czech music

quarterly magazine

David RadokInstrument Makers

Sources of Dvořák’s Music

12006

…want to learn more about Czech music?

…search for information about Czech musical life?

www.musica.cz

editorial

A major theme in this issue of Czech Musicis the manufacture of musical instrumentsin the Czech Republic. When we look backon the history of instrument-making here, itis hard not to feel a certain nostalgia and acertain bitterness. In the Austro-Hungarianperiod and in the inter-war period under theFirst Czechoslovak Republic this was acountry with literally hundreds ofinstrument makers of all kinds, from thesmallest to world famous firms. Thecommunist nationalisation programme after1948 and replacement of private enterpriseby central planning had devastatingconsequences for the music instrumentindustry, just as it had for the rest of theeconomy. There were, it is true, a fewexceptions that remained capable ofcompeting on world markets in terms ofquality, but these were truly exceptions and– above all – they cannot be used asarguments for the theory that is still heardtoo often, that “actually nothing so veryterrible happened”. Since the revolution of1989 things have changed and there arereasons for optimism, but the threat posedby cheap Asian manufactures is becomingever more real. The interview with the opera and theatredirector David Radok gives me greatpleasure. Not just because this remarkableand versatile artist tends to avoid publicityand only rarely agrees to interviews, butbecause of the nice interview itself. Starting with this issue you will no longerfind the Profiles supplement, but we shallbe continuing to publish material of thekind that has appeared in the supplementover the last years, and simply putting it inthe magazine, which will therefore besomewhat thicker. Finally I would like todraw your attention to the fact that you canorder older numbers of Czech Music – ifthey are still available, we shall be happy tosend them to you. You will find a list ofcontents of the magazine in past years atour new web pages www.czech-music.net.Our new e-mail is info@czech-music.net.

See you again in May

PETR BAKLA

EDITOR

In Opera Direction a Generalizing Approach Means the Absolute End. Interview with David RadokRADMILA HRDINOVÁ

Page 2

Václav František Červený - Master of his CraftGABRIELA NĚMCOVÁ

Page 8

Organ Building in the Czech LandsPETR KOUKAL

Page 13

Manufacture of pianos in the Czech Republic:Yesterday and TodayTEREZA KRAMPLOVÁ

Page 18

Four generations of Špidlens - The Legendary Violin MakersLIBUŠE HUBIČKOVÁ

Page 23

The Composer Rudolf KomorousRENÁTA SPISAROVÁ

Page 28

The Musica Nova Competition LENKA DOHNALOVÁ

Page 31

The Paganini of the Bass Clarinet Is Dead... MILOŠ ŠTĚDROŇ

Page 33

The Sources of Antonín Dvořák’s Music JAROSLAV SMOLKA

Page 34

ReviewsPage 41

Czech Music is issued by the Czech Music Information Centre with the support of the ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic and the Czech Music Fund Editor: Petr Bakla, Producer: Pavel TrojanTranslation: Anna Bryson, Graphic design: Ditta Jiřičková Photos: Karel Šuster (cover, p. 2-7), Antonín Krejčí (p. 8, 11), Gabriela Němcová (p. 9),Petr Koukal (p. 13-17), Petr Bakla (p. 22) and archives

DTP: HD EDIT, Print: Tiskárna Nové MěstoISSN 1211-0264

Price and subscription (shipping included):Czech Republic : one issue Kč 60, subscription (4 issues) Kč 200Europe: one issue £ 6.25, subscription (4 issues) £ 25 Overseas countries: one issue$ 9, subscription (4 issues) $ 36 or respective equivalents.

Czech MusicInformation Centre, Besední 3, 118 00 Praha 1, Czech Republic, fax: ++420 2 57317424phone: ++420 2 57312422e-mail: info@czech-music.nethttp://www.czech-music.net

contents 1/2006czech music

david radok

RADMILA HRDINOVA

2 | interview | czech music 1 | 2006

czech music 1 | 2006 | interview | 3

in opera direction a generalising approach means the absolute end

Is the electric guitar a memento of yourrocker beginnings? I bought it from a guitarist in New York. Do you play it when you want to relaxfrom opera? Something like that. Only in this quietVinohrady house I can’t really go at it at fullblast or the neighbours would complain. InKoloděje it’s not a problem.What do you play? Just for myself, I’m not very good at it. WhenI was a small boy I learned to play the guitar,but I didn’t stick at it long. Later, when I wasalready in Sweden, I played the trombone forthree years. I even did the entrance examsfor the conservatory, but they didn’t take me.Luckily. You mean luckily because you wouldhave missed a career as an operadirector?No, I mean it was lucky for the orchestraI would have had to play in.Why did you learn the trombone,specifically?My dad was very worried about my future.Unlike my sisters I didn’t do well at schooland nothing much interested me, and so dadwas naturally worried about how I was goingto make a living so as not to end up sweep-ing the streets. Music was the only thing thatI enjoyed. So the conductor Martin Turnovskýadvised dad to have me learn trombone. Okay, but why trombone? Because traditionally the least number ofapplicants to the conservatory were in trom-bone or harp. I ruled out harp straight away, butI had always liked trombone from Dixieland.And as it turned out there really were only four

trombone applications to the conservatory.Three got in and the fourth was me. So your dad’s dream of a safe liveli-hood for his son as trombonist evapo-rated. Didn’t your father try and get youa job in theatre on the side? You werean extra in his production of Trovatore. Back then it was just a chance for me andmy friends for school to make a little easyextra money, but as far as opening upa direct path to opera was concerned, no, itwas nothing like that.Later I discovered from Dad’s letters to Cze-choslovaka that he had wondered if I hada talent for theatre, but at the time I hadn’tshown much sign of it – I tended just to getbad marks at school. Dad knew he was ill,and he had a painful sense of the problemsof an exile’s life, and on top of that he wasworried what would become of me. When you and your parents and sister leftCzechoslovakia, you were fourteen. It’sa sensitive age, but at the same time an agewhen kids easily adapt to a new environ-ment…Emigration is a complicated thing, but I didn’thave any trauma or complex about it eitherat the time or later. Still, entering a worldwhere you don’t have the language and youdon’t know anyone is difficult in any circum-stances. When you are fourteen you copewith it better than the adults. I managed tomaster Swedish and English relatively quick-ly and so I found friends and today I’m actu-ally grateful to fate for the experience, whichforced me to become independent and findmy bearings in the world faster. You left Czechoslovakia just at the cul-

minating point of the sixties, a periodthat is today almost glorified for itsculture and theatrical life. Did all thatleave any trace in you at that age?Unfortunately not. I was a child and interest-ed in things completely different from cultureor political events.When did the theatre start to attractyou?I couldn’t avoid the theatrical environment,since my father was involved in it, and I likedit, because it was full of strange, eccentricpeople. But I came to be a director by a cir-cuitous route, a set of coincidences, and itabsolutely wasn’t a goal I consciously setmyself. I was an extra in the theatre, andI worked as a stage hand and assistant forthe orchestra. I enjoyed carrying the piano in,building benches, straightening the musicparts – it was a life free of any responsibilityor worries about the future and it suited mepretty well. One day I was asked to becomeassistant director and I thought, why not?But in fact I had no idea what it involved.I was supposed to assist Elijah Moshinskyand he was a very thorough kind of director,and so to my surprise I soon discovered thatthe job of assistant meant a lot more thanjust making coffee. I was a completely unreli-able director’s assistant. When he askedwhat we had done at the last rehearsal,I would just answer that I didn’t know. It wasa tough but good school. When you had got the hang of thingsas an assistant, did you never think youwould like to try directing for yourself? I was assistant to many directors, some ofthem good but more of them worse, so of

If David Radok happens not to be directing in Sweden, Denmark, France or some-

where else, or not to be staying in his father Alfréd Radok’s house in Koloděje in

South Bohemia, you will find him in his pleasant attic flat in an old house in the

Vinohrady district of Prague. The room, full of old furniture, is personalised by

the objects David Radok likes to make out of driftwood, smoothed stones and

other materials bearing the traces of time. The director’s book of Verdi’s La Travi-

ata lies on his desk, half-worked at the beginning of the year, and a red, pearl

inlaid electric guitar is propped against the wall.

4 | interview | czech music 1 | 2006

course I couldn’t help thinking I would like tohave a go, but I didn’t make any particularefforts in that direction. In the end, yet again,it was mere chance that got me into direct-ing. When the director of Menotti’s opera TheMedium, happened to drop out, a few peoplefrom the company who had more belief inme than I had myself, wanted me to direct.And because it wasn’t a major stage produc-tion but just a chamber title, the manage-ment was prepared to take the risk. Naturally I enjoyed it. I had absolutely no ideaabout direction or dramatic theory, and soI was constantly discovering things that oth-er people had discovered long before me.I can no longer remember what my first pro-duction was like, but it had to be pretty terri-ble, because I was experimenting with allkinds of things I believed were my own dis-coveries. With great enthusiasm I forced thechoir to slow-motion movements or stoppingaltogether (stoptime) and so the singersused to shout “Freeze again?” at me. I keptindulging in this kind of idiocy. I had first toteach myself every craft and after the firstten productions I was still learning. Afterevery premiere I was thinking about whathad worked, what hadn’t and why. And justby having to ask these questions by myself,with every production I took a little step for-ward. I looked for enlightenment outside the the-atre. I used to go to galleries and look at thepaintings and from the groupings of figureson the canvases of the great mastersI learned how to work with the choir, andfrom their chiaroscuro I learned about light-ing. I don’t know if it’s a good thing to have todiscover and test out these things for one-self, but for someone like me it was betterthan if I had got there by learning theory.

Your first “major” production was LaBohéme in Göteborg. What was it likehaving such a large set of musiciansand singers in front of you? It was terrifying! Especially when youremember that the people I was standing upin front of as director were used to seeingme as the orchestra’s assistant. But I hadspent a lot of time preparing myself verythoroughly for my first major directingassignment. For every page of piano excerptmy director’s book had ten densely writtenpages of director’s notes. The choir wasdivided into its individual members, and alltheir individual actions and the blocking weredescribed in the book in detail. Of courseyou can’t always work like that, but on thefirst occasion it helped me a lot. It gave mea sense of security at moments when I reallyneeded it. After twenty-five years in theatre I sup-pose that you prepare your productionswith less anxiety, although you areknown for the great thoroughness andsense of responsibility with which youapproach each title…My director’s books are of course brieferthese days. The older I am the more I con-centrate on trying to get to the heart ofwhatever it is that a work is about. Youngpeople have a great deal of energy and mostof all they are convinced they have a lot tosay. As they get older and acquire experi-ence they learn a craft that they didn’t knowbefore, but at a certain stage it’s important totake care that the craft doesn’t crush all theother elements. After twenty-five yearsdirecting I spend a lot of time making surethat I don’t slide into approaches that I knowwill work, but which just don’t get to theessence of the work in question. In my view

the biggest problem in directing is that direc-tors often don’t know what the work they arestaging is really about. And that means thattheir concept is based on showy effects oraround a directorial idea that may not cap-ture the essence of a work at all. I go along with the excellent words of thedirector Jan Grossman: “Theatre is an eclec-tic form, who constantly borrows from all theareas and genres that harmonise best withthe sensitivity and intelligence of their time.”In my view this is the most accurate formula-tion of the foundation of theatre. And in thisspirit what is always important for me is torealise what the story is about, how it is nar-rated in music and libretto and how it har-monises with the intelligence and above allthe sensitivity of its time. Today theatre – and not just opera –has a tendency towards visualisationand external effects. Here we couldcertainly find connections with theCzech boom in musicals since 1989,and the effect of computers, advertis-ing spots and clips and so on, on ourperception. But at this same time thereis a trend towards superficiality here…You are probably right. But there is some-thing going on here that I don’t understand.I entirely understand that in the 1960s or1970s theatre was done in a certain way, butI find it sad when in 2005 I see productionsthat are based on the style or way of thinkingof the 1970s. Frankly it’s boring to watch thetwenty-fifth rehash of something that startedthirty years ago. When the stage designerJosef Svoboda came up with a staircase andback lighting, it was a marvellous idea, butwhen singers are all crowded onto a “Svobo-da-esque” staircase in Tosca, for example,where there’s absolutely no reason for it, youhave to ask whether this enthusiasm for Svo-boda really has to be ventilated in this unfor-tunate way. What in your view is behind these“rehashes” – it is enchantment witha famous example, insecurity, a lack ofcourage to think up an approach ofone’s own? In my view it’s a complete lack of interest insubmerging oneself in the theme of the workto be staged, in whatever it is the thing isreally about, and the way the story can betold. There are directors who base theirwhole approach on being shocking. I heardof a production of Berg’s Wozzek in which allthe singers were naked, but what does thatcommunicate about the essence of Wozzekas a story? And what’s more it is highly unfairto Berg and Büchner, because there are notmany people who could really overtrumpa message as strong as theirs. Maybe in thenext production everyone will masturbate,and it will be irrelevant whether it is Wozzek,Carmen or some other opera, because it willbe all about the director’s own sensationalbrand name, and not about the work itself atall. This kind of production offends me asa member of the audience and I rarely man-

czech music 1 | 2006 | interview | 5

age to stay to the end of the performance.Why should I pay good money to spend threehours watching a piece of bad provocationwhich inspires me to nothing more thana wish to leave and go to a cafe. I’ve got nothing against any kind of new con-ception, so long as it’s a way of narrating thestory. But it really annoys me when – toquote Jan Grossman again – my intelligenceand sensitivity is bombarded with insults. It’sa different situation when a director man-ages to persuade you of the value of hisconception, succeeds in engaging you. I sawPountney’s production of Julietta and I wasenchanted, ravished. But Pountney is a direc-tor who – even though he doesn’t necessari-ly succeed in every aspect – goes after thereal meaning of a thing in an incredible hon-est way. Nonetheless, his productions, especial-ly of Czech opera classics, are receivedhere in this country with a certain dis-taste and inability to get beyond con-ventional ideas of how a “national”opera should be staged… That’s a pity, of course, because then thepublic is outraged that for example theydon’t find their own image of the mill in Jen-ufa, and then they stop paying attention andlose any ability to read the director’s ideasand purpose. And it is interesting that it is above all for-eigners who are discovering Janáček forCzechs – Pountney, Mackerras and otherswho are not weighed down by “tradition”.Things become traditions by sheer repetition,even when they don’t belong to the worksconcerned at all. Just think of the alterationsin the score and approaches that had noth-ing to do with Janáček. And it’s not justJanáček, since I’m encountering the sameproblem now with preparations for La Travia-ta. When I compare acclaimed recordingswith Verdi’s original, I find that the singersare often singing completely different notesto those the composer wrote, but the audi-ence expects it of them because these alter-ations have become tradition. And so invok-ing tradition can be a very deceptive thing. What is your view of so-called “post-modernism” in opera directing? It bothers me a great deal, because it mixeseverything together without any kind ofthought about style. If you want to go againsta style, then you have to know how to createyour own style and not just recklessly ignorethe whole thing. Every little detail presentedon stage, whether decoration, prop, arrange-ment or character means something, speaksto the spectator, creates certain associationsin his mind, and you have to reckon with that. I don’t believe that opera direction is funda-mentally changing. It has all happenedbefore. But in the last twenty years it hasbecome a kind of tilt-yard in the style of“who’s getting the upper hand”, with directorsless interested in the work itself than in howto do something that hasn’t been donebefore and will cause the biggest sensation.The concepts often involve the greatest pos-

