific religion as the
joy of created nature itself. The ending is preceded by a thundering
organ solo with furious pedal work, and then both orchestra
and organ join forces in the final Intrada, whose tremendous
excitement, as if a bright sun had blazed out, seems to renew
the promise of the cycle of birth, indeed an `intrada'. Mention
should also be made of the light-hearted and attractive wind
sextet Youth (Mládí, 1924), and
the equally happy Concertino (1925) for piano and six
instruments, inspired by little incidents in the lives of the
animals in Janáček's garden. Janáček's
final work, Danube (1928) for orchestra, left incomplete
and usually heard in the version by Osvald Chlubna, will be
of interest to those who already know his work; the original
version sounds unfinished, but is full of interesting ideas,
notably the very high soprano vocalise in the third of four
movements.
Some of the editions of
Janáček's operas are problematic, the personal idiom
of Jenůfa, for example, being smoothed out in some
versions, and changes being made to the ending of From the
House of the Dead. The original versions promoted by the
conductor Sir Charles Mackerras are to be preferred.
Janáček conducted
the Brno Philharmonic Orchestra, and was connected with the
Brno Organ school (1881-1920), which he had helped found. But
he is not associated with influential compositional teaching
activities; of all the composers in this Guide, his very
personal idiom is perhaps the least imitated, and the least
imitable, even if occasional echoes of a phrase or idea of orchestration
occur in later Czech music.
───────────────────────────────────────
works include (titles as
usually known in English):
- Capriccio for
piano, left hand, and 7 instruments; Concertino for piano
and 6 instruments
- The Ballad of Blaník,
Danube, overture Jealousy, The Fiddler's Child,
Sinfonietta, Six Lachian Dances, Suite,
Taras Bulba and other works for orch.
- violin sonata; piano
trio; 2 string quartets (early quartet lost, No.1 Kreutzer
Sonata, No.2 Intimate Letters); Youth (Mládí)
for wind sextet
- Sonata 1.X.1905
for piano; In the Mist, On the Overgrown Path,
Reminiscence and Theme and Variations for piano
- song cycle The Diary
of One who Disappeared for tenor, alto, three women's voices
and piano; cantatas Amarus and The Eternal Gospel;
Glagolitic Mass; Nursery Rhymes (Ríkadla)
for 9 voices and 10 instruments; Seventy Thousand, Kantor
Halfar and Maryčka Magdónova for male
voice chorus and many other works for chorus; many arrangements
of folk-songs
- operas The Beginnings
of a Romance, The Cunning Little Vixen, The Excursions
of Mr.Brouček, From the House of the Dead, Jenůfa,
Katya Kabanova, The Makropulos Case, Osud (Fate)
and Šárka
───────────────────────────────────────
recommended works:
Seventy Thousand
(1909) for male voice chorus
Concertino (1925)
for piano and 6 instruments
song cycle The Diary
of One who has Disappeared (1917-1919) for tenor, contralto,
three off-stage women's voices and piano
opera The Excursions
of Mr.Brouček (1908-1917)
opera From the House
of the Dead (1927-1928)
Glagolitic Mass
(1926) for soloists, chorus, orchestra and organ
opera Jenůfa
(c.1894-1903)
opera Katya Kabanova
(1919-1921)
String Quartet No.1 Kreutzer
Sonata (1923)
String Quartet No.2 Intimate
Letters (1928)
Suite for Orchestra
op.3 (1891)
Taras Bulba (1915-1918)
for orchestra
wind sextet Youth
(1924)
───────────────────────────────────────
bibliography:
M. Brod Leoš
Janáček, His Life and Works, Prague, 1924 (r.Vienna,
1956)
E.Chisholm The
Operas of Leoš Janáček, London, 1971
H.Hollander Janáček,
His Life and Works, London, 1963
J.Vogel Leoš
Janáček, London, 1962
───────────────────────────────────────
JIRÁŠEK
Ivo
born 16th July, 1920 at
Prague
died 8th January,
2004 at Prague
───────────────────────────────────────
Jirášek is
known in Czechoslovakia for his operas (he conducted opera at
Opava, 1946-1955) and for his vocal works. In the 1960s he concentrated
on works for chamber-sized forces (Four Studies for string
quartet, 1963-1966, Music for Soprano, Flute and Harp,
1967). His Stabat Mater (1968) is a powerful combination
of a modern style mixed with a feeling of antiquity and aleatoric
devices. It was followed by another major large-scale work,
the Symphony (Mother Hope) (1973-1974, since revised
to exclude the vocal part), a striking and urgent work in a
mainstream European idiom. In a conventional four-movement structure,
the opening adagio is brutal, uneasy, and sometimes motoric,
contrasted by a thoughtful lento that breaks out into a turbulent,
aggressive climax in the middle of the movement before closing
in a lyrical, mysterious atmosphere. The powerful third movement
opens with a motoric march with ostinati ideas handed around
the orchestra, moves through a contrasting trio, re-establishes
the mood of brutal aggression, and then reverts to the atmosphere
that closed the second movement, before eagerly breaking out
into a trusting idea reminiscent of the drive of Martinů
and ending with a very beautiful and mysterious atmosphere of
slow rising woodwind phrases against held strings. The finale
only partially resolves this turbulence, and the symphony, if
uneven, is well worth investigating. The Concertino for Harpsichord
and Eleven Strings (1987) has a similar ruggedness, rhythmic
energy, together with moments of string writing with a nostalgic
hue, a satirical, slightly grotesque middle movement, and a
rather quirky last movement. This is an interesting, if not
startling, addition to the limited repertoire of modern concertante
works for the harpsichord. Jirášek has also produced
a number of humorous and ironic works, such as Hudba k odpoledni
kávě (Music for Afternoon Coffee, 1972) for
four clarinets. More recently he has concentrated on stage works.
He is currently Director of Music Studio, Prague.
───────────────────────────────────────
works include:
- symphony Mother Hope
for baritone and orch., revised without vocal part; Concertante
Symphony for violin and orch.
- concertino for harpsichord
and strings
- 4 Dramatic Studies
for orch.; Variations for orch.; Serenades for
chamber ensemble
- 3 string quartets and
other chamber music
- 3 cantatas; oratorio
Stabat Mater; songs and vocal music
- operas And it was
Evening and it was Morning; The Key; Medved (The Bear); Pan
Johanes (Mr. Johanes); Svitáni nad vodami (Daybreak over
the Waters)
───────────────────────────────────────
recommended works:
Concertino for Harpsichord
and Eleven Strings (1987)
Stabat Mater (1968)
Symphony Mother Hope
(1973-1974)
───────────────────────────────────────
KALABIS
Viktor
born 27th February 1923
at Cerveny Kostelec
died 28th September
2006
───────────────────────────────────────
While Viktor Kalabis' style
has evolved from the mainstream evolutionary line influenced
by Bartók and Stravinsky towards the use
of some serial features, he has brought to it a tough and rigorous
intellect, which shows, in a not unattractive fashion, in the
music. It is exemplified in the impressive Violin Concerto
No.1 (1958), whose explosive orchestral opening is immediately
countered by a flowing lyrical solo violin line, as if the two
were in debate, the orchestra angry, the solo line turning the
material into a more considered and beautiful appraisal, mollifying
the orchestra. The very beautiful, sometimes anguished, slow
movement reconciles some of that orchestral anger, and if the
finale is not as inspired, it makes an interesting work for
those exploring the violin concerto beyond the usual repertoire.
It was followed by a second violin concerto in 1978.
Kalabis's relatively small
output has concentrated on symphonic and chamber music, the
former including nine concertos (among the most recent being
for piano and chamber ensemble, 1987). The Concerto for Orchestra
(1966), with its explosive opening, a slow movement that starts
in a lyrical vein but turns into an angry march, a sometimes
perky, sometimes aggressive third movement, and emphatic finale
that leads to a quiet close and a final moment of perkiness
and orchestral outburst, is one of his better-known works, in
a mainstream European style, strong in technique and orchestral
effect, but short on memorable invention. The Symphony No.2
`Sinfonia Pacis' of 1960 was widely heard outside Czechoslovakia,
while the fine Symphony No.4 (1972-1973) has the unusual
shape of two movements. The first, in a loose rondo form, opens
and closes with the strings in the mood and atmosphere of the
slow movement of Shostakovich's Symphony No.5,
but builds up inexorably to a great climax, its technique of
surging forward following those of Martinů's symphonies,
with ostinati bass pedal figures. The balancing but more frenetic
second movement has a similar sense of progression.
The chamber music has reflected
an interest in the neo-Baroque and includes a number of works
that use a harpsichord (his wife is the well-known harpsichordist
Zuzana Růžičková), such as the Concerto
for Harpsichord and String Instruments (1975), and the Sonata
for Violin and Harpsichord, 1967). Harpsichord players might
consider investigating the Six Two-Part Canonic Inventions
for Harpsichord (1962), especially the Bachian final invention.
From 1953 to 1972 Kalabis
was manager of the music department of Radio Prague.
───────────────────────────────────────
works include:
- 5 symphonies
- concerto for chamber
orch. (Homage à Stravinsky); cello concerto; piano
concerto; 2 violin concertos; concertino for bassoon and wind
instruments
- Concerto for Orchestra;
Symphonic Variation for orch.; Diptych for Strings
- cello sonata; clarinet
sonata; sonata for violin and harpsichord; piano trio; 6 string
quartets (No.4 In Honour of J.S.B.); Little Chamber
Music for wind quintet
- 3 piano sonatas; Six
Two-Part Canonic Inventions for Harpsichord
───────────────────────────────────────
recommended works:
Violin Concerto No.1 (1958)
Six Two-Part Canonic
Inventions for Harpsichord (1962)
Symphony No.4 (1972-1973)
───────────────────────────────────────
KAPR
Jan
born 12th March, 1914 at
Prague
died 29th April
1988 at Prague
───────────────────────────────────────
Kapr startled the Czech
musical world in the sixties by changing his style from the
nationalist school to a new personal system of composing that
included serial procedures. His earliest works (String Quartet
No.1 1937, Piano Concerto No.1 1938) had shown the
influence of French music and Martinů, but during
World War Two he concentrated on folk music. His works immediately
after the war reflected the current climate in Song of my
Native Land (1950) and In the Soviet Land (1950).
But his eight symphonies, the first written in 1943, have shown
a steady progression to simpler textures and harmonic styles,
so that by the Symphony No.7 Krajina dětství
(Country of Childhood) spare textures and serial techniques
combine with a lyrical line for children's chorus into a moving
and very accessible idiom, with a taut and economical structure.
Symphony No.8 (1970) includes a chorus and taped bells.
His change of style in the sixties, with such works as Chiffres
(1965) and Oscillations (1966) attracted considerable
attention among other Czech composers.
Kapr has been active as
a music critic (1946-1949), a music producer with Czech Radio
(1939-1946), as an editor with the publishing house Orbis (1950-1954),
and as a teacher. His works have been heard quite widely outside
Czechoslovakia (he won a UNESCO prize in 1968). As a leading
figure of his generation, his music, especially that written
after the middle 1960s, deserves more widespread attention.
He must also be one of the few composers to list table tennis
among their hobbies.
───────────────────────────────────────
works include:
- 8 symphonies (No.5 Olympijská,
No.7 Krajina dětství [Country of Childhood]
for children's chorus and orch., No.8 Campanae Pragenses
for chorus, orch., and tape)
- 2 piano concertos; violin
concerto; viola concertino; Concertino for clarinet,
cello, percussion and piano; Concertino for bassoon and
wind instruments
- vocal symphonic score
Mánes' Horolgue
- Anachron for chamber
orch.
- 8 string quartets and
many other chamber works, some with tape; Woodcuts for
8 brass instruments
- 3 piano sonatas and other
piano music; 2 cantatas; choruses
- opera Muzikantská
pohádka (Musicians' Fairytale); film music
───────────────────────────────────────
recommended works:
Symphony No.7 Country
of Childhood (1968)
───────────────────────────────────────
KOPELENT
Marek
born 28th April, 1932 at
Prague
───────────────────────────────────────
After his discovery of
the techniques of Webern in the early 1960s, Kopelent
has been at the forefront of the Czech avant-garde. His String
Quartet No.3 of 1963 used serial techniques, non-periodic
rhythms, and an element of performer choice - a far cry from
Czech music of only a few years earlier - and subsequently gained
wider attention at the Stockholm ISCM of 1966. The atmospheric
and effective (if not highly individual) choral piece Matka
(Mother) of the following year, pitting modern vocal textures
against a solo flute and employing 12-tone rows and performer
rhythmic choice, was also heard outside Czechoslovakia. The
String Quartet No.4 of 1967 uses theatrical gestures,
an interest reflected in music for experimental films, radio
plays, poetry recitals, and other multi-media events. In 1969
he received a grant from the German Academy of Arts in West
Berlin to concentrate on his compositional activities. From
1956-1971 he was editor of contemporary music for the publishing
house Supraphon, and in 1965 became director of the ensemble
Musica Viva Pragensis. He is interesting as a Czech composer
who has decided not to encase his modern ideas in more traditional
forms. Perhaps because of this, his music is woefully neglected
in recordings, in spite of the fact that many pieces have been
heard in Western Europe. His recent works have been for more
conventional forces, while retaining their modernity. They include
the Toccata (1978) for viola and piano, the unusual and
appealing Concertino (1984) for cor anglais and chamber
ensemble, taking full advantage of the timbre of the solo instrument,
and the astringent String Quartet No.5. His individual
approach has been recently exemplified in the Agnus Dei
for soprano and chamber ensemble, which moves from astringent
atonalism to a moving tonal close.
───────────────────────────────────────
works include:
- 3 Movements for
string orch.; Hrátky (A Cozy Chat) for saxophone
and orch.; Accord and Disaccord for 12 soloists and orch.;
And she really exists... for voices and orch.
- 5 string quartets and
Play for string quartet; wind quintet; In Honour of Vladimir
Holan for Nonet; sonata for 11 strings Veroničina
rouška (Veronica's Veil) and other chamber music
- Bludný hlas
(The Wandering Voice) for actress, chamber ensemble, tape,
ad lib film, and light projector; works for voice and various
ensembles including Agnus Dei; Matka (Mother) for flute
and chorus
───────────────────────────────────────
recommended works:
Concertino for cor anglais
and chamber ensemble (1984)
Matka (Mother) fresco
for flute and chorus (1964)
───────────────────────────────────────
KREJČI
Isa
born 10th July 1904 at
Prague
died 6th March 1968 at
Prague
───────────────────────────────────────
Krejči was a leading
Czech neo-classicist, and a member of a group of composers associated
with Martinů before the Second World War. Neo-classical
ideas are particularly marked together with a lively sense of
joy in the Cessation for orchestra (1925), the Symphony
No.1 (1954-1955), the opera Pozdviženi v Efesu (Revolt
at Ephesus (1939-1943) and in the five string quartets.
The Symphony No.2 (1956-1957) is an undemanding and vivacious
work that should appeal to many with its classical elements,
strong echoes of Prokofiev and Shostakovich in
a light vein, and deft scoring tinged with unmistakable Czech
elements. He also absorbed influences from Czech folk music,
especially the chorales of the Bohemian Brethren, together with
an interest in ancient classical culture (opera Antigone
1934, song cycle Antické motivy [Ancient Motifs],
1936). His influence was widely felt through his other musical
activities. He was conductor of the Bratislava Opera (1928-1932),
music director and conductor of Prague Radio (1934-1945), artistic
director of Olomouc Opera (1945-1957), and conductor and dramaturge
at the Prague National Theatre (1957-1968).