sible simplification of the theme. And I reallydon’t like productions that try to hit mebetween the eyes with a poster-style direc-torial conception. When I watch a productionI don’t want to be bothered with the direc-tor’s concept, just as when I watch a goodactor I don’t want to think about how well heis acting, I want to be absorbed by his pre-sentation of the role.As a member of the audience can youever free yourself from thinking abouthow this or that production has beendone, and just respond immediately tothe performance as it is, or even let itenchant you? Yes, rarely but it does happen. My last greatexperience was from a production ofMozart’s opera Cosi fan tutte, directed byPatrice Chéreau in Aix-en-Provence. It wasa fantastic production, very simple, withouttricks or any kind of nudging or pointing atmeanings, simply good. But the critics rippedit apart because it wasn’t sufficiently upfront“revolutionary”. But thank God for every hon-estly produced piece of theatre of the kind.On occasions like that don’t you feeljust a hint of professional envy?Not at all. On the contrary I am delightedwhen I see a production that I myself would-n’t have managed to do so well. Of courseI feel a little bit put down, but that’s a veryuseful feeling, because it forces me to do thebest I can and according to my own lights. You see I am very well aware that in a yearI could do ten productions with my eyes shutthat would be very interesting and receivepeons from the critics. I could do one pro-duction with naked singers, another ina swimming pool maybe, in the third seat theaudience on the stage and let the cast singin the auditorium, and for safety have thefourth staged outside the theatre and so on– thinking up ten superficial ideas like thatreally isn’t a problem. But what I want is toget through to what a work is really about,with the best conscience I can. I don’t alwaysmanage it, but productions like Chéreau’sconfirm my belief that it is worthwhile. And what about when it really doesn’twork? How do you feel in cases likethat? When I know that something hasn’t workedbecause I’ve just been operating on auto-matic, as it were, then it’s a bad feeling, butwhen I am sure that I’ve given it all I’ve gotand it still hasn’t worked I feel disappointed,but at least I can still say, “Yes, I tried but itdidn’t work out.” The time you spend workingon a production and the energy you invest init is extremely important for you. Even so – doesn’t it make your angrywhen the critics swallow the bait withthose superficially showy productionsand dismiss honest but less ostenta-tious productions with a wave of thehand?Of course you feel bitter when the critics oraudience reject something that you’ve spenthalf a year working on. But that’s just thefirst reaction, because the work is important

not just in terms of the results achieved, butfor me as a person. But of course that’s thesame for every profession, and not just foropera directors…I find what you say very sympathetic,but as a critic I must say that unfortu-nately most of the productions I see(leaving aside the hopelessly uninter-esting) fall into the category of superfi-cially effect-mongering…Of course, because this is an easier andpleasanter path from the point of view ofgetting “fame”. As time goes by every direc-tor finds that at fifty he doesn’t have theenergy that he had at twenty, but when work-ing on a large stage, with lots of people andequipment, the director is the one who isexpected to give the whole apparatus ener-gy. And when you have a simplified concept,it is all much easier and you can also rely onthe prospect of most of the audience andcritics being impressed. But how does this relate to the direc-tor’s internal conscience? Naturally it has nothing to do with it at all. You are preparing a production of Ver-di’s La Traviata. It is an opera thatsingers know very well and have sungmany times. How do you convince themof your own, perhaps very differentconception of the parts?Singers who know their parts well are capa-ble of adapting to another conception withme and the conductor without any problems.Recently in Aix-en-Provence I was rehears-ing the Barber of Seville, which is an operaevery one of the singers knew backwards,but they were still open to a completely dif-ferent conception. The overwhelming majori-ty of people who do opera really seriouslyare willing to meet you halfway. And it is usu-ally the case that the better and more experi-enced a singer is, the easier it is to come toan understanding with him or her. I admirethe readiness to look for and discover some-thing different in a character that a singerhas sung throughout his life, and to agree toa completely new approach to a role playedfor the nth time. I don’t know if I would becapable of it myself. Of course it always takes a bit of time forboth of you to discover what the other isreally about. The singer needs to get thefeeling that he or she will not be abused insome hare-brained production, especiallywhen he or she cannot be sure about it prac-tically until the dress rehearsal. But aftera certain amount of rehearsal the singerfinds out whether the director is requiringthings that could have a certain point in thecourse of creating the production. At thispoint singers become far more open andwhen reassured will agree to more or lessanything. But the initial uncertainty is natural.As a director I feel it too, and during the firstrehearsals I am trying to find out aboutsingers I have never worked with before, todiscover who they are, how their minds work,how they feel, how they react and so on. Andoften I let myself be influenced by their per-

6 | interview | czech music 1 | 2006

sonalities to the extent that I change my con-ception of their characters, at least partially.Of course this has to be a change that fitswith the general direction of my ideas, anddoesn’t go against it. I am very grateful andpleased at any inspiration like this. Inrehearsals for an opera production there isa great need for mutual understanding. Youare all venturing together onto very thin ice.And when personal disputes are added tothe uncertainty about how things will turnout, then the situation can get very compli-cated. And what if there’s an insuperable con-flict?That happens, of course. And when it does –if the contract makes it possible – the bestsolution is for the one or other person con-cerned to leave. If that’s not possible it usu-ally ends badly. When I hit a brick wall, I try toachieve my ideas by other routes, for exam-ple by working around the person concerned,but of course this is a fall-back solution.After all, it is the singer that has to providethe impulse for the actions and the singingof his or her character from inside, and so ifhe or she lacks the will or ability, you can’tcover it up with any side actions. You have staged operas in a widerange of genres and from a wide rangeof periods – from Baroque to the pre-sent. Do you have particular likes anddislikes as regards periods and com-posers? Do you feel more at home incertain opera styles? I like change, and trying different genres.I enjoy it when I can follow a stage play, ver-sion of Description of a Struggle in Praguewith Rossini’s Cinderella in Copenhagen, andthen put on the Barber of Seville in theopen-air in Aix-en-Provence and finally getback to Göteborg for the Description ofa Struggle as a completely new opera by JanSandström. Change is a challenge for me. There are some periods that don’t speciallyappeal to me. For example French Romanti-cism, which I have tried, but the degree ofstylisation of extreme Romanticism engagesme much less than Baroque opera, for exam-ple or 20th-century works where the channelof communication between music and listen-er is much more direct. Handel’s Julius Cae-sar or Berg’s Wozzek, where nothing is cov-ered up just for the sake of it, is for me verysincere music. Over the twenty-five years ofmy career in opera my taste in composershas changed. My admiration for Puccini hasgiven way to a taste for Verdi. I have learnedto understand Rossini, whom I originally con-sidered a kind of superior “music to put onwhen washing the dishes”. But his Barber ofSeville, or The Journey to Rheims are worksof incredible serenity, wit and at the sametime pure communication with the audience. Even so, in the future I should like toencounter an opera that doesn’t immediatelyappeal to me, because staging a work likethat provokes you into something. This wasan experience I had in the case of Baroqueopera, which I approached with a strong

sense of helplessness about how to copewith such huge expanses of music. And I dis-covered another time, another feeling for life,very different from our hectic modern era.And the need to communicate this remote-ness to today’s public, which no longercomes to the opera in carriages, but in cars.To master the rhythm and dynamics of a pro-duction like that is extremely interesting andexciting work. If it succeeds, it gives you theenergy you need to put on an opera for thethird time that doesn’t give you the samefeeling.But repeating operas is the lot of operadirectors…It’s natural and even in a certain sense nec-essary. But I’m not speaking now about thelimited repertoire of certain opera compa-nies, but about the fact that when you put allyour energy for three years into producinga new work like The Description of a Strug-gle… you can’t immediately throw yourselfinto another project that makes the samedemands. And in that case doing a new pro-duction of Cinderella or La Traviata is a nec-essary means of regeneration, a rechargingof batteries.How does a director recharge his bat-teries?For me it’s a long and essential process. I gothrough quite a complicated process forevery production, I need time, and I need toachieve a certain relaxation. Every directorhas a different kind of energy bank, whichchanges with age. When I look back today onhow I used to do five new productions eachyear, I feel a chill up my spine. The professionof director means that you are constantlytelling stories about human relationships.And when you get caught up in the machine,and move from one production to the next,you stop registering the reality of life and youcan no longer transform it into artistic reality,because you are not receiving enoughimpulses from the world around you. And sowhen I don’t go to concerts, or exhibitions orread a good book, I get a fit of cramp. Ofcourse in situations like that I can writea director’s book in a fortnight, but it won’tbe any good. When you are twenty-five, you have so manyimpulses and great truths that you want tocommunicate to everybody else! They arenaive and stupid, but you have a need to getthem off your chest. When you are fifty, youfeel much less of an interior charge. Andwhen as a director I keep returning to basichuman problems and relationships, I reallyhave to beware of fall into a certain routine,and a generalising tendency, which meansthe absolute end in any kind of art. Whenthat happens your expression sinks to thelevel of the idiom of a television serial, wherelove means that people embrace each otherand hate that they frown at each other.Universality is terrible, but it dominateseighty percent of all the art around us. Itdoesn’t force you to think, or be engaged,and instead of reality it offers you superficialstereotypes. And when you descend to that

as a director, then you’re finished. You won over the Prague public firstwith your Mozart productions and thenwith your productions ofShostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mten-sk and Berg’s Wozzek. Since thenthree years have gone by. Last year youpresented the stage play Description ofa Struggle based on Kafka themes atthe Divadlo Na zábradlí in Prague. Areyou going to return to Prague as anopera director as well?That’s a difficult question to answer, becauseit doesn’t depend just on me. But I hope thatI will. I am very fond of the stage at theNational Theatre, which in height and depthis a unique theatre space. I have receivedseveral offers from the National Theatre, andI am on very good terms with the head of theopera Jiří Nekvasil, but to be honest, it’s nota simple decision for me. In order to be ableto work somewhere, I need to feel goodthere. I am not a dictator, or a conflictual per-son, I am just who I am, but when I come intothe canteen in the Copenhagen Theatre,I immediately have the feeling that I belongthere, that people have a relationship withme and I with them. And when you havea positive relationship with people andrespect them professionally, then togetheryou can handle even a difficult production. But embarking on that kind of thing in a situ-ation that isn’t entirely favourable is some-thing I find unbelievable difficult. When I wasthirty, I was prepared to fight my corner foranything I wanted. Today I don’t have theenergy for it. I don’t want to waste time withthings I can’t change. I want to devote myselfto things that interest me and not to wasteenergy convincing people of things thatought to be self-evident. I need a certainpersonal calm and frame of mind for mywork, and if it isn’t there, I lose my taste forwork. And that doesn’t apply just to theNational Theatre, but to other big – national,royal, state – opera houses that offer mework. I appreciate the offers from theNational Theatre, the Prague State Opera orthe Slovak National Theatre, but I have justfinished demanding work on Description ofa Struggle and I need time for regenerationand to think about what I want to do next,and under what conditions. At the moment I have Traviata on the tablefor the Copenhagen and then the GöteborgTheatre, and then I shall be preparing forVerdi’s Macbeth, which I’m looking forwardto. The premiere won’t be for another twoyears, but the long production schedulesforce me to think about how to approach itnow. I shall certainly be looking for other pro-jects, but I am slightly shy of taking on com-missions with major or unknown opera hous-es where this or that aspect doesn’t work andwhere you can’t guarantee that the work youinvest in a production will lead to the desiredresult. I want to do what I really enjoy.

czech music 1 | 2006 | interview | 7

DAVID RADOK (*1954)son of the important Czech direc-tor Alfred Radok. In 1968 after theoccupation of Czechoslovakia heemigrated with his parents toSweden, where he attended sec-ondary school. He started in thetheatre in Göteborg as an extra,stage hand and orchestra assis-tant. He made his debut as a direc-tor at the Göteborg Opera in 1980with a production of Mennoti’sopera the Medium, and today he isthe leading director in Göteborgand also a consultant in findingnew directors, singers and artistsfor the company there. His fiftyopera productions have spanneda repertoire from the EarlyBaroque to the present. Apartfrom his work in Göteborg he hasworked with and continues towork with theatres in Copen-hagen, Stockholm, Oslo, Helsinki,Berlin, Dresden, Tel Aviv andTokyo. In 1991 he staged Mozart’s DonGiovanni with the Prague NationalTheatre company for the re-open-ing of the Estates Theatre, and twoyears later The Magic Flute. Hisstaging of Shostakovich’s LadyMacbeth of Mtensk in the historicbuilding of the Prague NationalTheatre, a production that he shift-ed from the 19th century to theperiod of Stalinist terror, won himthe Alfred Radok Prize (namedafter his famous father) for thebest production of 2000. A yearlater he won the same prize for hisproduction of Alban Berg’sWozzeck at the Prague NationalTheatre. Transferred to the Göte-borg Opera, this production alsowon first place in a critics’ surveyof the “Event of the Season” andthe Theatre News Prize. Togetherwith Josef Kroutvor he wrotea libretto for an opera on FranzKafka, and presented the text asa stage play last year in the PragueDivadlo Na zábradlí and as anopera with music by Jan Sand-ström in Göteborg. He is alsoactive in visual art, and has exhib-ited his art objects in the NavrátilGallery in Prague. In October2003 he was awarded the CzechMinistry of Culture Award for ser-vices to theatre. Since 1993 hehas lived in Prague and worked inGöteborg, Copenhagen and otherEuropean theatres.

8 | instrument makers | czech music 1 | 2006

If we look around for important instrumentmakers in Czech history, we shall not find agreater figure in the field than Václav Franti-šek Červený (27th July 1819—19th January1896). His work and inventions were not onlyhighly rated in the Austro-Hungarian empireas it then was, but were acclaimed throug-hout Europe from Russia to France and evenwon him respect overseas. With his ingenui-ty, inventions, designs, organisational abiliti-es, theoretical conclusions and demonstrati-on and reputation abroad Červený contribu-ted to the overall development of Europeanmusical culture, and this is just one of manygood reasons for recalling the most impor-

tant dates and events of his life and some ofhis most significant “contributions” to thedevelopment of brass instruments that spre-ad through the world. In January we also commemorated the 110thanniversary of his death.

Family History, or the First Steps towards Fame

Jan Červený, Václav František’s grandfather,was a farmer and serf in Krupá near Kostelecnad Černými lesy. When he died in 1788 atthe age of 31 as a result of injuries caused bya falling waggon-load of wood, he left a wifeBarbara and a five-year-old son, Jan. The verynext year, 1789, the widow found a new hus-band in the farmer Jan Klíma of Prusice, whe-re Jan grew into a strong and able youngman. When he reached the age of militarycall-up, his stepfather hid him in a parish pri-est’s service in Štolmíř, because he knewthat farmhands belonging to a prince or pri-est were not taken into the army. The priestSadil took a great fancy to Jan and taughthim the basics of reading, writing and arith-metic, which he had never acquired in child-hood because of a lack of money and time.

When his stepfather died in 1808, Janreturned to his inheritance, the farm in Prusi-ce, after six years spent at the parsonage,years that were to have a decisive effect on

his life. The next spring he married AnnaBeranová of Dobročovice, who bore him afirst son Jan (2nd June 1811) and two yearslater a daughter Anna. In 1815 the wholefamily moved to a new, larger farm in Dubečnear Běchovice not far from Prague, whereJan sometimes used to go on a “Czech expe-dition” to Václav Matěj Kramerius’ bookshopfor books and magazines. After the birth of asecond son Václav (27th of September1819), Jan’s wife set about persuading himto move elsewhere for the sake of the child-ren, and so in 1823 the family took over afarm in Březany near Český Brod. It was herethat Václav started to learn to play the hornand bugle with the church teacher Stehlík,but above all the clarinet, which apparentlythe boy played with miraculous skill.