───────────────────────────────────────
works include:
- 4 symphonies, sinfonietta
- concertinos for piano
and wind, violin and wind, cello
- Serenade and 14
Variazione sul un canto popolare for orch.
- 3 trios (Piano Trio
with female voice); 5 string quartets; nonet and other chamber
music
- operas Antigone, Pozdviženi
v Efesu (Revolt at Ephesus)
───────────────────────────────────────
recommended works:
Symphony No.2 (1956-1957)
───────────────────────────────────────
MARTINŮ
Bohuslav
born 8th December 1890
at Policka
died 28th August 1959 at
Liestal, Switzerland
───────────────────────────────────────
If there is a 20th-century
composer whose mastery has still to be discovered by a wider
public, that composer is Martinů, although there are at
last signs that the situation is changing. It took 40 years
for the music of Janáček to become well-known;
perhaps the same fate awaits Martinů, whose compositions
after the mid-1930s (like those of Janáček after
1905), if developing no startling innovations, show a uniformity
of a totally individual voice, instantly recognisable.
The situation has been
exacerbated by his huge output (over 400 works, mostly written
before this period), by his reputation as a leading composer
in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s (most of his works that appear
in concerts come from this period), and by claims of his unevenness
(although this is applicable only to those works written before
the mid-1930s). Allied to this, his mature style, for all its
elements of power and deep tragedy, is founded on the basis
of expressing joy, and at times ecstatic pleasure in life and
nature. His predominant tone extends the Czech tradition in
a fundamentally new direction. His formal structures, founded
on a mastery of counterpoint, look back to the free forms of
the Baroque. All these elements have been unfashionable in the
musical world of the last three decades.
Born in a bell tower, he
was expelled from the Prague Conservatory for `incorrigible
negligence' - he was stifled by the prevailing German Romanticism
- and after playing second violin in the Czech Philharmonic
(1918-1923) he found his milieu in Paris in 1923, studying with
Roussel. His String Quintet (1927) won a Coolidge
Prize in 1932, and his String Quartet No.2 was heard
at the ISCM of 1928. The most striking pieces of this period
are influenced by jazz, sometimes overtly, as in the marvellous
Revue de Cuisine (1927, written as a short ballet), sometimes
as an element, as in the instantly attractive Concertino
for cello, wind instruments and piano (1924), important
as the first of 33 works using the solo cello, and including
musical fingerprints that are to be found throughout his output,
such as the characteristic side drum and the use of a four-note
rhythmic device.
Martinů then continued
to experiment in a number of stage works, with a particular
gift for musical comedy, using advanced dramatic techniques
and sometimes surrealist subjects. At the same time, he started
to incorporate Czech elements into his music, in a wide variety
of genres. In parallel with this appeared a number of orchestral
and concertante neo-classical works which reflected the influence
of his teacher Roussel and looked back to the Baroque
forms in a cast of 20th-century polyphony (e.g. the Concerto
for String Quartet and Orchestra, 1931, and the Sinfonia
Concertante for two orchestras, 1932), with development
by ritornello or by treatment that is episodic rather
than thematic.
At the end of the thirties
Martinů fused the neo-classical elements (notably the influence
of the concerto grosso), the Czech melodic tinges, and
technical devices learnt from his earlier music (especially
germinal development from cells of ideas gradually extending
to become the motivating impulse of the music, first tried out
in the Piano Trio No.1 `Cinq Pièces Brèves',
1930) into a totally individual style, and his music takes on
a new authority. The Double Concerto for two string orchestras,
piano and timpani (1938) has all the characteristics of
the works that were to follow; a simplified melodic vocabulary,
an intense rhythmic momentum, with `sprung' rhythms, heightened
by the germinal development of melodic ideas, and strong Moravian
folk intervals. Combined with his natural lyricism is a powerful
musical awareness of the tension of the times, both immediately
before and during the Second World War (most consciously in
the Polni mše [Field Mass], 1939 and in
Památnik Lidicem (Memorial to Lidice, 1943),
when he fled Paris for the States via Lisbon in 1940. This gives
his music an extra dimension, but (again like Janáček)
with the final tone of joy and revelation.
Between 1940 and 1953,
he concentrated on a series of six symphonies, in which the
principle of developing cells reached a culmination in the Symphony
No.3 (1944), and in what many regard as his masterpiece,
the Symphony No.6 (Fantaisies Symphoniques, 1951-1953),
when his voice is to be heard at its most natural and spontaneous.
His luminous orchestration also reached its culmination in this
period, with blocks of solo instruments (especially wind) pitted
against the general orchestra, octave doubling, and the use
of the piano as a colour instrument. In 1945 Martinů suffered
a serious accident, cracking his skull, and this affected the
quality of his output in the immediately subsequent years.
But after 1953, his final
works show a more conscious return to the atmosphere of his
Czech homeland, which, with the arrival of the communist regime,
he never revisited. This culminated (in spite of its touches
of Greek colour) in the opera The Greek Passion (Recké
pasije, 1956-1959). From this period also come two major
works with voices, looking to new sources of inspiration, Gilgames
(The Epic of Gilgamesh, 1954, on the most ancient surviving
written text) and Proroctvi Izaiásovo (The
Prophesy of Isaiah, 1959).
These, then are the general
outlines of Martinů's development, and within these lines
his works are best discussed by genre (titles are given in the
form they are best known in the English-speaking areas). Chief
among these are the group of five symphonies, all composed between
1942 and 1946, and joined by a sixth in 1953. Although still
relatively unknown, they are among the finest symphonies of
the century, consistent and completely individual in idiom;
in technical terms they represent, even more than those of Shostakovich,
a regeneration of the form, building on Sibelius's concept
of growth from germ-cells, and on the idea of progressive tonality
(ending in a key different from the opening). Their sound-world
(the piano and often the harp prominent in the orchestration)
has no parallel in the symphonic repertoire, one of the advantages
of coming to the genre at the age of 52, when Martinů needed
no models other than his own. The first two symphonies represent
the development of his symphonic idiom. The Symphony No.1
(1942) is the most classical in construction, the principle
of development by germ-cell used only in the first two movements.
It is largely lyrical in conception, its atmospheric opening
using the Bohemian St.Wenceslas chorale that recurs in Martinů's
work and which is of Czech nationalist significance; the symphony
also uses a Moravian cadence, first heard in the opera Julietta,
that recurs in Martinů's later work. The scherzo has an
arresting syncopated lilt, and a trio without strings; there
is a sense of Mediterranean colour in the slow movement, and
of folk-song in the finale. The Symphony No.2 (1943)
is more chamber-like in character, aptly described as his `pastoral'
symphony, and is cast in three movements, with a boisterous
march and a brief quote from the Marseillaise in the third.
With the emotionally more searching Symphony No.3 (1944)
Martinů found his individual voice of symphonic genius.
Apart from his own two earlier symphonies, there is nothing
in the symphonic repertoire to herald it, and its only antecedents
are in the symphonies of Sibelius, and then only distantly.
The entire orchestra is used as a huge organic complex, generating
germ cells and growing them with passionate logic and marvellous
clarity of orchestral texture, flowering when the growth is
momentarily complete and major chords arrive. The orchestra
is used in step-like blocks, the generating impulse passed from
block to block, and then opened out in more flowing, lyrical
culminations. Whenever such moments of relative stasis are reached,
a new ostinato phrase with its own particular colours inevitably,
and so appropriately in the overall logic, starts up again.
Suddenly in the final movement, in the midst of this wonderful
and sometimes troubled organic progression, the entire canvass
is taken onto a different plane, with shimmering orchestral
textures as if the world had suddenly been hushed and held still
- surely Martinů at this moment was thinking of his homeland.
This is one of the finest symphonies of the century, quite unlike
those of any other composer in construction, its tone - deeply
rooted in the Czech tradition of brightness and hope - so completely
alien to so much of 20th-century music that it has been completely
overlooked: yet that very message of organic growth, of the
interconnectedness of all natural things, now seems so prophetic
and so apposite. The Symphony No.4 (1945) returns to
the lyrical, its happier tone announced by the light textures
and boisterous opening. In the scherzo and again in the finale
Martinů's use of swirling ostinato figures reaches its
most sophisticated development, whirring around like little
dust-devils across a field. The slow movement opens with complex
slow-moving chromaticism, like a fog in which the chromatic
drops are held in suspension. Gradually this clears, and turns
into the spirit of Dvořák redefined in 20th-century
terms, an ambience continued into the finale, which has thematic
connections with Julietta and the third symphony. The
Symphony No.5 (1946) is the most difficult and complex
of these symphonies, continuing the general idiomatic cast,
but as if fragmenting both the idiom and the moods; it includes
moments of a grandeur not often found in his output. The culmination
of this symphonic experience is the Symphony No.6, subtitled
Fantaisies symphoniques (1951-1953), currently the best
known of these works. In this extraordinary score, which defies
conventional analysis apart from its division into three movements,
the element of fantasy of the title is given free reign in that
the construction and choice of musical event seems to be based
entirely on instinctive response, which at this stage in Martinů's
career was of unerring surety, using as its means the sound
patterns and techniques he had developed in the earlier symphonies.
Martinů's symphonies bear a similar relationship to the
Czech symphony as Janáček's operas do to Czech opera;
their idiom, while maintaining a tonal base, is still sufficiently
unusual to require adjustments by listeners unused to it, but
it can only be a matter of time before the third and sixth symphonies
in particular are very widely known and appreciated.
Of his other orchestral
works, the brilliant, sometimes harsh Sinfonia Concertante
(1932) pits two orchestras antiphonally, while the Concerto
Grosso (1937) for wind, brass, string, and two pianos exemplifies
his modernization of Baroque principles, alternating solo and
tutti passages, and using a short germ-motif. The Tre Ricercari
(1938), the piano prominent in the orchestra, is a culmination
of his neo-Baroque period, combining baroque elements with suggestions
of his later style in a generally bright and uplifting tone.
In Frescoes de Piero della Francesca (1955), a three
movement work inspired by three of the 15th-century artist's
paintings, there is a marvellous melding of Impressionistic
Mediterranean colour and Czech yearning and drama, Martinů's
tribute to the joys of the creative spirit. All these works
show Martinů at his best.
Concertos formed a considerable
part of Martinů's output, often harking back to the baroque
concept of the concerto grosso, rather than to the Romantic
conflict between soloist and orchestra. Of his concerto works
for piano, the Sinfonietta Giocosa (1940) was written
while Martinů was waiting in Nice to escape Vichy France,
mostly while travelling by train and tram in an attempt to get
exit visas; his happy anticipation of leaving is reflected in
the perky score. A more stunning work in an equally extrovert
mood is the Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra (1943).
From its emphatic opening, full of urgency and rhythmic drive,
it presents vivid solo writing, a sense of pent-up excitement,
and in the central adagio glittering colours evolving from the
Impressionistic opening. Throughout it explores the possibilities
in sonority of the two solo instruments (sometimes with a sense
of devilry, the two clashing in keys with apparently natural
spontaneity). This work should be much better known, but the
necessity of two soloists precludes regular performance. The
rather grand Piano Concerto No.3 (1943-1946) perhaps
reflects the circumstances of its writing, long delayed by Martinů's
accident, for it is less convincing than either of these two
works. The Piano Concerto No.4 `Incantation' (1955-1956),
is his finest work for piano and orchestra. In two movements,
it expresses the composer's search `for truth and the meaning
of life', and is complex but flowing in its coalescence of a
multiplicity of ideas, colours, and timbres, with a wide range
of effects for the largely percussive piano writing, including
the depression of silent chord clusters to add sympathetic colours.
Its moods are equally wide-ranging, with an element of imaginative
and meditative fantasy that preoccupied Martinů in this
period; the second movement is a series of variations of different
colour casts, different incantations. This is not the easiest
Martinů work on first encounter, but it is one of the most
satisfying. The Piano Concerto No.5 (1957, titled Fantasia
concertante) also has fine passages in a more conventional
structure, the fantasy elements being suggested in the brittle
piano writing of the opening. Uncharacteristically virtuoso
passages combine with ideas of tenderness and simplicity, with
a slow movement whose haunting textures suggest a nocturne.
The two violin concertos
are contrasted in idiom and tone. The Violin Concerto No.1
(1932-1933, but not performed until rediscovered in 1973) is
dominated by the jerky, nervous, constantly agitated but nonetheless
lyrical solo line, permeated by technical challenges and syncopated
and additive rhythms, and comes from the composer's neo-Baroque
period. The Violin Concerto No.2 (1943) is a yearningly
lyrical work reflecting Martinů's own considerable gifts
on the instrument, with a much more Romantic interplay between
soloist and orchestra, pitting solo line against transforming
but heavily textured orchestral sonorities. The predominant
mood is one of a rhapsodic nostalgia, in which echoes of the
folk-music of his native country are never far away. With characteristic
surges built on his repetitive principles, a lithe, dancing
finale that returns to the understated grandeur of the opening
of the concerto, and a hazy, unsentimental intermezzo for a
slow movement, this is one of Martinů's finest works.
Of Martinů's four
concerted works for cello, the influence of jazz predominates
in the little Concertino for cello, wind instruments, piano
and percussion (1924), but mixed with a cantabile lyricism
for the soloist. The Cello Concerto No.2 (1944-1945)
is in a similar idiom to the second violin concerto and shares
its qualities, although it is perhaps a little long for its
material. His other concertos include two related concertinos
for the unusual combination of piano trio and string orchestra
(the suggestion is that Martinů mislaid the commissioned
score of the first, and had to swiftly compose another). The
lithe and vital Concertino for Piano Trio and String Orchestra
No.2 (1933) is in four movements, with a neo-classical rhythmic
urgency initially reminiscent of Stravinsky and with
skilful use of the available forces, the piano being used mainly
in short notes, reminiscent of harpsichord writing, with and
a joyous, folk-like lilt to the finale. The Concerto for
Harpsichord and Small Orchestra (1935) belongs to the period
when Martinů was exploring the form of the concerto grosso,
and is a piece full of charm and interest in the piano obbligato
foil to the soloist, if without the depth of similar pieces
by Martin or Poulenc. More effective and biting,
until the more playful final movement, is the Concerto for
String Quartet and Orchestra (1931). The short Oboe Concerto
(1955), for a small orchestra that includes piano, suffers from
over-thick orchestration (Martinů had intended to revise
it), but has a rustic simplicity to the solo writing in the
first movement (belying the technical difficulty), and a slow
movement of magical textures and a very beautiful main theme.