In 1833 Václav left for Prague to take upan apprenticeship with Jan Adam Bauer, withwhom he learned to make mainly brassinstruments, “the French horn, bugle andtrombone”, and where he had his first ideasfor improving and simplifying the instruments.Starting in the autumn of 1836 he spent twoyears with Master Anton Klepsch in Vienna,where he got to know military janissarymusic. He then moved from the imperial cityto Master Franz Schöllnast in Prešpurk(today Bratislava), but did not stay long, andafter a short period in Pest at the Bereghtzasifirm, he went back to the Bohemian Lands, to

václav františek červenýmaster of his craft

GABRIELA NĚMCOVÁ

„âerven˘ is always inventing something. He has already been inventing for more than thirty years,he is always at it. It is to do with a kind of obstinacy, which is also expressed in the fact that he can-not and will not endure having something better beside him. In Vienna he had to be better thanVienna, in Paris he beat Paris, and wherever there was some exhibition in Europe, âerven˘ tookthe first place in it.“ Jan Neruda: V. F. âerven˘, to je ten, co tvrdí muziku. In.: Humory (1878)

Repri

nte

d f

rom

Bohusl

av

Číž

ek: H

udební n

ást

roje

© A

ventinum

, photo

Iva

n K

rejč

í

Construction plan of the French HornPrivilege for production of the Cornon,

granted by the emperor Ferdinand I in 1844

Construction plan of chamber cylinders (1878)left: Tritonikon (1856-1875)

10 | instrument makers | czech music 1 | 2006

Brno. Here he worked in 1840 as a journey-man with Jakob Zidrich and a year later withJosef Hallas.He thus returned home after five years experi-enced at his craft, but he was soon goneagain, leaving in the spring of 1842 for Pra-gue to join his first master J.A. Bauer. Evi-dently on Bauer’s advice, the young instru-ment-maker then settled in Hradec Králové,where he opened his own workshop withfour workmen on the Great Square. This wasthe birth of the firm “V. F. Červený”, later toacquire world fame, with its product labeland inscription “Výroba hudebních nástrojů /manufacture of musical instruments Václav F.Červený”.

From the start Červený was overwhel-med with orders, above all from the militarygarrisons near and far that often had gaps inthe equipment of their bands. More or lessthroughout his life Červený was producinginstruments primarily for military music, andwould supply instruments in complete sets,always for the whole band. This meant hecould take responsibility for the resulting ove-rall sound of the ensemble, which would thenbe distinctive for its unity and compact cha-racter. Červený was particularly sought afterbecause he sold first-class instruments atvery acceptable prices. He was one of thefew independent craftsmen from the interiorwho were still capable of competing with thefactory production of wind instruments inKraslice or the Brno firm of Josef Lídl (1864-1946) – the second biggest wind instrumentfactory in the Czech Lands, founded in 1892,which launched production of wind aeropho-nes in 1895 –, and Červený managed it abo-ve all by his consistent quality and unremit-ting modernisation.

V. F. Červený – Father, Entrepreneur andRespected Citizen of the Town of HradecKrálové

In 1843 Červený married Josefa AngelinaŠípková and less than a year later their firstson was born, Jan (5th November 1844).Over the next 20 years they had another 12children, nine sons and three daughters, butin the difficult conditions of the time some ofthem died very young. Only four of his sons(Jaroslav, Stanislav, Otakar a Bohumil) andon daughter (Marie) survived their father.

The year 1848 brought political uphea-vals for the empire, and also a turning point inthe life of Červený’s brother, younger by sixyears, who for a short time worked as aninstrument maker in the family firm. In mid-June, when Prague capitulated, many war-rants were issued for the arrest of revolutio-naries, and young František Červený was onthe wanted list. After a few weeks he fled toWestern Europe and from there to America.Nearly three years went by before the longawaited letter from František arrived in Hra-dec Králové, with the surprising news that hehad started to produce musical instrumentsin New York.

Alto Cornet

Euphonium

Army Trombone (Bass)

Kaiser (Tzar) Tuba

Bass SokolovkaFrench Horn

czech music 1 | 2006 | instrument makers | 11

In the next two decades Červený’s familylife revolved above all around the births, andalso alas the premature deaths, of his child-ren. Most of those children who lived to scho-ol age were involved in music and played amusical instrument. It should be admitted thathis children often added to his cares, as wellas giving Červený pleasure. His son Bohumil,for example, trained as a shopkeeper but didnot enjoy the trade, and his shop finally wentbankrupt. Although his father paid all hisdebts and expected complete obedience inreturn, Bohumil defied the will of the “head ofthe family” and decided to go into puppettheatre. He turned out a great success, butnever won any acknowledgment from his fat-her.

Červený was not just a leading instru-ment-maker who clearly devoted more timeto his business than to anything else, but alsoa respected citizen of the town. This is evi-dent from his appointment to the head ofseveral clubs and associations founded inthe 1860s as part of the national revival (inc-reasing patriotic consciousness) among eth-nic Czechs. Červený eventually chaired theHradec Záložna – Czech Trustee SavingsBank (1862), and the Sokol physical trainingsociety established in Hradec Králové in1865 on the Prague model. He was alsoelected a senior member in 1869 by the localUnion of Amateur Theatrical Enthusiasts. Hisson Jaroslav won the respect of the local citi-zens as an agent of the Ústřední matice škol-ská (the National School Foundation) strugg-ling against the suppression of Czech schoo-ling.

At the beginning of the 1870s the youngJaroslav (1851-1928) and Stanislav (1854-1911) trained in their father’s firm and alsostarted work there on the shop floor. Červenýgave them no privileges of any kind. Aboveall, like all his apprentices they had to knownhow to play all the musical instruments pro-duced there. He evidently greatly respectedhis sons and their skill, since as early as 1876he made them his partners. The firm thenbore the title “Václav Červený & Sons”.

Another important and alas very sadevent both for Hradec Králové in general andfor the Červený family in particular, was themajor fire in the local sugar refinery in 1875,in which the youngest son Václav died. Onhearing of the death of her beloved youngestson Josefka had a stroke and remained para-lysed on one side and permanently bedrid-den until she died four years later. The deathof his wife was a huge blow to Červený, cau-sing him to concentrate all the more freneti-cally on his work, his inventions and themanagement of the firm.

V. F. Červený – Master of his Craft

Červený’s instrumental output was basedabove all on the needs of military bands,which were also his largest customer. At thetime, every regiment had a right to its ownband, and in the Austrian infantry every com-

pany had its own trumpeter, so the demandfor wind instruments was considerable. Fromthe mid-19th century, therefore, instrument-makers throughout Europe were thinking upnew musical instruments or making majorimprovements to existing instruments in orderto meet the booming market of wind bandsand orchestras. As an instrument maker whonever stopped musing on new possibilitiesand improvements, and a true professionalČervený could hardly have been born into amore fortunate period. Without these goodhistorical conditions he might not have beenable to put so many of his inventions intopractice. Conversely, of course, without Čer-vený the history of some of our brass aero-phones would have been very different, ornever even have happened.

In the construction of brass instruments,Červený was the main representative of whatwas known as the Austro-Czech School,which stood in opposition to the FrenchSchool represented by Adolph Sax (1814-1894) and finding almost no adherents onBohemian soil. The main difference betweenthe two schools is the measure of the tubes,i.e. its length in a ratio to a changing width,particularly manifest in the mellophones andcornets (invented in the 1830s). In the caseof the old trumpets and trombones the instru-ment tube was cylindrical, except where itopened out to the bell at the end. The tube ofthe new group of instruments that we knowtoday under the name of the bugle, bass bug-le, euphonium or helicon gradually broade-ned from mouth piece to end, and was there-fore conical, which influenced the soundpotential especially in terms of colour andquality of tone. The Austrian-Czech schoolpreferred a tube with the largest possiblemeasure which helped to give a lighter into-nation and a softer, finer tone. The instru-ments of the French school had a narrowermeasure, which means that their tone is moreblaring, brighter and overall more sonorous.Another important difference is that theAustrian-Czech School used exclusivelychamber cylinders, while the French usedpiston cylinders. The truth is that CentralEuropean taste was for a less obtrusivesound and so musicians chose locally madeinstruments, i.e. above all those made by Čer-vený.

The first invention that secured Červenýimmediate international success was the“Cornon”, for production of which he wasgranted a privilege license in 1844. A seriesof other improvements and designs for newinstruments followed in quick succession,and were associated with his first greater orlesser successes at work exhibitions. Červe-ný’s instruments gradually spread throughoutthe world. They were played not only in Sout-hern Germany, Italy, Spain, Norway and Rus-sia, but also in North America and Brazil. Acollection of instruments even journeyed fromHradec Králové as far as a Peruvian militaryband. Červený came up with another majorinvention in 1856, presenting to the world his

“Tritonicon“ or brass double bassoon, i.e. adouble bassoon with its length reduced by ahalf and equipped with valve mechanism.

In 1859 Červený’s firm employed almost80 people and was producing around 400musical instruments every year. Červenýdirected everything himself, personally chec-king and assessing every instrument from thecutting stage to dispatch. He was one of thevery few instrument makers to make all theparts for his instruments himself, from thesmallest rivet. He procured all the necessarymaterials for the workshop, and did the busi-ness correspondence and accounting. Heimmediately invested his profits back in thefirm, constantly improved the equipment andeven bought reserve materials for stocksbecause the times were uncertain and orderswere usually for large amounts of instru-ments.

One of the first honours that Červenýreceived was to be made a “Knight of theOrder of Christ“ in 1866 by the King of Por-tugal Dom Luis in person. When news of thisreached the imperial court in Vienna, theHabsburg emperor did not wish to be upsta-ged and the very next year awarded Červenýthe “Imperial and Royal Chivalric Cross of theOrder of Franz Josef” and Gold Medal forScience and Art”.

The year 1867 was important not justbecause of the imperial decoration, butbecause the firm now expanded east, intoRussia, where Červený opened his first sub-sidiary in Kiev. Initially it was run by the local

Key Horn, ca. 1842-1860

Repri

nte

d f

rom

Bohusl

av

Číž

ek: H

udební n

ást

roje

© A

ventinum

, photo

Iva

n K

rejč

í

12 | instrument makers | czech music 1 | 2006

bandmaster, but later it was taken over byČervený’s son Otakar who was to head it for35 years. The new branch was immediatelyhonoured by a huge order for musical instru-ments for a Russian hulan guard regimentand also for the Groden Personal Hussars inWarsaw.

Červený also presented some moreinventions and improvements in this year.One was an improved military trombone thatcould be played with only one arm. This wasgreeted with great acclaim throughout themusical world abroad, where the prototypewas copied and sold under new names. Čer-vený himself supplied it to military bands inAustria, Germany, Holland, Spain, Bulgaria,Russia and America. The firm also made afew pieces for the orchestra of the NationalTheatre in Prague and for an Austrian symp-hony orchestra. Červený reaped notablesuccess with an instrument he called theSokolovka, the signalling trumpet for theCzech patriotic Sokol physical educationunits; it was at made in all versions from lowto high register, with six trumpets making acomplete band set.

In Moscow at the polytechnical exhibitionin 1872 Červený was awarded the GrandGold Medal “For successes in the perfectproduction of musical instruments, suitableabove others for military musical corps, out-standing for their full, superb and pure soundand for the invention of transposition rotaryvalve. At this point Červený was also entrus-ted with putting together sets of musicalinstruments for the whole Russian infantry. Avery substantial order came from the otherside of the border as well, when Prussiarequested 66 complete sets of brass instru-ments.

1876 proved to be another particularlyfertile year in terms of successes and neworders. The Russian Tsar honoured Červený-’s work with a gold medal of the Order of StAnna and diploma “for zealous efforts to ele-vate wind instruments to highest degree ofperfection”, and the Czech master becamethe exclusive supplier for brass instrumentsfor all the Tsar’s regimental bands. Once aga-in this aroused competitive feelings to thewestern neighbour – the Prussian Kaiser Wil-helm I awarded Červený the knightly cross ofthe Crown Order. Decoration came fromoverseas, as well in the form of a First Medalof Honour with the legend “Inasmuch as allthe instruments exhibited were distinguishedfor peerless excellence in construction,superlative work, grand sound and superbplayability, and acknowledged as instrumentsfirst-class in every respect.”

Červený did not, however, “rest on hislaurels” and he presented more of his newinventions, this time a quartet of cornets. Hehad found inspiration in simple source – thefour basic registers of a vocal ensemble. Forthe soprano he used the “primovka” of 1873,and added another three deeper instruments,i.e. three lower cornets made on the sameprinciple as the “primovka”. According to

contemporary reactions this new quartet ofcornets was an advance on all its predeces-sors in terms of the equilibrium of the tonecolours, and certainly in other respects aswell.

Over his lifetime Červený was awarded atotal of 11 imperial or royal decorations(orders) for services to industry (Austria-Hun-gary, Prussia, Russia. Portugal, Bulgaria andthe Papal See) and 15 medals, including twohonours at world exhibitions (New York,Munich, Paris, London, Oporto, Philadelphia,the Vatican, Chicago and Barcelona). Hisunique talent is attested, for example, by thefact that when after long drawn out negotiati-ons the pitch of the reference a was internati-onally fixed at 435 Hz in 1891, Červený allo-wed the flicker of a smile to pass his face.With his perfect pitch, he himself had beenalready been using the frequency for sixyears.

One of the last honours that he received,but certainly one that must have meant a gre-at deal to him personally, was to be made acitizen of honour of the Town of Hradec Krá-lové, above all for his services to the develop-ment of the town and its culture, but also formaking it famous abroad.

Finally we should not forget an anecdoteof 1884 which vividly captures Červený’scharacter. One day Václav received a letterfrom the supreme imperial office in Vienna. Itformally announced that by the decision ofhis Majesty the factory-owner Václav Franti-šek Červený was to be raised to the nobleestate for his services to industry. He wasasked to kindly present himself for an audien-ce with the emperor on such and such a day.The imperial master of ceremonies, at thattime Prince Lobkowicz drew his attention hewas naturally required to wear dinner dressto the audience and that in his present clot-hes, unfortunately, not even the master facto-ry owner could be admitted. The prince tact-fully indicated that for these situations a hireshop for dinner dress was available and thesituation could easily be remedied. But hedidn’t know Červený and his short-temper.Václav flew off the handle and refused tocalm down even when the last of the freshlybelted noblemen had left the audience cham-ber. At home the whole family was waiting forhim, almost with a triumphal arch. After thewhole day‘s train journey Václav had recove-red his dry humour. “You and your descen-dents were almost called von Červený, vonČervená. It depended just on a dusty dinnersuit from a hire shop. I for my part am satisfi-ed with my name: Červený.“

When Červený died in 1896, it was a hugeloss not just for his family and friends but alsofor the whole music world. The family traditionwas carried on by Červený’s sons, and formany years co-owners of the firm Jaroslav andStanislav. They too succeeded with a fewpatents, clearly winning most fame with a bug-le with special key setting that was supplied toa total of 61 battalions of the Austrian military

land defence music bands. At the end of the1920s after the death of Jaroslav the firm pas-sed into the hands of the instrument makerKarel Šámal because there were no morefamily heirs. He had to struggle with the seri-ous problems of the inter-war period, the politi-cal situation and the world economic crisis.

After the Second World War the famousfirm of “Červený” met the same fate as all pri-vate companies – it was nationalised, andplaced under the National Amati Concern.1948 meant the final end of a more than100-year tradition.

Conclusion – Summary

Červený continually sought through his inven-tions to discover new sounds, new colours,and new ranges for musical instruments andto make them easier to play and handle. Heimproved the old horn into a cornon, createdthe rotary valve, double bass tuba, a specialkind of horn “zvukoroh”, cornet, baroxyton(the pride of all Austrian Austrian militarybands with a range right down to contra Eflat), and tritonicon, simplified many othersand improved the contrabass bassoon, altohorn, sokolovka, contrabass sokolovka, thetrompet “harcovka” (the signal bugle for allunits of the imperial army), a set of army trom-bones (the basis of the unique sound ofAustrian military music), a sub contrabasstrombone, kettle drums, bells, a cornet quar-tet from descant to bass. The “kaiser musicalinstrument“ is still known today – in Italy theystill produce the Contrabasso ad anchia, i.e.Červený‘s tritonicon.

Because the legal and above all licencesystem including patent law was in his timenot valid throughout the world but only in agiven country, Červený’s inventions werecopied and renamed, even patented underother names by clever foreign instrument-makers and then manufactured in many diffe-rent countries. One example might be Červe-ný’s first invention the rotary valve, which theParisian instrument-maker Gautrot immedia-tely “borrowed” in 1846 and used as a basisfor an international reputation. Červený’scontrabass tuba, which supplies the deeptones without which the sound of the symp-hony orchestra would be unimaginable, wasmanufactured by the Vienna firm Stourasseunder the name Helikon, the Milan instru-ment-maker Pelitti renamed it as his ownPelittone, and another borrower was Červe-ný’s lifelong rival and competitor Ad. Sax,who presented it as the Saxhorn-contre-bas-se. And many more Červený’s inventions, soimportant for the subsequent development ofbrass instruments, could not have been evenmentioned in this article.

Pipe organs have always been and remainone of the most impressive and also compli-cated musical instruments. As with violins,the making of organs has always beenwreathed in a certain amount of mystery.Organ builders have guarded their knowl-edge and handed it down only to their suc-cessors in the workshop. This is somethingevident enough from the fact that our histor-ical sources and literature are all with fewexceptions silent on certain matters –specifically on the technology of the makingof organ pipes, the scaling of the pipes andthe way the organ is tuned (tempered). It isa tradition confirmed by a nearly anecdotestory of 1804, although one that might senda chill down the spines of lovers of themusic of Leoš Janáček. Janáček’s grandfa-ther met with an unpleasant accident thatalmost ended in tragedy – while trying tocast the tin plate for organ pipes he and hisfriend suffered such severe burns that theyspent a long time recovering. The secret ofthe correct approach was revealed to themlater, in exchange for a bag of potatoes, bythe widow of a certain organ builder.

One reason we tell this story is that it istestimony to the fact that organs werea matter of fascination in all classes of oursociety. On the other hand, it was nevereasy to make a living as an organ builder,because as the famous philosopher andsociologist Max Weber observed, organbuilding was only a good prospect in eco-nomically prosperous places and regions.The same remains true to day. It was thereason why organs first appeared in metro-politan cathedrals and monastery churches.It is no accident that the oldest reports oforgans in this country come from Pragueand Olomouc, and that it was clerics whotook up organ building. But as towns grewand flourished organ building became morewidespread and became a recognisedtrade. Reports on organs in the CzechLands in sources from the 14th centuryshow that the trade was doing well here.Indeed, the oldest known Austrian organ

builder, who built the organ in St.Steven’s inVienna, was probably Czech because, indocuments of around 1400, he is named asJörg Behaim (Behem, Pehen, Böhm). Theorgan builder Jan Behaim, a friend of thecelebrated organist Paul Hofhaimer (1459– 1537), was also Czech, a native of the vil-lage of Dobrá near Prachatice.

The second half of the 16th century wasa particularly favourable period for Bohemi-an organ building. At this time the Bohemianlands were arguably one of the trend-settingareas of Europe, as represented by theircrowning creation, the so called FerdinandOrgan in the Cathedral of St Vitus inPrague. This was also a golden age inburgher musical culture. One positive factorwas the fact that a substantial number ofchurches in the larger towns came underthe patronage and administration of Protes-tant town administrations, which in line withmusical traditions of this religion consideredorgans and organ music an important partof the spiritual life of their town populations.Rudolf Walter on the territory of the formerPrussian Silesia noticed that the co-exis-tence of two faiths inspired a spirit of com-petition in the construction of organs. Theresult was that two– and three-manualorgans were much more numerous therethan in the predominantly Catholic lands.The same trend was gradually evident in theBohemian Lands too. The situation changedabruptly in the post– White Mountain periodafter the defeat of the Protestants and withthe beginning of the Thirty Years War, how-ever, allowing us to speak about the firstgreat crisis of the organ-builders’ trade.A land in economic and religious turmoilwas not a promising place for the construc-tion of new organs. Only later, in the secondhalf of the 17th century, do we see renewedsigns of development in organ building,especially after the end of the Turkish wars.

The results of re-catholicisation after theThirty Years War routed the development ofhome organ-building to the style of the socalled Habsburg organ building region.

czech music 1 | 2006 | instrument makers | 13

Towards the end of the 17th century foreignorgan builders such as Petr Dotte fromWestphalia or Theodor Agadoni (comingfrom Italy) spent time in the country and sig-nificantly influenced the form of domesticorgan construction. Both of them con-tributed in their own distinctive ways to thelocal colour range of organ stops by pat-terns taken from the German and Italianorgan building areas. At the same period wefind the famous Johann Heinrich Mundthere, a native of Cologne, neverthelessa pupil of Jeroným Artmann of Prague. Thatis the ground why his importance resultsmore from his excellent standard of crafts-manship than from any stylistic innovations.Thanks to German sponsorship his mostimportant instrument in the Church of OurLady before Týn in Prague (1673) hasrecently been the subject of first-raterestoration. His other surviving instrumentsare still waiting for conservation and restora-tion rescue.

In the following period, however, it wasdomestic organ-makers who came into theirown and exercised the greatest influence,particularly the members of the so calledLoket and Brno schools. The most importantfigures here were the founders of theschools. In Loket (Elbogen) it was AbrahamStarck (1659–1709). A number of hisinstruments are still in existence and attractthe interest of every expert and laymen aswell (Zlatá Koruna, Plasy, Sněžné (fig.1) andothers). Other masters ranked to the LoketSchool are Leopold Burghardt, author of thewonderful organs in the monastery church inKladruby and in Manětín (fig.2), Johann F.Fassmann, and Johann Ignaz Schmidt(fig.3).

The origin of the Brno Organ BuildingSchool is dated to the arrival of JohannDavid Sieber (1670? – 1723) in Brno.Sieber created many excellent organs(1708 Polná (fig.4); 1723 Žďár nad Sázavou– monastery (fig.5) and others.). He alsomanaged to get commissions in cities fur-ther away, for example for a large three-

organ building in the czech lands

PETR KOUKAL1

manual organ in the Prussian (today Polish)town of Svídnice (1705) and in Vienna(1714). His work was continued by his sonFranz Sieber, Anton Richter and Jan Výmola.The last named organ builder ultimatelyachieved an exceptional standard, as wecan see in his surviving organs, for examplein Doubravník (1760) (fig. 6) and in Dub naMoravě (1768).

These two organ schools were the mostimportant ones, but by no means the onlyones. Another remarkable example is theKráliky School, residing in the small town ofKrálíky (Grulich) on the northern borderlandbetween Bohemia and Moravia. Severalorgan-building workshops existed there sideby side in the later 18th century – for exam-ple four to five of them in the years 1769 –1807. To this day it is unclear whether therelationship between them was competitiveor co-operative.

What do we know today is that in theperiod 1600–1850 a large number oforgan-making workshops existed on the rel-atively small territory of the historic Bohemi-an Lands. For example in Moravia and Aus-trian Silesia there demonstrably existedmore than 170 workshops in seventy locali-ties, and at least as many may be assumedto have existed in Bohemia. It must bestressed that here we are talking aboutorgan-building workshops, places in whichoften only one to three people were makingorgans. This form of production went ondeep into the 19th century. The handmadeapproach usually resulted in relatively highquality instruments. In these circumstancessome of the builders could be autodidacts,some of whom turned fully professional andsoon achieved excellent results. One exam-ple might be František Svítil senior fromNové Město na Moravě, who foundeda three-generation firm and himself con-structed more than fifty instruments not justin the surrounding region but also in SouthBohemia, South Moravia and Lower Austria(fig.7).

Starting in the 1860s the situationchanged again – workshops were turninginto factories. This was the period that wit-nessed the foundation (1873) of the well-known firm of Rieger in Krnov (Jägerndorf).One factor that made for the accelerateddecline and disappearance of small work-shops and the rise of factory firms was thetransformation of the musical aesthetic idealof the organ associated with the rapidimplementation of what was known as theCaecilian reform of church music. This hadits effects in the Czech Lands as well.Nonetheless, the smaller centres of produc-tion – more workshops than factories –,clung on up to the end of the century, and insignificant numbers; it documents the list oforgan-making firms throughout the formerAustro-Hungarian state published in 1898.It lists a total of 141 firms, of which 45, i.e.almost a third, were in the Czech Lands. For

purposes of comparison we should notethat at the same time there were “bare” 13organ-making firms in Switzerland. Amongthe 45 organ-makers listed in the BohemianLands, six were based in Prague and theothers scattered throughout the whole terri-tory of Bohemia, Moravia and Austrian Sile-sia. They were not located only in the largercentres, but could be found in small townssuch as Polička (Bedřich Čápek) or Lom-nice nad Popelkou (Josef Kobrle), and evenin tiny villages like Hraničné Petrovice (JosefMader), Nová Říše (Ludvík Nix) or StaréMěsto pod Landštejnem (Franz M. Stangl).Some produced organs of traditional typewith slider windchest, but most were gradu-ally moving over to cone windchest and laterequipping their instruments with pneumaticaction.

The consequences of the First WorldWar were all too evident in organ-making –many firms went out of business. The eco-nomic crisis of later years compounded thedamage. Nonetheless the number of organbuilders remained relatively high, as wasconfirmed by Československá vlastivědaencyclopedia in 1935 with the followinginformation:

“Among numerous domestic organ-building firms, some of which no longerexist, we should list: V. Brauner in Uničovin Moravia, K. Čápek in Polička, Friedl (heirof Petr) in Prague, Lad. Hauser in Teplice,V. Hubený in Protivín, Jos. Hubička inPrague, Vojtěch Kaš in Brno, Langenauer inPodbořany, J. Mádlo in Prague, Medřický inKutná Hora, J. Mölzer in Kutná Hora (neworgan for St Vitus’s in Prague), J. Mudrochin Tišnov, the Paštika Brothers in Prague(they built the wonderful instrument inEmauze in Prague), Boh. Paštika in StaráBoleslav,G. Paštika in Češtin, L. Petřík inBrno, E. S. Petr in Prague (the organ inKarlin and many others), V. Poláček inRychnov n. Kn., J. Rejna & Černý inPrague, the Rieger Brothers in Krnov inSilesia (many outstanding instrumentsthroughout the republic and abroad),Jindřich Schiffner in Prague (took over theworkshop of the famous Gartner organbuilders), this traditional firm is now direct-ed by Jos. Růžička in Prague, Schönhofferin Bratislava, Schusser in Teplá near Mar.Lázně, V. Skopek in Tábor, M. Strmiska inUher. Hradiště, F. Surat in Čes.Budějovice, M. Svítil in Nové Město inMoravia, J. Tuček in Kutná Hora (the bigorgan in the Municipal House in Prague),K. Urban in Prague, Ot. Vazanský in Nitra,Veselý in Kutná Hora, Votruba in Počátky,J. M. Wünsch in Sušice, Fr. Zachystal inTřebíč and others.”

If we leave aside the Slovak towns, wereach a figure of 31 firms, which once againtestifies to the character and staying powerof the Czech organ-building in the inter-warperiod. Once again we should stress thesignificant fact that organ-makers were

based not just in cities like Prague and Brnobut could be found in small towns likePočátky (Josef Votruba), Protivín (EduardHubený) or Nové Město in Moravia (MetodějSvítil). The one with the best reputation wasRieger Brothers (Gebrüder Rieger) ofKrnov, who in the inter-war years1925–1939 produced more than 700 neworgans, half of which were exported fromthe then Czechoslovakia to other Europeancountries, Asia, South America and Africa.In this respect the firm overtook all the otherdomestic producers of organs include oth-erwise excellent firms such as Emanuel Š.Petr (fig.8)

This development was once again halt-ed by world war; after 1945 the organ com-panies scarcely had time to recover beforethe communist take-over in 1948 strucka final blow to their development. The pro-duction of organs was henceforth to bestate planned within the monopoly nation-alised firm of Rieger in Krnov, newly operat-ing under the name of Továrna na varhany –Organ Factory. The new secondary titleRieger-Kloss signified the merger of the twoprevious organ companies after their nation-alisation. This single state enterprise, pro-ducing and repairing organs, at the sametime became the sole, i.e. state monopolyexporter of organs. A few local co-opera-tives, most of them former organ-buildingfirms, were allowed to meet the domesticdemand for new organs and repairs to olderinstruments. The most important of thesewas Organa Kutná Hora, created by thenationalisation and merger of the two earlierlocal firms of Tuček and Melzer.

These changes meant that the naturaldevelopment of Czech organ-building wasfrozen, since with the political-ideologicalrestrictions and the new iron curtain it lostcontact for many years with the best Euro-pean and world developmental trends in theorgan construction. Particularly hard hit wasthe important artistic and technical area oforgan restoration.

The development of organ building with-in the Czech Lands was thus to be essen-tially planned and determined by a singleproducer. The application of socialist indus-trial methods in so sensitive field as organ-building inevitably had effects preciselyopposite to the planned demands forincrease in quality – the Krnov concern pro-duced instruments of very uneven standard.Over the years 1948 – 1989 almost sixhundred instruments were built in Krnov.Among them there are some good enoughto merit attention and protection in my view.They cannot be listed here in full, but wemight here mention at random at least thefollowing: Velehrad (1964), Cheb – St.Clare (1974), Olomouc – St Michael (1975)and Uničov (1987).

As in the other post-communist coun-tries of Central Europe, 1990 was anothermajor turning point. At the time in the Czech

14 | instrument makers | czech music 1 | 2006

czech music 1 | 2006 | instrument makers | 15

Lands, three other enterprises were buildingorgans apart from the Rieger – Kloss OrganFactory: Organa Kutná Hora as a smallerproducer of organs with pneumatic actionoften inserted into old organ cases; theorgan division of the toy factory Igra Praha,which was mainly devoted to repairs but inthe seventies was already managing to buildnew organs with mechanical action andslide wind-chest (1976 Nové Město inMoravia); and finally the organ workshop ofthe Dřevopodnik Brno (City of Brno WoodConcern), which produced below-averagepneumatic instruments that replaced older,often historically very valuable organs inSouth Moravia.

Apart from these official producers,however, there existed some “independent”essentially only semi-legal organ makers,some of whom were capable of buildingnew smaller instruments. Among the mostpromising at that time were Vladimír Šlajch,Bohumil Žloutek & Jan Kubát and PavelDoubek & Dalibor Michek.