Unlike the symphonies,
the seven string quartets span Martinů's compositional
career, and therefore provide an overview of his changing styles
and concerns within one medium. They have been difficult to
encounter, and do not often plumb the depths of emotion; perhaps
because of this they have been generally dismissed. They are
much finer than such a reputation would warrant, full of the
vigour of life while never being lightweight, and are marked
by their use of counterpoint to thrust the music forward. The
long String Quartet No.1 (1918, revised 1927) is Romantic
in style and inspiration, imbued with a gentle Czech 19th-century
lyricism, influenced by both Dvořák and Debussy,
but the String Quartet No.2 (1925) is idiomatically more
ambitious, built around a weighty and dark central andante,
flanked by two movements that oscillate between lightheartedness
and rhythmic aggression. The String Quartet No.3 (1929)
continued the exploration of sonority initiated in the slow
movement of its predecessor, and is of interest in his development,
having features in common with his later concerto grosso style
(in the driving sonorous logic of progression); it is far weightier
than the bright work suggested by some commentators. The String
Quartet No.4 (1937) is subtitled Concerto da camera,
and anticipates the early symphonies, especially in the short
phrases of the opening, darting between instruments. This fine
quartet has drive and bright vigour in the first two movements
and the last, with a more contemplative slow movement to counter
this, of an almost religious cast, solo cello lines like a cantor
being answered by the quartet. The more anguished String
Quartet No.5 (1938) was the response to a passionate love
affair, and is tragic in tone, the general style of the previous
quartet taken to new depths by the addition of much more dissonant
and fragmentary writing, a wider range of string effects, and
an angry intensity, Martinů exploring an inner emotion
rather than an outward response. This is the only Martinů
quartet to receive a general recognition for its Bartók-like
powers of expression. The fast-paced and often restless String
Quartet No.6 (1946) is also introverted, but in a very different
fashion, and is the quartet in which Martinů seems to be
expressing his longing for his homeland, using his technique
of long, developing repeated rhythmic phrases that thrust towards
luminosity. After two such personal quartets, the last, the
graceful String Quartet No.7 (1947), also subtitled Concerto
de camera, is a more abstract delight in the form. It combines
Martinů's technique of short abutting phrases in the outer
movements with the strong influence of Haydn, especially in
the lovely andante, a kind of tribute to the 18th-century composer
and quite unlike any of his earlier quartet slow movements in
its idiom and sense of deep pleasure in music-making. Of his
other chamber music, the form of the madrigal is sometimes to
be found in his later works, notably in the attractive Madrigal-Sonata
(1942) for flute, violin and piano, which has become popular
with performers, as have the Three Madrigals (1947) for
violin and viola, combining virtuosity with depths of expression.
The circumstances of the composition of the Bergerettes
(1939-1940) for piano trio, written as Martinů was leaving
for the U.S.A., completely belie their bubbling, sunlit atmosphere;
the turbulent Piano Quartet (1942) reflects the actual
upheaval of the period.
Martinů's extensive
piano music is of lesser interest, and mostly consists of miniatures,
usually with a distant basis in folk-music rhythms, but with
a full range of pianistic technique, exemplified in the three
books of cheerful Etudes and Polkas (1945); the longest
piece is under three minutes.
Martinů wrote fourteen
operas (a further two are incomplete), and it is still difficult
to get an overall assessment of their worth, particularly with
the earlier experimental works, which often use techniques and
styles easier to achieve with modern technology than at the
time of their writing. The Soldier and the Dancer (Voják
a tanečnice, 1926-1927) to a libretto by J.L. Budín
based on Plautus, is a riot of crazy incidents parodying the
artistic idioms of the 1920s, involving audience, critics, moon,
stars, knives, forks and spoons, a Dixieland jazzband (to name
but a few). Les Larmes du couteau (The Tears of the
Knife, 1928), to a libretto by Ribemont-Dessaignes, is a
20-minute Dadaesque tale of horror, necrophilia, and erotic
violence. Les Trois Souhaits (The Three Wishes, 1929)
also to a libretto by Ribemont-Dessaignes, applied film techniques
to operatic structure, with an actual film-crew as part of the
action, showing glamorous actresses, warts and all, and questioning
the dichotomy between actual events and the filmed dream; it
uses jazz among its musical elements. In complete contrast,
The Miracle of Our Lady, more correctly titled Plays
of Mary (Hry o Marii, 1933-1934) is an attractive
and deliberately simplistic trilogy of miracle plays based on
three legends about Mary, using dance, narration, mime, and
a commenting chorus; Martinů was consciously trying to
create a more popular, folk-based music-theatre (as Britten
was later to do), and succeeds. Hlas lesa (The Voice
of the Forest, 1935), to a libretto by Vítežslav
Nezval, was one of the first operas written especially for radio,
using a folk story as its basis. More effective was his next
one-act radio-play, Comedy on the Bridge (Veselohra
na mostě, 1935), in six linked scenes based on a classic
Czech play by Václav Klicpera, again with a slightly
fantastic situation, but one resonant to this day. Neighbours
try to visit each other across a bridge, but the two river banks
are in different and now mutually hostile territories. The various
characters have exit visas from their respective sides, but
no entry visas, and so find themselves stranded in the middle
of the bridge, and there, in fear of their lives, make various
personal confessions, until with the victory of one side they
are pushed off the bridge to make way for troops. The bright,
lively music, with martial overtones, and often passionate vocal
lines, uses a chamber ensemble. It is one of his better known
works in the States, having won the New York Critic's prize
for the best new opera in 1951, following its American premiere
(the American critics also tried to give Klicpera personal recognition
for the libretto, unaware that he had been dead for 92 years).
It was followed by Martinů's operatic masterpiece, the
surrealistic and full-length Julietta (1936-1937), where
his powers of fantasy and the fantastic, and their relationship
to the actuality of existence, found a perfect text in the French
play Juliette ou le clé des songes by Georges
Neveux. A book salesman revisits a town where he once been captivated
by the sight of a young woman, Juliette. However, this time
everyone has lost their memory; their awareness is only of the
moment, with many disconcerting consequences, such as a fortune-teller
foretelling the past, an engineer who gazes at the blank pages
of a photo-album, a memory seller who invents journeys. The
book salesman gradually gets sucked up into this real, yet unreal
world, with the affair with Juliette weaving a linking thread
(she is apparently shot at one point, but this too hovers between
reality and fantasy), and the ending (invented by Martinů)
is inconclusive, as all that has happened turns into a dream
which itself restarts the action. This profoundly disturbing
drama explores the edge of the reality of perception, and of
a particular kind of sanity; Martinů treats it very directly,
letting the music build character and the fantasy speak for
itself, often with warm, yearning music (especially in the interaction
with Juliette), and with strong musical characterisation of
the many protagonists. Its structure is happily set up by the
arch-form of the actual play, ideal for musical treatment. This
profound, questioning, and yet affirming work has few parallels
in the operatic repertoire. What Men Live By (1952),
based on a version of the legend of St.Martin by Tolstoy, is
an opera for television (one of the first), but neither it nor
its successor, the television opera The Marriage (1952)
after Gogol, really make use of the new medium. The comedy Mirandolina
(1954) is based on Goldoni. The title-role of Ariadne
(1958), to a libretto in French by the composer based on a version
of the Greek myth by Neveux, was inspired by Callas, and includes
baroque elements (a prologue and three scenes divided by orchestral
sinfonias, and a final aria). The compressed, swift-moving story
seems deceptively simple, but hinges on verbal and psychological
ambiguities which gradually unfold into a complex and disturbing
metaphor. Ariadne has a fantasy-love for the Minotaur (she has
heard his voice, but never seen him); Theseus also has an appointment
with him. The two recognise their common cause, and are engaged
following an unexpected decree from the King of Crete; Theseus
therefore sets aside his quest in favour of love. When one of
his companions is killed, Theseus is stirred into action: the
Minotaur appears as his own double, the Theseus who loves Ariadne
(who says she knew the two would be alike). Theseus has to kill
the Minataur, and in doing so kills his relationship with Ariadne,
who is left abandoned, watching the departing Greek ships. Martinů's
score to this swift one-act opera starts in an equally disarming
fashion, bouncy and lyrical (not unlike the folk-inspired works
discussed below), but gradually gets more complex and dark,
culminating in a beautiful extended aria for Ariadne, whose
fey changes of mood and intuitive knowledge have been subtly
portrayed throughout the work. This opera is much more weighty
than it first appears, raising uncomfortable psychological questions
and letting the ambiguities stand for themselves, right down
to the perky closing notes.