The situation after 1990 can be brieflydescribed in terms of the following basicfeatures:— The privatisation of all existing organ mak-

ing and repairing facilities— Rapid growth in the number of licensed

organ-makers and repairers as a result ofextremely liberal legislation

— A decline in the traditional organ-makingand repairing facilities as a result of toughcompetition on domestic and foreign mar-kets associated with the changed eco-nomic situation

— Improvement in the production qualities ofa few organ firms as a result of liberal andconcurrently tough market conditions

— How have these changes affected theestablished organ builders? In relation tothe most important, the Rieger-Kloss firm,we may sum up as follows:

— The loss of monopoly position on theCzech market, resulting in the gradual cut-back of production and reduction of theworkforce

— The loss of traditional export areas (TheSoviet Union and other former communistcountries)

— Privatisation involving a new owner andnew management

— Gradual orientation to “combined” instru-ments with pipe and digital registers,associated with the attempt to break intothe American market

— Continuing neglect of modern restorationapproaches with older instruments

The overview of the firm’s production con-firms the features identified above (seechart).

A typical example of the recent productionof Rieger-Kloss firm might be the organ op.3724 for a Presbyterian church in Savannah

76

2 3

4 5

16 | instrument makers | czech music 1 | 2006

sive organs Traun – České Budějovice –Bruchsal makes this very clear. His lastorgan for Burchsal, indeed, shows that hiswork is in the European first rank. His hugeexperience and historical knowledge oforgans, the like of which we shall find winno other Czech organ maker, makes him notonly an outstanding domestic restorer ofhistorical organs, and one almost withoutcompetition, but is manifest in his approachto the building of new instruments.

As has been noted above, after 1990(and in some cases earlier) a number oforgan-builders left the firm Rieger KlossKrnov. Most of them then founded their ownorgan trades, but to a greater or lesserextent they have all continued to show theinfluence of the original “mother firm”, the“Rieger-Kloss” method for building organsand their acoustic and visual aesthetic. Thisentitles us to use the term of Krnov Organ-Building School in the same sense that theterms Loket or Brno School are used. Thefollowing firms and organ-makers areamong the most important representativesof this Krnov School:

Václav Smolka (Krnov) produces smallerand larger instruments, applying his owntechnical improvements and ideas. So farhis most important organs have been for theCathedral in Ostrava (1998, op. 3, III/43)and for the Church of the Holy Spirit in Opa-va (2003, op. 5, III/34).

The firm Kánský and Brachtl (Krnov) wasfounded in 1997. It produces new organsusing historical inspirations and approach-es, especially Baroque organ-building. Thefirm’s most important organs include 1999Odry (III/44) 2001, Nový Hradec Králové(II/23), 2003 Banská Bystrica (Slovakia,III/35), and 2004 Humpolec (II/25) (fig.11).It is a firm that has achieved surprisinglywell thought out and high quality results,making it one of the leading representativesof contemporary Czech organ-building. It isgradually creating its own aesthetic idea ofsound and visual form, emancipating itselffrom the earlier influence of the Riegeriantraditions.

Vladimír Grygar left the Krnov organ firmlong before 1990, but officially founded hisfirm in Prostějov in 1992. He is the author ofa number or organs, largely conceived andexecuted in the Riegerian tradition of univer-sal instruments for all organ styles. We shallfind them for example at St. Anne’s Hill nearOpole (1998, Poland, III/34), in Litomyšl atthe Holy Cross (2000, IV/50) (fig.12), andin Česká Třebová (2005, III/38).

Other firms producing smaller instru-ments should also be considered a part ofthe Krnov Organ School: Jiří Vaculín(Vsetín), Robert Ponča (Krnov) and JanStavinoha (Valašská Bystřice). Their activi-ties have not so far risen above the level ofordinary organs for liturgical needs.

(2002) and Křoví (2005). Most are smallerinstruments designed to meet the liturgicalneeds of rural churches.

In the 1990s Dalibor Michek foundeda new firm in Puklice and then in Studénkynear Jihlava. At first he continued workingwith Vladimír Šlajch and with the Doubeks,but then he became a sought-after producerof wood pipes, which today he is still manu-facturing for many foreign firms. His cus-tomers include Georg and Thomas Jann –Allkofen, Peter Vier – Oberweier, Hans-Georg Vleugels – Hardheim, KristianWegscheider – Dresden, Yves Koenig –Sare Union, Gaston Kern – Hattmat,Friedrich Hartig – Seewalchen am Attersseand others. In the last two years he hasbeen going back partly to restoration, usinghis own effective methods of conservingand petrifying the wood parts of organs.

His former colleague Vladimír Šlajch hasemerged as one of the most talented ofCzech organ makers. In 1992 he foundedhis own firm and in Borovany he startedfrom scratch to build a modern organ-mak-ing and restoration workshop. Since then hehas made a number of remarkable organs.While still working with Dalibor Michek hecreated the organs in Růžená (1989, I/7)and in Třešť (1990, II/24) (fig.10). The twoconcert organ positives for the organistsJaroslav Tůma and Vladimír Rusó are alsofrom this period. In his new workshop inBorovany he has built organs for Ebreichs-dorf (1996, Austria, II/14), Feldafing (1997SRN, II/14), České Budějovice (1999,II/20), Traun-Oedt (1999, Austria, II/16),Prague – St Bartholomew’s (2000, II/18),Prague – St. Ignatius (2001 I/6) and Bruch-sal (2004, Germany, II/30).

Vladimír Šlajch is perhaps the purestexample of the handful of Czech organ mak-ers who have not stagnated and slept ontheir laurels. He has been constantlyimproving and developing his work. Justa comparison of his chronologically succes-

(USA, Georgia) in 2005, which has up tothree manuals and pedal 45 pipe and 21digital registers.

Unlike in the case of Rieger-Kloss theprivatisation of Organa Kutná Hora did notmean the change in the firm management,which consisted simply of the organ-makersthemselves. Production of new organs withpneumatic action was halted, for the man-agement quickly grasped the changed situa-tion. Now the firm is orientating itself more tomodern methods of restoration and renova-tion of organs with pneumatic and mechani-cal systems.

The activity of the organ-makers at IgraPraha was terminated and some of its formeremployees went independent as privateentrepreneurs focused mostly for organrepairs. Dřevopodnik Brno ended in muchthe same way, with the new firm VarhanyOstopovice, being formed in its place;Organ Ostopovice is moving from pneumat-ic action to the production of organs withmechanical action and slide windchest.

With the help of his son Dušan, PavelDoubek enlarged his earlier workshop andturned it into a modern firm, newly foundedin 1992 in Čížov. During the 1990s he madeseveral interesting organs, for example thetwo-manual mechanical instrument made in1992 for the Blahoslavův dům (an evangelicChurch) in Brno (fig.9). This firm alsorestored Baroque organs, for exampleBurghardt’s organ in Kladruby and the Star-ck organ in Prague at St. Francis’s. Towardsthe end of the 1990s the firm’s activitieswere halted as a result of poor managementdecisions and business plans.

Bohumil Žloutek worked most often withthe pewterer Jan Kubát. The new conditionsallowed him to set up his own firm in thetown of Zásada, where his son also assistshim. They have revived the family, pre-Com-munist tradition. Among organs recentlymade by the firm we might mention organs inBystřice nad Pernštejnem (2000), Křenovice

Overview of the Output of Rieger-Kloss Krnov since 1990

Year No. of Destinationorgans

1990 13 7 Czechoslovakia, 3 USSR, 1 Italy, 1 Cuba, 1 Germany 1991 14 9 Czechoslovakia, 1 USSR, 1 Slovenia, 1 Austria, 1 Italy, 1 S. Korea1992 14 5 Czechoslovakia, 3 Germany, 3 USA, 1 Norway, 1 Portugal, 1 Austria1993 8 3 Czech Republic, 1 Slovakia, 1 Italy, 1 Austria, 1 Norway, 1 S. Korea 1994 11 5 Germany, 2 S. Korea, 1 USA, 1 France, 1 Slovakia, 1 Ukraine1995 10 6 Germany, 2 China, 1 S. Korea, 1 Denmark1996 12 5 S. Korea, 2 USA, 2 Germany, 1 Austria, 1 Slovakia, 1 Czech Republic1997 3 1 S. Korea, 1 USA, 1 Czech Republic1998 2 1 Germany, 1 Slovakia1999 2 1 USA, 1 Japan2000 2 1 Poland, 1 Great Britain2001 4 2 USA, 1 S. Korea, 1 Japan2002 4 3 USA, 1 Slovakia2003 02004 1 1 Czech Republic2005 1 1 USA

czech music 1 | 2006 | instrument makers | 17

12

Titles for the Photographs:

1) Sněžné (1691 Abraham Starck)

2) Manětín (1716 Leopold Burghardt)

3) Peruc (1763 Ignaz Schmidt)

4) Polná (1708 Johann David Sieber)

5) Žďár nad Sázavou – monastery (1723 6)

Johann David Sieber)

6) Doubravník (1760 Jan Výmola)

7) Batelov (1841 František Svítil sen.)

8) Nové Město na Moravě – Protestant church

(1897 Emanuel Š. Petr)

9) Brno – Blahoslavův dům (1992 Doubek

and son)

10) Třešť (1990 Vladimír Šlajch and Dalibor

Michek)

11) Humpolec (2004 Kánský and Brachtl)

12) Litomyšl – The Holy Cross (2000 Vladimír

Grygar in a modified case by Josef Kobrl)

We can summarise the present stateand prospects of Czech organ making todayas follows: The new legislative conditionsafter 1992 meant the “unfreezing” of theunnatural arrested state that had lasted forforty years. A large number of people havesince acquired trade licenses in the field,but only a few firms are actually capable ofproducing new instruments, and thesemainly belonging to the so-called Krnovorgan school with its more conservativecharacter of production and sound aesthet-ics. Only a very few firms have achievedhigh quality new organs enabling them tobreak into foreign markets, especially Ger-many. Unfortunately what was hitherto thelargest Czech organ producer, Rieger-Kloss, has been dropping out of this pro-gressive group. Vladimír Šlajch, on the otherhand, deserves to be taken very seriously,as does the firm Kánský a Brachtl. The typi-cal feature of both is strong inspiration fromhistoric instruments, but this makes theirproducts almost unacceptable for some

Czech organists and customers whowant “modern” organs of the Rieger-Kloss or Grygar type.

This fact reflects the two main devel-opmental trends in contemporary Czechorgan-making:

1) the established, i.e. traditionalstyle based on Krnov organ-making, rep-resenting the so-called “modern” organwith a wide range of technical possibili-ties.

2) the historicizing style, based ondetailed, precise craftsmanship using his-torical organs as models.

If we look at the question from thepoint of view of the wider Europe, andEuropean Union, for the moment the onlyfirms capable of competing are in thesecond group. Only time will tell whichpath Czech organ-making as a whole ismore likely to take.

10

8

9

11

18 | instrument makers | czech music 1 | 2006

fully repaired his neighbour’s piano and thework so inspired him that he shelved hisoriginal profession as a mill repairer anddevoted himself entirely to constructingpianos. In 1891 he started production inVarnsdorf and expanded it substantially.Scholze had all four of his sons trained aspiano makers and in 1914 opened yetanother branch in Jiříkov. (Since 1894Jiříkov had also been the home of a key-board manufactory managed by HermannStamnitz, which supplied keyboards to thefirms Petrof, Rősler and then the local pro-ducer Scholze.) In 1921, two of Scholz’ssons, together with the merchant HeřmanSvoboda, formed a public company underthe name “Scholze & Sohne” but in 1935 itwent bankrupt. It was auctioned and pur-chased by another of the brothers Franz,who founded the Scholze Piano House inÚstí nad Labem. At this point the firm wasproducing 8 types of upright piano and 5types of grand piano. After the war it wasnationalised like so many others.

In Liberec itself, the A. Proksch firmwas founded in 1864 and subsequentlyprovided work for fifty workmen. After twen-ty years of existence it boasted a subsidiaryin Vienna and exported to Germany, Eng-land, France, America and the Balkans.Another important Liberec firm engaged inproduction of upright pianos wasWawrisch, established just before the endof the 19th century by the Wawrisch broth-ers who drew on their experience of Ger-many and France.

In the 1890s the ranks of the Liberec

works of the most famous and to this daythe largest Czech manufacturer AntonínPetrof dates from 1864.) After a number ofmoves, it settled in Česká Lípa and alreadymade a name for itself in the 1870s in expertcircles by using English mechanics. On thedeath of the firm’s founder Gustav Rősler,the works were inherited by his wife, who in1897 entrusted the running of the firm toher brother Ludvík Gatter. At the beginningof the new century Gatter successfullyexpanded production and built up publicawareness of the trademark by taking part inworld exhibitions (The firm won the highestaward in the form of a medal at the WorldExhibition in Paris, for example). By 1911the firm had a hundred workers andemployed another fifteen externally. Produc-tion was characterised by a high level ofmodernisation and self-sufficiency. Apartfrom Austria-Hungary, which was the desti-nation for most of the output (25-35 % toVienna alone) the firm exported to Great Bri-tain and even to South Africa, for example.The output in numbers of instruments con-tinued to rise and from an original hundredpieces annually at the turn of the centuryhad risen to as high as 1000 instruments in1935. Then however, with the effects of theGreat Economic Crisis the output of the firmdropped back again to only a hundredinstruments a year. Up to the end of theSecond World War the firm remained in thefamily, with ownership taken over by LudvíkGatter’s sons, Reiner and Walter.

In 1876 Franz Scholze started produc-tion in the Liberec region. He had success-

Pianos were made in Bohemia and Moraviafrom as early as the end of the 18th centuryand the number of manufactories and smallworkshops producing and repairing pianosgradually increased to the order of hun-dreds. The first grand piano builders at theend of the 18th century included for exam-ple Jan Zelinka from 1796 in Prague orJacob Weimes from 1798, while in Brno theimportant Buchta family business wasestablished from 1770 and the Ignatz Spitz-ka firm in 1785. Czech instrument makerswere also strongly represented in Vienna.

The nineteenth century, especially thelatter half, brought a real “boom” in the foun-dation of new firms producing grand andupright pianos. Many small workshops wereopened which gradually expanded produc-tion and by the end of the 19th centurythere was a settled stratification of produc-ers by size. There were small workshopscomposed of just the owners and a fewassistants, who apart from making instru-ments mainly provided service – tuning andrepairs; then there were medium-sizedentrepreneurs operating on the basis ofa license for the production and repair ofgrand and upright pianos and finally quitelarge producers, whose factories werenationalised by the communists in 1948and placed under the single state concernTovárny na piana [Piano Factories], laterČeskoslovenské hudební nástroje [Cze-choslovak Musical Instruments].

The Origins and Development of Produc-tion

To get a better understanding of situation,context and starting points of today’s manu-facturers, let us take a brief look at the his-tory of some of them.

The firm Rősler started production inthe later 19th century, although the sourcesdiffer on the actual year, which was either1868 or 1878. (For comparison: the piano

manufacture of pianosin the czech republic:yesterday and today

TEREZA KRAMPLOVÁThe production of pianos, upright and grand, has a relativelylong tradition in the Czech Lands. Together let us look back tothe 18th century and the origins and development of a fieldthat is today a significant part of the Czech music industry. Letus compare the joys and woes of piano makers of the pastwith those of present-day manufacturers, and briefly considerat least some of the difficulties faced by current Czech pro-ducers especially as a result of the uncontrollable boom inAsian competition which abides by absolutely none of the tra-ditional trading and manufacturing rules.

manufacturers were swelled by Koch &Korselt. Thanks to major success at theworld exhibition in Paris the fame of thetrademark spread rapidly. Apart from wholeinstruments, it supplied claviatures andmechanics. By the end of the 1940s thefirm was producing eight models of uprightpiano and five models of grand piano,employed around eighty people and itsaverage annual output was 400 uprightsand 150 grand pianos. In 1940 RudolfKlinger became company secretary andthen owner; under his management the firmwas forced to shift to war production andthe manufacture of pianos de facto ceased.