However, the best known
of the later operas is the grand opera The Greek Passion
(1956-1959), based on Nikos Kazantzakis' novel Christ Recrucified.
It uses a play within a play: the Greek villagers are staging
their Passion play, with competition in the village to play
the parts, and an overall plot of interaction between the characters
that parallels the crucifixion story. Added to this is a third
layer, that of a refugee group (Greeks fleeing the Turks) who,
with their priest, seek shelter in the village. It is a flawed
work - the reduction of the novel to operatic length makes for
a bitty sequence of scenes - but it contains some of Martinů's
finest music and most affecting character portraits, combined
with the influence of folk and Greek Orthodox music, and its
strengths make it an effective stage work.
Of Martinů's many
other works, mention should be made of three very attractive
scores deliberately based on the colours and relative simplicity
of folk-music, in which his own original ideas are inextricably
intertwined with actual folk elements. The undemanding but enchanting
ballet Špalíček (Little Block,
1931-1932, revised 1940 and arranged as two suites) uses fairy
tales and nursery rhymes, and the cantata Bouquet of Flowers
(Kytice, 1937) for four soloists, children's chorus,
chorus, and orchestra with two pianos and harmonium, uses echoes
of a wordless cry or greeting called across the Bohemian-Moravian
mountains within the folk texts. The Songs of the Highlands
(1955-1959), four chamber cantatas using soloists, chorus, and
chamber forces, to words by the poet Miloslav Bureš,
and better known by their individual titles (The Opening
of the Wells, The Legend of the Smoke from the Potato-tops,
Dandelion Romance, for soprano and chorus a cappella,
and Mikeš from the Mountains), are the culmination
of Martinů's nostalgia for his homeland. In all these unaffected
works the colours are vivid, the zest of life shines bright,
and they will be enjoyed by listeners with a wide range of tastes.
Martinů's idiom is
not a difficult one, though the very individual cast of the
later works may require familiarity for their strengths to emerge.
The problem with encountering his music is the sheer bulk of
his output, and avoiding the many works of lesser merits (reflecting
his habit of writing fast and revising little). Generally, readers
are advised to avoid works not mentioned in this outline, at
least until they have experienced those works which reveal the
full range and scope of the appealing, life-affirming idiom
of this most underrated of all major 20th-century composers.
───────────────────────────────────────
works include: (from over
400)
- 6 symphonies (No.6 Fantaisies
symphoniques); 2 cello concertos
- harpsichord concerto;
5 piano concertos (No.4 Incantations); two-piano concerto;
Rhapsody Concerto for viola and orch.; 2 violin concertos;
concerto for string quartet and orch.; numerous other concertos
and concertinos
- Les Fresques de Piero
della Francesca for orch.; Memorial to Lidice for
orch.; Sinfonie Concertante for two string orch.; Tre
Ricercari for orch.; numerous other orchestral works, overtures,
etc. for full and chamber orch.
- 3 cello sonatas; 5 violin
sonatas; Madrigal Sonata for flute, violin and piano;
2 string trios; piano quartet; 7 string quartets (No.7 Concerto
da camera); string quintet; wind quintet; 2 piano quintets;
string sextet; numerous other chamber pieces for various forces
- sonata for piano and
other piano pieces
- cantatas Gilgames
(Gilgamesh), Kytice (Bouquet of Flowers), Proroctvi Izaiásovo
(The Prophesy of Isaiah); Polni mse (Field Mass) and numerous
other works for accompanied and unaccompanied voices, especially
part-songs
- 13 ballets including
Istar, La Revue de Cuisine and Špalíček
- operas Alexander bis,
Ariadne, Divaldo za bránou (Surburban
Theatre), Hlas lesa (The Voice of the Forest for
radio), Hry o Marii (The Miracle of Our Lady), Julietta,
Les Larmes du couteau (The Tears of the Knife), Mirandolina,
Recké pasije (The Greek Passion), Trois
Souhaits (The Three Wishes), Veselohra na mostě
(The Comedy on the Bridge), Voják a tanečnice
(The Soldier and the Dancer), What Men Live By
(for television) and Zenitba (The Marriage for television)
───────────────────────────────────────
recommended works:
opera Ariadne (1958)
cantata Bouquet of Flowers
(1937)
Cello Concerto No.2 (1944-1945)
opera The Comedy on
the Bridge (1935)
Concertino for cello, wind
instruments and piano (1924)
Double Concerto for two
string orchestras, piano and timpani (1938)
cantata Epic of Gilgamesh
(1954-1955)
Field Mass (1939)
Les Fresques de Piero
della Francesca for orchestra (1955)
opera Juliette (1936-1937)
opera The Greek Passion
(1956-1959)
Memorial to Lidice
(1943) for orchestra
opera trilogy The Miracle
of Our Lady (1934)
Piano Concerto No.4 (1956)
Rhapsody Concerto
for viola and orchestra (1952)
ballet La Revue de Cuisine
for chamber orchestra (1927)
Sinfonie Concertante
for two string orchestras (1932)
ballet Špalíček
(1931-1932 rev. 1940, arranged as two suites)
String Quartet No.4 Concerto
da camera (1937)
String Quartet No.5 (1938)
String Quartet No.6 (1946)
Symphony No.3 (1944)
Symphony No.4 (1945)
Symphony No.5 (1946)
Symphony No.6 (Fantasies
symphoniques) (1951-1953)
Tre Ricercari for
orchestra (1938)
───────────────────────────────────────
bibliography:
B. Large Martinů,
1975
J. Milhule Martinů,
1972
M. Safránck Bohuslav
Martinů: his Life and Works, 1962
───────────────────────────────────────
NOVÁK
Vitězslav
born 5th December 1870
at Kamenice
died 18th July 1949 at
Skutec
───────────────────────────────────────
Vitězslav Novák
is, with Suk, the most important Czech composer of the
generation that followed Dvořák (with whom he studied)
and Janáček. Coming from a poor background
(and hating his forced music lessons as a small child), he studied
jurisprudence and philosophy as well as music to fulfil the
terms of a scholarship. His early works are in the style of
German Romanticism (Brahms recognised his talent, and introduced
him to his publisher). Then, following a study of Moravian and
Slovak folk music discovered when on holiday (and with the encouragement
of Janáček), he suddenly found a nationalistic voice
based on the colours and rhythms of Slovak folk music. The results
of this change of style were initiated in the large Sonata
Eroica (1900) for piano, which in spite of its length is
monothematic, and then reached maturity in three orchestral
works. The vividly atmospheric symphonic poem V Tatrách
(In the Tatras, 1903-1905 - Novák himself
made the first ascent of the difficult Ostry peak in the Tatra
mountains) showed Novák's powers of musical landscape
painting, and Slovácká svitá (Slovak
Suite, 1903), where the small orchestra is used with restraint
but a strong sense of colour, his growing awareness of nationalist
themes. The third work in this group, the symphonic poem O
vecné touze (About the Eternal Longing, 1908) applied
the same descriptive techniques to a Hans Christian Andersen
tale, in two sections. This vivid tone-poem combines Impressionism
with the power of the late-Romantic orchestra, using a wide
palette of orchestral colours and effects, often with a mystical
atmosphere.
At the same time he produced
a number of song arrangements and chamber works with characteristic
Slovak folk elements, notably bare fourths and fifths; while
sometimes using actual folk melodies or themes, Novák
preferred to invent his own in a similar style. To the natural
sensuality of his music was added an erotic element in the tone
poem Toman a lesni panna (Toman and the Wood-Nymph, 1906-1907),
the overture Lady Godiva (1907) and, combined with his
feel for the emotive aspects of nature, in a piano cycle (later
orchestrated) with strong dramatic elements, Pan (1910),
in the form of monothematic variations in five movements. The
culmination of this period is perhaps Novák's finest
work, the powerful and beautiful cantata Bouře (The
Storm, 1908-1910), for soloists, chorus and orchestra, which
has been aptly described as a sea symphony with obbligato chorus.
The scoring, including a piano for effects, is especially vivid
and controlled. Characteristically, much of the material is
built on thematic fragments heard at the opening.
Novák, at the age
of 45, then turned to opera. Zvikovský rarášek
(The Imp of Zvikov, 1913-1914) was unexpectedly a
comic-ironic opera, as was Karlštejn (1914-1915,
again with erotic elements), but his most striking opera is
the nationalist fairy-tale Lucerna (The Lantern, 1919-1922),
reflecting the sufferings of the Czechs. Dědův
odkaz (Grandfather's Legacy, 1922-1925) is about
a man who inherits a violin (the legacy) and becomes a virtuoso,
and satirizes the hypocrisies of a virtuoso's life and audience.
From the same period comes a major orchestral work, highly regarded
in Czechoslovakia, Podzimni Sinfonie (Autumn Symphony,
1931-1934) for chorus and orchestra. The final flowering of
his symphonic talent is in the surprisingly effective De
Profundis (1941) for orchestra and organ, a patriotic assertion
of eventual victory over the Nazis, that starts with a long,
dark and foreboding search for harmonic resolution, turbulently
building over a long time-span to a climax during which bright
ideas slide in among the darkness. This opens out to an unmistakably
Czech landscape of chamber proportions, which in turn builds
to a huge climax, the organ prominent, of hope and joy. During
this last period folk influences were largely replaced by Hussite
chorales, reflecting his recognition of the threat current political
events posed to his country.
Throughout his life Novák
was fascinated by nature, and depictions of mountains, forests
and water abound in his music. His work, full of polyphonic
skill and interlacing textures and melodic ideas, is primarily
an expression of the emotions engendered by that fascination.
Such an approach has long been out of fashion, but his high
standards (he was intensely self-critical) will be appreciated
and enjoyed by those who are not expecting music of great intellectual
depth, and his work has been unjustly neglected outside Czechoslovakia.
Novák taught at
the Prague Conservatory (1909-1920) and was professor of composition
at the Czech State Conservatory (1918-1939), and the legacy
of his teaching was almost as great as that of his music, with
many of the next generation of composers as his pupils, including
Hába, Kapr and Suchon. With Suk he helped
found the Society of Modern Music.
───────────────────────────────────────
works include:
- Podzimni sinfonie
(Autumn Symphony) for chorus and orch.; Májová
symfonie (May Symphony) for soloists, chorus and orch.
- piano concerto
- symphonic poems De
Profundis, O věčné touze (About the Eternal
Longing), Toman a lesni panna (Toman and the Wood-Nymph); V
Tatrách (In the Tatras); suites Jihočeská
svitá (Bohemian Suite), Slovácká svitá
(Slovak Suite); Svatováclavsky triptych (St. Wenceslas
Triptych) for organ and orch.
- 3 string quartets; piano
quartet; piano trio; piano quintet and other chamber music
- Pan for solo piano
and other piano music
- cantata Bouře
(The Storm); choral works and songs
- ballet-pantomimes Nikotina
and Signorina Gioventu
- operas Dědův
odkaz (Grandfather's Legacy), Karlštejn,
Lucerna (The Lantern) and Zvikovský
rarášek (The Imp of Zvikov)
───────────────────────────────────────
recommended works:
symphonic poem About
the Eternal Longing op.33 (1903-1905)
tone poem De Profundis
op.67 (1941)
symphonic poem In the
Tatras op.27 (1902)
Slovak Suite op.32
(1903)
cantata The Storm for
soloists, male chorus and orchestra op.42 (1908-1910)
───────────────────────────────────────
bibliography (In English):
Vladimir Lébl Viteslav
Novák, 1968
───────────────────────────────────────
SLAVICKÝ
Milan
born 7th May, 1947 at Prague
───────────────────────────────────────
Milan Slavický,
son of Klement Slavický (see introduction), is one of
the most interesting of the younger Czech composers. He has
concentrated on orchestral and chamber music, and won acclaim
outside Czechoslovakia, including a UNESCO prize and the Prix
d'Italia. He studied with Kapr and Kohoutek, and
gained attention with an orchestral work, Poctat Saint-Expérymu
(Homage to Saint Exupéry). It was followed by an
arresting one-movement violin concerto, subtitled Ceste srdce
(The Way of the Heart, 1978). It is a taut and dramatic
work, with the linear and harmonically unsettled solo line passing
through a number of fragmentary episodes, almost chamber in
feel. Percussion and insistent, sometimes violent, rhythms are
much in evidence, and a deft, individually pointed use of the
limited colours available (wind, percussion, celesta and harp).
The symphonic triptych Terre des Hommes (1979-1983),
grander in conception, descriptive in its scoring, followed
a similar pattern without being so immediately alluring. It
has been followed by another triptych, Sinfonia mortis et
vitae (The Well of Life, 1986). The darker, almost violent
moments of these works are also observable in the chamber music,
exploring expressive effects from the brooding piano trio Brightening
I (1986) to the dark colours of Dialogues with Silence
(1978) for string quartet. In these works his approachable,
non-tonal harmonic palette is founded on a sense of tonal centres.
The interest in colours and rhythms has been explored in Tre
Toccate (1964) for percussion instruments. He has also been
active as a recording producer in Czechoslovakia.
───────────────────────────────────────
works include:
- violin concerto Ceste
srdce (The Way of the Heart)
- symphonic triptychs Terre
des Hommes and Sinfonia mortis et vitae; Pocta
Saint-Expérymu (Homage to Saint Exupéry) for
orch.
- Tre toccate for
percussion; Invocation for violin and other chamber and
instrumental works; Brightening I for piano trio; Colloquium
I and Dialogues with Silence for string quartet;
Brightening IV for oboe and string quartet; Brightening
III for flute, oboe and string trio; Articulations
for brass quintet
- piano sonata
- song cycle Stay with
us, Sweet Loving
───────────────────────────────────────
recommended works:
Violin Concerto The
Way of the Heart (1979)
Dialogues with Silence
for string quartet (1978)
───────────────────────────────────────
SUK
Joseph
born 4th January, 1874
at Křečovice u Neveklova
died 29th May, 1935 at
Beneřov (Prague)
───────────────────────────────────────
Joseph Suk was both Dvořák's
favourite pupil and his son-in-law. With Novák,
he is the most important Czech composer in the generation following
Dvořák and Janáček. However,
whereas Novák found his voice through Moravian folksong,
Suk largely avoided folk influences (although he used Bohemian
rhythms), extending the tradition of Dvořák mainly
through chamber music (including freer forms such as ballads
and rhapsodies) and a number of orchestral works - there are
very few songs or choral works, and he wrote no operas. Much
of his music is programmatic, but its programmes are of inner
emotions and personal events, rather than external inspirations.
The sonorities of his string writing reflect his own exceptional
abilities as a violinist (he was also a fine pianist). He was
the second violinist of the famous Czech Quartet, giving over
4,000 performances before his retirement in 1933. The violin
virtuoso tradition has been carried on by his grandson, Josef
Suk (born 1929).