August Riemer of Chrastava suppliedmainly electrical pianos and orchestrions.Within fifteen years of the founding of thefirm in 1845 he was able to employ aroundtwenty people. After 1896 the firm wasrenamed Gebrüder Riemer. The family tradi-tion was carried on with the building oforgans under the trademark Jos. Riemer andSőhne.

In his time the German producerAugust Főrster was a pioneer in the intro-duction of new technologies. He installedelectricity to power the machines in his fac-tory, enabling him to increase weekly pro-duction from eight instruments to sixteen,and he also patented a cast iron frame.Apart from Lőbau, where the firm wasfounded at the turn of the1850s/60s (sources differ, with some stat-ing 1859 and others 1862), he set upbranches in Budyšín (1893), and Žitava(1896), and to avoid a duty imposed on

German products imported into AustriaHungary he set up a firm – now under themanagement of Franz Cäsar Főrster, assem-bling instruments in Jiříkov as well (1900).The instruments produced in the Jiříkovbranch of the firm were not subject to dutyand were supplied to all parts of the monar-chy on favourable terms. Production dou-bled in the first five years of the firm’s exis-tence and operations in Bohemia were soonexpanded, in 1909. The 1910 cataloguelists production in both countries: 2,200upright and grand pianos with a workforceof 500 employees. In 1919 direction of theplant in Bohemia was taken over by thefounder’s grandson Gerhard Főrster. Underhis management the firm built the legendaryquarter-tone piano at the suggestion of thecomposer Alois Hába (see Czech Music3/2005) and was involved in the develop-ment of sound in the field of electro-acoustics. Experts enhanced the propertiesof the soundboard with an amplifier andreproducer and the result was the instru-ment known as the Elektrochord. The firmalso devoted attention to the developmentof new low upright piano models known asthe Pianetto.

In Zákolany near Prague a workshop ini-tially concerned just with repairing oldinstruments was founded in 1905, but by1913 it had grown so substantially that itwas producing its own grand pianos andupright pianos under the trade name Dali-bor. Modernisation of the equipmentenabled it to keep on expanding production,as is also clear from the growing number of

employees (originally the firm had aroundeighteen employees, but in the1920s around fifty). In 1925 it already hadits own a warehouse and shop in Prague.

The originally small Prague manufactoryfounded in 1872 by Josef Brož, flourishedand expanded under the direction of his sonsand in 1921 opened another branch in Velim.Apart from its own models, the factory manu-factured instruments of the German firmFörster Leipzig under licence. In roughly themid-1920s the firm employed more thana hundred workers and in addition to classi-cal models was producing electropianos.The concern kept on expanding and diversi-fying and as well as a wood drying plant, itsown keyboard production centre and its pro-duction of all metal parts, it provided employ-ees with accommodation in newly built flatsfor workers. Had it not been overtaken byinternational political and economic events,this firm might well have carved out one ofthe leading positions on the market.

In Jihlava, apart from the small pianoworks belonging to Josef Bělohlávek, theworkshop of Josef Breitner was founded in1924. Under the patronage of the Viennesefirm of Hofmann & Czerny it flourished andemployed around fifty workers. Thanks toAustrian capital, in 1927 Breitner formedthe joint-stock company “Jihlavská továrnapian, a.s. – Iglauer Klavierfabrik AG” andmanufactured Hofmann & Czerny instru-ments under license. Starting in 1930 thefactory underwent modernisation andexpansion, acquiring a varnishing shop withelectrically powered spray, drying room and

czech music 1 | 2006 | instrument makers | 19

Petrof op 1611 (cca 1875)

Josef Bělohlávek’s workshop, Jihlava (Now Bohemia Piano)

© Bohemia Piano

© Petrof

20 | instrument makers | czech music 1 | 2006

Nazi occupation authorities forced firms togive priority to the production of woodenparts for aeroplanes and munitions chestsfor the Wehrmacht. With reduction in thenumber of skilled expert workers productionin some places entirely ceased, while otherfirms continued to make instruments only asa sideline.

Development after 1945

After the Second World War almost all pri-vate enterprise was nationalised and incor-porated into national concerns. The ownersof firms were deprived of their rights andfrom 1945 national administrators delegat-ed by district national committees wereinstalled instead of owners and originaldirectors. These administrators were cho-sen either from the ranks of former employ-ees, often heads of workshops and produc-tion, accountants and so on, or wereexperts from other towns.

In 1948 following the Communistputsch some of the larger plants were incor-porated into the newly founded state con-cern Továrny na piana a varhany – Pianoand Organ Factories based in HradecKrálové. The following firms were trans-formed into the assets of this state concernby a decree of the Minister of Industry in1948: Antonín Petrof, Hradec Králové; Koch& Korselt, Liberec; Dalibor, Zákolany;Brothers Rieger, Krnov; Josef Kloss, Krnov;Gustav Rösler, Česká Lípa; H. Stamnitz,Jiříkov; August Förster, Jiříkov; Scholze &Söhne, Varnsdorf. Others were later addedto the list.

At the end of the 1950s the whole ofthe Czechoslovak music industry was reor-ganised and the state concern renamedfrom Továrny na piana to Československéhudební nástroje – Czechoslovak MusicalInstruments (ČSHN, established bya Decree of the Ministry of Industry of the1st of April 1958). Until the end of thesocialist era this concern incorporated notjust producers of pianos, but all Czech andSlovak producers of musical instruments.Production was divided into several plants,and in 1962 a separate plant for the manu-facture of pianos was established in HradecKrálové (Odštěpný závod Piana).

This socialist unification of production inthe field was a tragedy not just because ofthe appropriation of the rights of the originalowners, often families who had been pro-ducing pianos for generations, but alsobecause the many self-sufficient firms thathad been making their own instrumentsbecame mere suppliers of parts. The dis-tinctive character of their instruments waslost. Furthermore, the lack of motivationamong employees and those owners whooften stayed on as employees led to stagna-tion of production. It can of course beargued from the other side, that only by theunification of production (and not only in thecommunist period) could Czech producers

water turbine. In 1939 racial laws forceda number of changes in personnel, in 1945the company secretary and director of theworks fled to Austria, and the firm wasplaced under national administration. In1948 the factory was nationalised andincorporated into the state concern “Pianoand Organ Factory” in Hradec Králové.

Lídl and Velík were among Moravianproducers. The owners moved productionto Moravský Krumlov from Boskovice in1921 and started to manufacture severalmodels of grand piano and upright pianothere. The firm prospered and within a fewyears were producing 14 types of uprightand 6 types of grand. When hit by the eco-nomic crisis, however, it had to move over toproduction of button and piano accordions,which saved the firm from cutbacks in pro-duction and layoffs.

The Decline in Production from the Begin-ning of the 20th Century 1945

At the beginning of the twentieth centurythere was a great deal to choose from, butfirms were struggling with problems of vari-ous kinds. The field was negatively affected,for example, by the enormous hike in cus-toms duties between Austria-Hungary andGermany, which put the brakes on trade,while electrification was as yet inadequate,capacity in heavy industry was insufficientand inflexible in its response to thedemands of new customers. The small pro-ducers were also facing tough competitionfrom the instruments made by foreign firms(The trademarks Streicher, Bősendorfer,Steinway or Ehrbar were already makingheadway in Czech markets.)

The First World War, which causeda loss of workforce and overall stagnation ofpiano production was a painful blow to mostof the Czech manufacturers. Co-operationwith specialised producers of piano parts –mechanics, keys, keyboards and so on wastemporarily interrupted and the circle ofexperts seriously narrowed. After the war,however, the situation improved year by year,trade relations were re-established and after1925 an influx of new skilled craftsmen andthe use of high quality materials and half-fin-ished elements meant that productionreached a very high standard. Then, however,came the Great Economic Crisis, which dev-astated the industry. In 1929 more than 90%of all the small, mainly family firms that pro-vided their owners and a few journeymenwith a livelihood went out of business. Allproducers experienced a drop in demand,production was cut back and employees laidoff. Many factories had to make as much ashalf their workforce redundant, massivelyreducing production and sometimes intro-ducing three-day weeks.

After the establishment of the Protec-torat of Bohemia and Moravia under theNazis there was further decline in the manu-facture of musical instruments, because the

succeed in the face of global competition.The operation of all elements and co-ordina-tion of the firms was the task of a unifiedmanagement (at the time the General Direc-torate of ČSHN), which supervised andsupported the development of instruments,monitored foreign competition, expandedproduction and in its separate specialisedplants created self-sufficient departmentssupplying all the parts necessary for thefinal product.

Czech Manufacturers of Upright and GrandPiano Today

Currently four domestic firms producing andselling pianos figure on the Czech market.The main producer is Petrof Ltd. of HradecKrálové, which is largest in turnover and his-torically the most famous maker and retailerof instruments in the CR. Another is themiddle-sized firm Bohemia Piano Ltd.based in Hradec Králové and Jihlava, andthe last two are the smaller KLIMA-PIANO,Ltd. and HSBF.

Thanks to a history of unbroken produc-tion since its founding, Petrof is today thebiggest firm on the Czech market. Like theother Czech firms it exports around 95 % ofits overall production, and abroad Petrof isthe best known brand and a synonym forCzech piano. The other firms have beencatching up, especially through participationin world fairs and exhibitions, and Bohemia,for example, today has representatives in 35countries. Petrof and Bohemia Piano in par-ticular have also been building up theirimage in the Czech Republic by sponsoringmusic festivals and organising their ownconcerts and other events.

The combined turnover of all four firmsis more than 960 million crowns (32 millionEUR approx.), making it a substantial item inthe framework of the Czech music industry.One interesting trend is that while the pro-duction of uprights by the two larger firmshas been gradually diminishing, the numberof grands has remained the same or risen.Be that as it may, in recent years there havebeen major cuts in the number of employeesand branches particularly in the case ofPetrof. Of the four factories operated by thefirm as of mid-2004 practically only oneremains and the workforce has been pro-gressively cut from 1300 in 2003 to some-where around 700. Recently, howeverPetrof has become majority shareholder ina piano case factory in Týniště and plans tobecome the biggest European supplier ofsemi-finished parts for the production ofupright and grand pianos.

The Pressure of Asian Producers and otherProblems Facing Manufacturers

Let us for a moment turn our eyes from purelyCzech conditions and try to identify the caus-es of the present fragile stability of traditional

European producers, for whom one of thegreatest current threats is the boom in Asianproduction. The main motto of the new firmsthat have been established in China and havebeen making headway on European and USmarkets is above all low prices, mass produc-tion and digitalisation of instruments. Thehuge upsurge in piano manufacture in Chinais a phenomenon of the last decade. Fre-quently these firms copy European modelsalmost perfectly, and this is happening, unfor-tunately, with the help of European and Ameri-can experts who are founding firms in Asiaand providing the know-how to make up forthe lack of local traditional experience in thefield. Thus with each year that passes we wit-ness a perceptible improvement in the qualityof the Asian instruments presented there. Giv-en the incomparably cheaper work force andthe materials used (less expensive, but withproperties that approach the traditional),Asian producers can set prices that are extra-ordinarily low compared to instruments ofAmerican or European manufacture. (Theprices of Asian products at the Musikmesse inFrankfurt am Main in 2004 were around 800USD for a classical model upright, comparedto a European price at a minimum of 2600 –10 000 EUR.) In a period when clients givepriority to price over quality world markets arenaturally opening up to these instruments andthe traditional instruments are being progres-sively squeezed out.

At present, collaboration with Asia is tak-ing many forms. European and American firmsare co-operating with their Asian counterpartsby using cheap Asian parts for their owninstruments. The situation is far from transpar-ent, because some firms admit this kind of co-operation while others do not. Instruments arealso often produced in Asia under a traditionalEuropean or American trade name. Europeanand Asian firms are often fused, and some-times factories are being moved entirely toAsia.

History seems to be repeating itself.Today’s producers are struggling with thesame problems as their predecessors at theturn of the 19th/20th century. The USA hasimposed high duties on goods from the EUand producers are thinking up various strate-gies for getting round it. An unfavourableworld economic situation and specific difficul-ties facing home industry are affecting theproduction of musical instruments here, justas in the past. And then there are the newproblems of cheap Asian production and localfalls in demand caused by many factors(9/11, the threat of terrorist attacks, SARS).The instability of the dollar exchange rate isalso not helping trade.

The current trend, with which world pro-ducers are falling into line, is to merge allactivities into one whole and try to offer thecustomer a wide spectrum of products andprices from which to choose. Thus for exam-ple Steinway is now a part of the large con-cern Steinway Musical Instruments, whichbrings together producers in many fields, hasmanufacturing branches in 13 locations in the

August Förester’s quarter-tone piano

Petrof factory© Petrof

USA and Europe and co-operates with Asia.Many producers have been shifting produc-tion to Asia, collaborating with local firms ordirectly purchasing cheap Asian instrumentsand moving over from production to distribu-tion in their own countries.

In addition to all these world trends, theCzech situation has specific features thatmean that if the largest firm Petrof gets intofurther serious difficulties, the other Czechfirms will suffer as well. This is because thesupplier base of all the Czech firms is the

same, and Petrof is still the main domesticcustomer. Today Czech producers have todecide which path to choose. Either to suc-cumb to cheap Asian production and take thepath of producing low price instruments, or tostick to their traditional standards and even inthe face of high manufacturing costs to main-tain the existing quality that attracts cus-tomers with the same demands. Another alter-native is a merger between all the producersor to find a strong partner in a foreign compa-ny. All we can do is wish them every success.

22 | instrument makers | czech music 1 | 2006

LIBUŠE HUBIČKOVÁ

czech music 1 | 2006 | instrument makers | 23

four generations of špidlensthe legendary czech violin makers

When it comes to violin makers, the Czechs,like the Italians, Germans, French and Eng-lish, are among the handful of nations thatcan boast not simply a number of individualsolitaire masters, but entire celebrateddynasties. In the Czech case, distinguishedlines or schools emerged not only in largeurban centres, but also (and in this respectwe may be unique), in remote villages of theKingdom of Bohemia where especially inthe 18th and 19th century men as well aswomen (for example Johanna Metelková(1843–1866) in Podkrkonoší region)engaged in violin making. It is from theserural roots that one of the most illustrious ofCzech violin-making dynasties has sprung;today the fourth generation of Špidlens stillproduces violins.

FRANTIŠEK ŠPIDLEN

The first of them was František Špidlen(1867–1916), born under the KrkonošeMountains in Sklenařice, a small placewhere he made his early instruments. Helearnt the craft with local masters as a liveli-hood, just as other boys trained to be a bak-er, weaver or carpenter. Only František Špi-dlen was lucky, and found a way to a worldwhere music lived a much more sophisticat-ed life than in his native village. This wasKiev, and later Tsarist Moscow, a city wherein the late 19th century music was still con-sidered the essential daily bread of aristo-cratic and patrician society. Otakar Ševčíktold František Špidlen about a competitionannounced by the conservatory in Moscowto fill the position left by the deceasedFrench violinmaker Ernest André Salzard.Špidlen won it, and at the age of thirtybecame violinmaker to the prestigious con-servatory in the Russian metropolis. At thetime he was already the father of a nine-month-old boy, born in 1896 in Kiev and

named Otakar František, who was to growup to be the second violinmaker of the Špid-len dynasty.

As violin maker to the Tsarist Conserva-tory, Špidlen’s duties consisted of mendingand collecting old instruments, but other-wise he was free to ply his own trade,including selling. František initially madea name for himself as an outstanding restor-er and repairer of old instruments, and whilehe did not have much time to make newinstruments, he learned a great deal fromdismantling the old instruments beforerepairing them, since here he had a chanceto work with some of the most valuable vio-lins of the day. As time went by he was ableto devote more time to creating his owninstruments. He was already producingexquisite violins as far as form, proportionsand choice of the best wood was con-cerned. He still did not know much about

František Špidlen during his time in Moscowat the end of the 19th century

František Špidlen, 1890 – the style of theKrkonoše School is clear, the instrumentvery carefully constructed and finished

sound, however, and at the beginning didnot worry too much about varnishes either,buying them readymade.

One of his violins from his Moscow peri-od remains in the family collection to thisday. It shows how much he had alreadylearned from repairing classical instrumentsand how he kept seeking to improve hisskills. It is a beautiful violin modelled on theGuarneri of 1740 that Eugène Ysaye hasused for his concerts in Moscow. FrantišekŠpidlen’s instruments of this period areexcellent in terms of craft and aestheticappearance, but as far as sound was con-cerned they were sometimes problematic.He had almost no knowledge of sound-board tuning or acoustics.

Some of the first ideas on how to tunethe violin soundboards came from anothernative of Sklenařice, František’s nephewJindřich Vitáček (1880–1946), whom

František had taken on as assistant in theKiev period. At that time neither of themguessed that the fifteen-year-old lad wouldgrow into a very talented violinmaker, onewith a tremendous enthusiasm for uncover-ing the unknown techniques of the old mas-ters and at the same time a scientific pas-sion for making his own experiments anddiscoveries in the field of varnishes,acoustics and soundboard tuning. InMoscow a large quantity of old instrumentsthat he repaired with his uncle had passedthrough his hands. He obsessively studiedthem in disassembled form, exploring everydetail of their construction and the individualwooden parts, as well as all the techniquesthen used to finish them. Working withphysicists and chemists (which was unusualfor violin makers of the time) he sought toestablish the basis of the strength andcolour of the sound. He then told Františekthat both soundboards – the top and bot-tom of the violin – needed to be tuned ina certain interval (according to Vitáček,a perfect fourth), and later told Otakar andhis son Přemysl, with guidelines as to howthis could be achieved. Vitáček keptdetailed records of every item of hisresearch, experiment and result. In Russia,the boy from the Krkonoše foothills who hadnever even finished his weaving apprentice-ship became the saviour of hundreds of pre-cious stringed instruments, which after theRussian Revolution became the basis forthe Tsarist Collection of Musical Instru-ments (today the world famous GlinkaMuseum in Moscow, the largest of its kind).

As far as design of the instruments wasconcerned, the Czech violinmakers of theFr. Špidlen’s era were traditionally linked tothe German school and so preferred thickersoundboards. When repairing old instru-ments, however, they found the sound-boards unusually thin. Their only explanationwas that the wood must have dried out andso “thinned” considerably. Thus when violin-makers had dismantled a Stradivarius, forexample, which had a top soundboard 2.5millimetres thick, they believed that the two-hundred-year-old instrument’s soundboardmight originally – before the supposed dry-ing out – have been about 3 millimetresthick, and so supplied soundboards of thisthickness for the instruments. In doing so,however, they ruined the instrument,because in fact the soundboards had origi-nally been only 2.5 millimetres and had notsubsequently altered or thinned (Logically, ifthe thickness of the soundboards haddiminished, then drying should have affect-ed their breadth and length as well and theviolin would have completely changed inshape, which it had not… The theory wassimply wrong. Stradivari had made his vio-lins in just the form that we know themtoday…)

František Špidlen made an excellentname for himself in Russia and elsewhere inthe world, where his instruments were suc-cessful against tough competition at exhibi-

tions and in contests. He made a total ofaround 400 violins, among other awardswinning a silver medal in Frankfurt, a Diplo-ma of Honour and Exhibition Medal inPrague (1895), a Grand Silver Medal inKiev (1897), an Exhibition Medal in Paris(1900), First Prize and Grand Gold Medal inPeterburg (1906–7), and the Grand SilverMedal in Lille (1909).

In 1907, however, poor health forcedhim to return to Bohemia. After a short peri-od in the country he was able to opena shop and workshop in Prague inKřížovnická Street not far from the conser-vatory. For a while he also had a shop onhired premises in what is today KarlovaStreet. As a violinmaker almost unknown inPrague, however, he could not establishhimself there until after the death of theestablished Prague violinmaker and instru-ment dealer Karel B. Dvořák, whose unas-sailable position had deterred competition.Once the eldest Špidlen had settled inPrague and hung a sign with his name overthe new workshop in Křižovnická in the OldTown, all the other bearers of his name andinheritors of his craft – his son, grandsonand great-grandson – were to be domiciledin Prague, despite the origins of the dynastyin the Krkonoše School of violin making. Atthe beginning František and Otakar hadsimply to establish a place among the exist-ing local violinmakers, but soon they wouldbe considered equal partners with the oth-ers, and as stalwart supports of the PragueViolinmakers Guild. Finally the name of Špi-dlen would become the first, the most fre-quently pronounced, the most famous. Thename that attracted celebrated string virtu-osos from Bohemia and abroad.

OTAKAR FRANTIŠEK ŠPIDLEN

The founder’s son Otakar František Špi-dlen (1896 – 1958) was a talented andclever entrepreneur. He could do businessjust as well as he could make new instru-ments and repair the old, and he was extra-ordinarily hard-working. Despite this, hisfirst independent steps in Prague were diffi-cult. The violinmakers makers organised inthe Prague Association of Musical Instru-ment Makers already had the city strategi-cally “occupied”. While for some time theyhad grudgingly accepted the existence ofcompetition from the Špidlens as represent-ed by the doyen of the family František,when the young Otakar František conjoinedthe guild after his father’s death as a merenineteen-year-old lad (and what was worsea lad born in Russia), his determination tomake his way struck the established Praguemasters as impudence. Their resistancewas considerable.

He would repair instruments all night, onholidays and Sundays, and produce newones during the day. But mainly he lookedafter the shop. Twenty hours a day. Fortu-nately the times themselves smiled on him.This was the era of the first free Czechoslo-

vak Republic, which at least as far back asthe nation could recall was the mostfavourable period ever for Czech businessand businessmen.

“My father,” his son Přemysl recalls“lived for the business. He enjoyed it. Hewas lord and master in that shop. He lovedstanding behind the counter and he lovedthe way it kept him in continual contactwith people from the world of music… Hehad a lot of outstanding, rare instrumentsthere and a tremendously interesting clien-tele. Naturally the people who came to usincluded esteemed figures like FrantišekOndříček, Josef Suk, Jan Kubelík, VášaPříhoda, and later David Oistrakh anda whole range of other important violinists.Simply the elite…“

Otakar F. Špidlen managed to create anenthralling environment for instruments andtheir admirers. He took part in exhibitions inBohemia and a number of competitions atthe conservatories in Prague’s Emauze andthe Rudolfinum and usually won first prize(in most cases) or second prize. He madea violin for the president T. G. Masaryk in1936, and on its bottom had a painter fromthe neighbourhood Diblík paint a large ver-sion of the state emblem and theinitials T.G.M. Today it is the depositary ofthe Prague Music Conservatory. (The news-papers reported it on the 12th of January1936 under the headline “Rare Violin. Who

24 | instrument makers | czech music 1 | 2006

Otakar František Špidlen, 1935 – instrumentmade for President T.G. Masaryk for the 17th

anniversary of the declaration of an indepen-dent Czechoslovakia

czech music 1 | 2006 | instrument makers | 25

will play on it?” The press wrote that “Theviolin the master violinmaker Otakar Špi-dlen has presented to thePresident T.G.Masaryk. (…) a copy ofa famous violin by Ant. Stradivari, is one ofthe most beautiful works of modern Czechviolinmaking, and in craftsmanship andsound is the equal of the very valuableinstruments of the Old Italian School.“)

Other instruments by Otakar Františekalso testify to his outstanding skills asa master violinmaker. He always used thesame models, Stradivari and Guarneri, andused an orange oil varnish that he pur-chased readymade abroad. Like FrantišekŠpidlen, he tended to leave the sound-boards thicker than in the Italian models. Hisbest era was around the year 1930, a timewhen he made very fine fiddles, and was stillquite young and under the influence of hisfather. As he got older he concentratedmore and more on business.

For his knowledge of theory Otakar F.Špidlen was indebted above all to the untir-ing assistance of his cousin Vitáček, who inletters from Russia and on visits to Praguesystematically passed on all the conclusionshe had drawn from his own researches andstudy of theory in the many countries he vis-ited for the purpose. Otakar F. Špidlenmade aroud 150 instruments. He was theinitiator and co-founder of the Circle of FineViolin-Makers.

Otakar František Špidlen, 1920s

Přemysl Otakar Špidlen, 1961 – copy of theCampo Selice Stradivarius

Přemysl Otakar Špidlen with a finished instru-ment in his workshop in Jungmannova Street,Prague, 1980s

PŘEMYSL OTAKAR ŠPIDLEN

After the death of Otakar František Špidlen,the shop with its windows facing the busyJungmannova Street remained open, butsoon after the Communist putsch PřemyslŠpidlen (*1920), now himself a master andthe third of the violin-making dynasty, wasforced to close the shop that had been hisfather’s pride and joy. Only the workshop forrepair and production of new instrumentswas allowed to remain in operation.

“From my father I inherited ingenuityand dexterity in the craft” says Přemysl Špi-dlen. “Without that I couldn’t have becomea violinmaker. It wasn’t just family, but theomnipresence of violins, the music createdby all those original people who belongedto us – for me that was an everyday inspira-tion with a taste of a kind of mystery thatI never experienced anywhere else in thefamilies of my friends. All that basically pre-destined me to my future career. At home itwas usual for us to talk about some rareviolin that would be coming in for repair…The doors didn’t bang in our shop and theywould open (especially the doors to theworkshop) to admit great figures who gavean extra respect and dignity to our wholehouse – something that of course I was torealise fully only later, in the course of thefollowing years. That was all part and parcelof my father’s life.”

His childhood provided Přemysl Špidlena perfect understanding of wood and thephysical laws that determine how it shouldbe treated, and he subsequently kept upwith all the new expert findings of the mod-ern age. He knew everything that was to beknown about the several ways of tuning theviolin soundboards – something aboutwhich his grandfather had known very littleat all and his father only slightly more. Frommodern physics and chemistry he soonacquired a great deal of knowledge neces-sary for the correct varnishing a violin, andhe enlarged this body of knowledge withfindings of his own. As an active violinist hecould try out an instruments himself in anyphase of its construction. Heir to a respect-ed workshop, he soon won a reputation inhis own right and became versed in allaspects of his craft.

Throughout his life he has had a pas-sionate interest and pioneering desire todecipher the secret formula of varnishes onthe instruments of Stradivarius and theeffects of varnishes on the acoustics of vio-lins. He tested all the recipes so far known,and added hundreds of his own. He stillkeeps up with all the new experiments inphysical, chemical and mechanical researchand takes his passion to absurd lengths –he will only travel to countries where he canfind violins or violinmakers. One of the peo-ple who has influenced Přemysl Špidlen’sviews on the soundboards tuning since the1980s is the American physicist C. M.Hutchins, who was the first to conductresearch on acoustics using modes pro-

duced by a tone generator and loudspeaker.When he inherited his father’s workshop

as a young man, Přemysl had no idea thatone day he would take his own art andinheritance to the topmost summit of worldviolin making. “It is the rediscovery ofStradivari!” Etienne Vatelot, the top Frenchexpert on the violin was to exclaim manyyears later, when hearing an instrument cre-ated by Přemysl Otakar Špidlen, and thegreat expert and at the time the biggestGerman dealer in musical instrument WalterHamma pronounced Přemysl Špidlen to bethe only violinmaker to have succeeded inpenetrating the mystery of Stadivari’s instru-ments. “The art of Czech violinmaking hasbeen developed to the very highest stan-dards by Přemysl Otakar Špidlen” –declared a television documentary on theŠpidlens… But of course, such tributes hadbeen earned by huge, untiring efforts. Hoursand hours at the workbench as the gracefulforms of instruments emerged slowly,almost in slow motion, from the slices ofwood. Hundreds and hundreds of experi-ments and tests with the composition andthen the application of varnishes to the sur-face of “white” violins. Hours and hours por-ing over the pages of expert journals on thequalities of sound, the resonance of woodand so on. Years waiting for the acousticresult of mature and “played in” violins. Con-stant comparison of disassembled instru-ments of the Old Baroque violin masterswith later instruments. Innumerable consul-tations and discussions with violin virtuosos.An extraordinary career on the field of inter-national violinmaker competitions, resultingin a whole range of very prestigiousawards…

Přemysl Otakar Špidlen made his firstviolin in 1937, when he was 17 years old.A record of the violin exists, written by hismother Marie who kept notes on his instru-

ments including important technical infor-mation. As the years went by the recordsgrew longer, although no longer in his moth-er’s hand. Přemysl Špidlen’s developmentas a violinmaker was many sided toa degree almost unparalleled among hiscontemporaries.

He places special emphasis on thequality of the wood and the quality of thevarnish. “Varnish has become his life prob-lem and hobby, he has conducted innumer-able varnish tests and believes that he isgetting close to his dream of recreatingCremona varnish. His work is truly out-standing. Distinctive for its absolutelyunerringly cut soundboards, perfect inlay,profiled cut scrolls. Beautiful spruce andmaple wood, browned by natural sunlight,is exploited to full aesthetic effect. Thecolour composition of the instrument creat-ed by the base and his own special varnishenhances the merits of the workmanshipand the wood, and so his instruments givethe impression of having been composedand imbued with feeling like paintings.There are few violinmakers as knowledge-able about acoustics and the physics ofviolins. Přemysl Otakar Špidlen is one ofthe most exceptional figures in the wholehistory of violinmaking in our country.Almost all the world virtuosos who come toplay in our capital eventually arrive in hisatelier.” (Extract from the Czech encylopediaThe Art Of Violin-Makers.)

Přemysl Špidlen has so far made around250 violins, violas and cellos, which hadserved many top performers (Menuhin, Suk,the Smetana Quartet…). Of his manyawards we might mention Best CzechViolin-Maker in the Hague (1947), The GoldMedal in Liége (1960), 1st and 3rd Prizeand Gold Medal in Poznan (1962), and 2ndPrize and Gold Medal in Poznan (1967).

26 | instrument makers | czech music 1 | 2006

Sklenařice under the Krkonoše Mountains, Špidlen family cottage, today no longer in existence

JAN BAPTISTA ŠPIDLEN

The Špidlen dynasty can now boast a violin-maker of the fourth generation in the shapeof Jan Špidlen (*1967). Today he is alreadyan acclaimed Master violinmaker. The authorof a series of beautiful and successful vio-lins, several violas and as yet one cello. Janhas of course inherited a tremendousamount of experience and a well-equippedworkshop, which he is modernising in linewith technical advance, but of course theseadvantages are balanced by the enormouschallenge he has faced in living up to thestandards of his three predecessors and theexceptionally high quality of their instru-ments. He has risen to it, and today he toohas produced excellent instruments – oneof his first violins is the property of JosefSuk, he is a privileged supplier of instru-ments to Pavel Šporcl and two recent vio-lins won him phenomenal success at the10th Violinmaking Trienale in Cremona in2003 – 1st and 2nd Prize and three otherawards. Cremona has ensured his member-ship of the prestigious international associa-tion of violinmakers and stringed instrumentmakers ENTENTE and has opened his pathto the elite of his profession.