The earliest works of his
small output (39 opus numbers) show the influence of Dvořák,
and his Serenade for Strings (1892) has remained one
of his most popular works. But it was the discovery of Julius
Zeyer's stage fairy-tale Radúz and Mahulena, with
its theme of faithful love and the triumph of good over evil,
that started a period of Romantic and lyrically happy works.
It remained an influence throughout his life, and themes from
his rich music to the play (Radúz and Mahulena,
1897-1898, suite titled A Fairy Tale, 1900) regularly
recur in his later music. From the same period come a number
of works with limpid and singing solo violin writing, notably
the Four Pieces (1890) for violin and piano. The culmination
of this period is first the Fantasy (1902-1903) for violin
and orchestra, a most attractive work in which he avoided concerto
form in favour of a free fantasy, with common motifs in each
of the three movements, and second the symphonic poem Prague
(1904).
The death of Dvořák
in 1905 affected him deeply, and it was followed in 1906 by
the death of his wife. From that point his music has a sterner,
more tragic element, and he moves from a Romantic feel to a
more complex polytonal idiom, with dense harmonies. The immediate
result was the tragic and powerful symphony Asrael (the
Angel of Death, 1907), with linking thematic motifs, including
one of Fate and the Death motif from Radúz and Mahulena,
a score of great emotional impact and structural mastery with
an ending of reconciliation; this long symphony represents the
culmination of the late-Romantic tradition in the Czech symphony.
It was followed by an Impressionistic and beautiful meditation
on nature, the symphonic poem Pohádka léta
(A Summer's Tale, 1907-1909), and the best of his
piano music, the introspective cycle Things Lived and Dreamed,
1909, with irregular rhythms and rich and ambiguous harmonies.
Pod jabloní (Under the Apple Tree, 1911)
for contralto, chorus and orchestra is drawn from the music
for a play by Zeyer (1902), and has no plot as such, but three
ecstatic poems concerning nature and heaven, the last a chorus
of angels guarding the Garden of Eden. It opens with a long
and gorgeous Romantic orchestral introduction, full of light
and happiness, solo violin prominent in delicate textures that
gradually thicken; the vocal writing ranges from a similar delicacy
to the uplifting nobility of the close, in a work that would
be ideal for larger choral societies. The War Triptych
consists of three separate works drawn together under the same
opus number (35). The first part, Meditation on the Old Czech
Chorale St.Wenceslas (usually known as Meditation,
1914) is a beautiful and intense version of the chorale for
strings (originally string quartet), and has become one of Suk's
best known works. Legend of the Dead Victors (1919) is
rather bombastic (it was commissioned as an official commemoration),
but has moments of quiet luminosity, especially at the close.
The third part, the infectious Festival March Towards a New
Life (1919), has become one of the best known of all Czech
marches.
Suk's masterpiece is the
symphonic poem Zráni (The Ripening, 1913-1918)
for orchestra with wordless chorus, with a personal programme
indicated in titles of its five sections (youth, love, pain,
quoting from the piano cycle Things Lived and Dreamed,
determination, and victory). The thematic structure matches
the title, with seeds of ideas growing and coming to fruition
in a rich web of complex harmonies, and with an intense message
describing both the brightness and the tragic shades of life.
It opens and closes with trumpet fanfares, and the last movement
- victory - includes a fugue followed by near silence and then
a final hymn. Throughout the sense of germination and fulfilment
is palpable. His last major work, Epilogue (1920-1932),
for soloists, chorus and orchestra, expresses Suk's vision of
Love, and is almost as fine.
Suk became professor at
the Prague Conservatory in 1922, and was its director from 1924-1926.
Among his many pupils was Martinů, and his teaching,
especially of his concepts of freer forms and his ideas of thematic
growth, had an abiding influence on the next generation of Czech
composers.
Suk's later works represent
one of the final flowerings of the Romantic tradition, but in
a more pastoral idiom than the late-Romantic German works more
usually encountered. They are imbued with an intensely personal
expression both of the tragedy of life and the power of reconciliation,
rebirth and love, in an increasingly complex, individual and
effective language. With the immediate attractions of the earlier
and less profound works, it seems surprising that his music,
revered in Czechoslovakia, is so neglected outside.
───────────────────────────────────────
works include:
- symphony in E; symphony
Asrael
- symphonic poems Pohádka
léta (A Summer's Tale), Prague, Zráni (The
Maturity); Serenade for Strings
- Fantasy for violin
and orch.
- Four Pieces for
violin and piano; piano trio; piano quartet; 2 string quartets;
piano quintet and other chamber music
- piano cycle Things
Lived and Dreamed
- Epilogue for soloists,
chorus and orch.; Pod jabloní (Under the Apple
Tree) for contralto, chorus and orch.; Křečovice
Mass and other choral works
- incidental music to Radúz
and Mahulena
───────────────────────────────────────
recommended works:
Epilogue for soloists,
chorus and orchestra (1920-1932)
suite A Fairy Tale
op.16 (1900 from Radúz and Mahulena, 1897-1898)
Fantasy for violin
and orchestra op.24 1902-1903)
Four Pieces for
violin and piano op.17 (1890)
Meditation on the Old
Czech Chorale St.Wenceslas (1914) for orchestra
symphonic poem The Ripening
op.34 (1913-1918)
symphonic poem A Summer's
Tale op.29 (1905-1906)
Symphony No.2 (Asrael)
op.27 (1905-1906)
piano cycle Things Lived
and Dreamed op.30 (1909)
cantata Under the Apple
Tree (1911) for contralto, chorus and orchestra
───────────────────────────────────────
bibliography:
Jiři Berkovec Joseph
Suk, (in English, French, German & Russian), 1969
───────────────────────────────────────
VÁLEK
Jiři
born 28th May, 1923 at
Prague
───────────────────────────────────────
The composer and musicologist
Jiři Válek is one of Czechoslovakia's major symphonists,
although the word should be taken with a note of caution. For
in common with many other East European composers, the primary
stimulus for his symphonies has been extra-musical, and those
expecting abstract symphonic developments and structures will
be disappointed - they are best treated as symphonic poems.
His major inspiration has been from history, and at best he
has the capability to conjure up a vivid musical picture using
a smattering of modern techniques and effects. The Symphony
No.6 (1969), for flute and chamber orchestra, is an atmospheric
meditation on Herakleitos, and exemplifies his approachable
atonality and his spare use of harder sounds (percussion, percussive
piano) and short woodwind phrases against a wide orchestral
background, notably strings. The less effective and more rambling
Symphony No.7 on Pompeii introduced an element of violence,
and in subsequent symphonies the uninteresting structures and
elements of banality (heard at their worst in the ballet music
from his opera Hamlet our Contemporary, 1984) outweigh
the elements of expressive interest. At the same time, he has
produced chamber works in parallel with the symphonies (Villa
dei misteri for violin and piano matching the Symphony
No.7, fragments of ancient Chinese chants in Symphony
No.8 being echoed in the song cycle La Partenza della
Primavera, 1970-1971, etc.). With the reservations outlined,
his music is interesting as an example of modernism officially
acceptable during the Communist period, which has undoubted
moments of atmospheric effect.
───────────────────────────────────────
works include:
- 14 symphonies (No.6 Ekpyrosis,
No.7 Pompejské fresky [Pompeii Frescoes], No.8
Hic Sunt Homines, No.9 Renaissance, No.10 Baroque,
No.11 Revolučni, No.13 Gothic)
- Concerto Burlesco
for cor anglais and chamber orch.; Concerto giocoso for
flute, marimba, harp and orch.; Concerto notturno for
string trio
- 2 nonets (No.2 Evviva
la Musica)
- song cycle La Partenza
della Primavera
- opera Hamlet our Contemporary
───────────────────────────────────────
recommended work:
Symphony No.6 Ekpyrosis
(1969)
───────────────────────────────────────