Today he is master on equal terms withthe most distinguished of the world’s violinmakers. As such he had the chance toattend a congress in Tuscany with a veryinteresting theme: would it be possibletoday to create an entirely new model violinthat would be equal in quality to the stillrespected Baroque type, but in allowablerespects would introduce new avant-gardeelements – form, colour, other proportions,new material…? It is a question to which noone has yet found an answer, despite manyoften picturesque experiments.

The young master has a very difficulttask in his own family of violinmakers. Per-

Jan Baptista Špidlen – finishing the varnishingof an instrument, 2003

haps a task more difficult than those that faced any ofhis predecessors. As he makes his violins he cannotcomfort himself, as perhaps his great-grandfather didwhen he first arrived in Russia, that if he succeeds itwill be fine but if he fails it won’t be the end of theworld. He is the guarantor of the successes of all pre-ceding Špidlens, and faces the challenge of equallingthem. From his forbears he has inherited, apart frommuch else, the responsibility for the name and qualityof Špidlen instruments, which is now a famous inter-national brand name.

In his childhood he learned from his father aboutwood, its properties and refined ways of treating.Then he went away to develop his talent at schooland in the wider world. He studied Applied ArtsSchool in Prague in Žižkov. There, specialising inwood carving and modelling he learnt to work withthis material in a way different from his father’s work-shop. Studies at the international violinmaking schoolin Mittenwald in Germany and a placement in Londonwith the famous violinmaking firm J. & A. Beare, whichspecialises in repairing and restoring the most expen-sive stringed instruments, raised his qualificationsand broadened his outlook still further, and allowedJan Špidlen to compare different ways of construct-ing violins and approaching other tasks associatedwith the production of master instruments and mod-ern restoration. He returned home with knowledgethat has hugely enriched the legacy of the firm of Špidlen.

A word of conclusion: Recently a notable book(in Czech) was published entitled “Špidlenovi, češtíMistri houslaři” [The Špidlens, Czech Master Violin-Makers]. It is the first book of its kind, offering read-ers not only an insight into the secret chamberswhere violins are born, but also taking them back tothe time and circumstances in which this royal instru-ment first saw the light of day. It recalls the gloriousepoch of the geniuses of Cremona – Amati, Stradivariand Guarneri. And last but not least it explores whathave often been neglected aspects of the inheritanceof the master art of violinmaking.

czech music 1 | 2006 | instrument makers | 27

Jan Baptista Špidlen,1988 – instrumentbased on Stradivari’sHellier inlaid violin of 1679

Cremona 2003 – a walk through thecentre of Cremona on the occasionof the 10th Violin-Making Trienale inCremona, where Jan won 1st and2nd Prize for his instruments as wellas three other awards and becamethe absolute winner of this interna-tional competition.

Two Masters – father and son – with theirinstruments

Jan Baptista Špidlen

Cremona 2003 –Přemysl and JanŠpidlen at the tombof the most famousviolin-maker of alltime, Antonio Stradi-vari

28 | composer | czech music 1 | 2006

In the 1960s the composer RudolfKomorous shone as one of the mostradical and interesting members of theavant-garde in Czechoslovakia. After1968 like many others he seemed tovanish off the face of the earth – at leastfrom Czechoslovak barbed-wire fencedin perspective. In 2005 he was 74 let,and celebrated his birthday in Victoriain Canada, near the shores of the Pacif-ic Ocean, where he has lived and suc-cessfully worked since 1971. He was born on the 8th of December 1931in Prague in Žižkov, and his father, first clar-inet in the National Theatre Orchestra, influ-enced his choice of career as professionalmusician. In the grade school at AmerlingTeacher Training Institute he was in the sameclass as Prince Lobkowicz, whose chauffeurused to let him get out of the Rolls Roycea couple of streets away so he could walk toschool with the other children. Rudolfbecame best friends with the Prince’s desk-mate, Josef Podaný the son of a tram driver.The small boys here were imbued with a thor-ough spirit of Masarykian democracy, learntthe importance of education and love ofcountry, even if these ideas sound rathernaive in our milieu.

He studied at a modern gymnasium(grammar school), and from the fifth form alsostudied bassoon at the Prague Conservatoryon the wishes of his father (1946–52).Komorous left the conservatory to take upa place at the Academy of Performing Arts inPrague (1952–59), continuing his bassoon

studies, and then started to study composi-tion in Pavel Bořkovec’s class.

In 1955 Komorous co-founded the artgroup known as the Šmidrové (the otherswere the artists Bedřich Dlouhý, Jan Koblasa,Karel Nepraš, and Jaroslav Vožniak). Theydeclared their allegiance to an aesthetics ofstrangeness and played a very important rolein the history of Czech art under communism.The Šmidrs aesthetics, which despite a peri-od favouring abstraction emphasised theimportance of the concrete and had a some-what Dada-esque ethos, was to have a fun-damental influence on Rudolf Komorous’slifelong output.

In 1957 Komorous won first prize in aninternational bassoon competition in Geneva(Concours International dīExecution Musi-cale; it was the very first time a Czechoslovakhad won such an award). As a resultKomorous was able to go for two years at theConservatory in Beijing in China (1959 –1961), where he taught bassoon and cham-ber play. In 1961, after his return from China,Komorous accepted an invitation from theflautist and composer Petr Kotík, founder ofthe ensemble Musica Viva Pragensis (MVP),to join the ensemble, and he was alsoengaged as first bassoonist in the operaorchestra of the State Theatre in Prague.Thanks to Komorous there were changes inthe composition of the MVP ensemble, whichbecame highly professionalised with theinvolvement of professors at the conservatoryand members of the Czech Philharmonic.

The MVP became one of the best ensem-bles in the world for the performance of mod-ern music, and its members gave concertsand made recordings in radio studios all overEurope up to 1968. From the very beginningof the 1960s they had contacts with Ameri-can avant-garde musicians; at the WarsawSpring festival in 1964, for example, they per-formed in the group around John Cage. “We in MVP were invited to the WarsawAutumn. We played there with John Cageand David Tudor for the Merce Cunningham

Dance Group and we gave a concert of ourown. We played my Olympia there, and itwas the official premiere. (We had played itfirst at the opening of an exhibition of workby Jaroslav Vožniak; people thought it wasvery interesting but that it was the sort ofmusic you could play at a gallery openingbut not in the concert hall. But later they hadto change their minds, because we did playit in a concert hall.) (…) Olympia was verysuccessful, and we had to repeat it, and wealso played Petr Kotík’s Trio dedicated to[composer and theorist] Jan Rychlík, whohad died shortly before. That was a longerpiece, perhaps around 12 minutes. (Backthen people were writing just short pieces,especially the composers of the New Musicat the Warsaw Autumn. That was the influ-ence of Webern.) (…) After our appearance,an important article came out about us inRudé právo [the main communist daily],which damned us and presented us as anirresponsible ensemble out to destroy thereputation of Czech music. It turned the per-formance into an affair, especially PetrKotík’s piece. It was not true that his Triowas badly received; most of the people inthe audience applauded and liked it. Backthen it was a kind of fashion for a couple ofpeople to whistle, because a New Musicconcert wouldn’t be a New Music concertwithout a bit of whistling, would it? Whenthey whistled at Petr’s piece, our officialsconcluded that it was a dreadful failure andshamed Czech music. And then they starteda hue and cry after us! The MVP was de fac-to banned, we had been supposed to begoing to Zagreb for the Biennale, but weweren’t allowed to and they sent the CzechNoneto instead of us. The audience some-how got to know why we weren’t there –there was more freedom in Yugoslavia thanat home, and they said publicly that our visithad been prohibited and they had sent theCzech Noneto instead. The noneto, ofcourse, had pieces by composers from theUnion [of Czechoslovak Composers and

RENÁTA SPISAROVÁ

the composer

rudolf komorous

czech music 1 | 2006 | composer | 29

Concert Artists] in their programme. Peoplein the audience got up and left…(…) AfterWarsaw they banned us by artificially creat-ing a scandal. The concert hadn’t been anykind of scandal, not even the slightest, buton the contrary it had clearly been the mostsuccessful concert of the whole WarsawAutumn.“

After the “scandal” the activities of theensemble were gradually revived, but withoutPetr Kotík, who was studying in Vienna. Twocomposers, Marek Kopelent as musicaldirector and Zbyněk Vostřák (see CM1/2005) as conductor, came to the MVP andthe ensemble started to orientate itself tomore standard currents in the New Musicthat were at least a little more acceptable inthe Czech political context. The MVP’s activi-ties were to cease definitively only with theSoviet Occupation.

As Rudolf Komorous says he was luckythat he never saw Russian tanks in our coun-try. When they arrived he was recordingWagner’s Ring in Nuremberg with HansSwarovsky for the English gramophone com-pany Westminster. Just by chance his wifeHana was travelling with him and they man-aged to get their daughter Klára out of theoccupied country into Germany after a time.All three said goodbye to Europe in 1969,emigrated to Canada and never regretted thedecision.

The first place where Rudolf Komoroustaught was in fact MacAllester College inMinneapolis, in the USA (1970 – 1971),where he was recommended by John Cage.

His family, however, remained in Canada andalthough he was very happy at MacAllesterCollege he accepted the offer of a job at theUniversity of Victoria. In 1971 the Komorousfamily moved to Victoria, one of the islands ofBritish Columbia. Here Komorous worked asa professor of composition and theory,strengthened the position of the musicdepartment, founded an electronic music stu-dio, expanded the range of musical disci-plines taught, and later reorganised thedepartment as director. He became anacclaimed and sought after teacher of com-position, and today many of his former stu-dents figure in the Canada composing elite(for example Allison Cameron, Owen Under-hill, Chris Butterfield, Linda Catlin Smith). Inthe years 1989–1994 he was director of theschool of contemporary arts at The SimonFraser University in nearby Vancouver.

Rudolf Komorous divides his maturework into three periods: the minimalist peri-od, the abstract period, and the period ofnew melody and new harmony.

The Prague compositions written aroundthe mid-1960s fall into the first period, with-out the author having any idea of the exis-tence of Minimalist art at the time. (He knewthe music of Morton Feldman, however, andat the time Komorous did in fact have moreaffinity with American new music than withthe German). He wrote pieces in which, apartfrom the use of bizarre sound sources, themost striking characteristic is the emptied outnature of musical time. Here his Chineseexperience with Zen played a part. The

pieces concerned are Sladká královna[Sweet Queen], Chanson, Olympia, Mignonand Náhrobek Malevičův [Malevic’s Tomb-stone]. The last mentioned composition, of1965, was the first electronic piece publiclypresented in Czechoslovakia, and also thefirst electronic piece released by Supraphonon gramophone record. The first three pieceshave been recorded by the Agon Orchestraon the CD Česká nová hudba 60. Let[Czech New Music of the Sixties; ArtaRecords 1994].

Rudolf Komorous’s abstract period con-sisted of six pieces from the first half of the1970s entitled Bez názvu [Untitled], basedon principles of permutation. The second ofthem, written in 1973 for trumpet, is oftenplayed, but Komorous himself comments that“I recognised that it wasn’t what I was look-ing for.”

The third period of new melodies andnew harmonies had a prologue in an earlierpiece, York of 1967. His opera of 1964–66,Lady Blancarosa also falls into this earlierperiod. A solo opera without accompaniment,it was later performed in Buffalo, New York,Montreal, and Victoria. The opera No no miyaof 1988, produced in Vancouver, Victoria andToronto met with unexpected success.

“Many young composers in my country,Bohemia, regard my last work as a kind of“return to something” and believe that thismusic is suddenly too traditional. My view,and I’m quite sure of it (someone ought tostart to teach it) is that there exists a certainprogress in music, and that what was pro-duced in 1950 is now historical music halfa century old. There is no point in compos-ing like Webern or Stockhausen, just as outgeneration realised that we ought not towrite like Stravinsky. But it seems to me thatthis present new generation keeps on think-ing that to write like Boulez is real mod-ernism, courage, avant-garde and so on.Although actually today Boulez is the equiv-alent of Brahms, it’s the same thing, histori-cal music, no longer living music, it doesn’texist. Some of these pieces from the pastare still amazing, some are just about tolera-ble and some are pathetic, and that probablyincludes even the deified Mozart. Art goeson, and today the New Music is a historicalterm. Music has had to keep on moving insome direction and in my view the path for-ward is that we need to discover how tocompose and invent melodies that are notpre-New Music but post-New Music. (Andde facto – even it seems like prising myself,but no, I consider it a fact – I have been thefirst to take this path from so-called NewMusic in genuinely new and contemporarydirections.). We also have to start from ourknowledge of harmony. (…) Today I would-n’t say we know everything about harmonybut we know a lot more than anyone in thewhole history of music, whether geniuses ornormal composer, anyone, because forwhole centuries, long centuries, harmonywas unusually limited. Now I repeat – oncemore – new melodies and all the knowledge

Chanson (1965)

30 | composer | czech music 1 | 2006

tain opinion, but if you look at Europeanmusic especially from outside, you can seethat it’s still bogged down in music that hasits basis in the music of fifty years ago, andthat it hasn’t moved on very far. That is alsowhy Penderecki writes a violin concerto thatsounds like Romantic music. But the prob-lem lies precisely in recognising, whetherthe pieces have proper harmony or propermelody, whether they are pre-New Music orpost-New Music! Lots of people who writeobsolete music, because they have neverbeen capable of thinking up anything else(they write in the spirit of the modernism ofthe earlier 20th century) are now latchingonto what is emerging today and what isbeing fought for and approached experimen-tally. (…) As I say: there are plenty of com-posers who have breathed a sigh of relief,because they were destroyed by the NewMusic and always battled against it and saidit was nonsense and thought they wereright! And now, when melodies are beingwritten again, and harmony, it really looks asif they were right. But they were not right!!!We had to get rid of what they were doingand are doing even now. That’s my greatbugbear! We have to do somethingabsolutely new, something that will work forthe future. But it has to be done on the basisof whole centuries of European music andsome impulses that we can take from othercultures (Asian, South American and so on),why not? But at bottom our tradition is Euro-pean. Or to put it in other words, we have totake that tradition, cross over through themodernism of the first half of the 20th centu-ry, and properly, thoroughly and deeply studyNew Music, because without that there is noway out and no way forward. In every con-

servatory, every academy, everywhere – inBerlin, Prague, Paris – there needs to bea proper course on Webern’s music, and itshould explain in detail what he actually did,although few people actually know it. (I havespent a great deal of time on Webern andfeel a sense of responsibility about it. Thestudy of Webern is a fundamental thing!)Then other directions in new music need tobe tackled, in relation to orchestration, formsand with all of that, from Perotin to Boulez,we should look for the music of the presentday. That’s a terrible term, I know…

Rudolf Komorous has retired, but he stillcomposers and his music is being publishedon CD by leading record companies. As hesays himself, finally for the first time in his lifehe can devote himself to composing full time.The most frequent performers of his piecesare the orchestras Arraymusic, EspritOrchestra, Manitoba Chamber Orchestra,Netherlands Radio Orchestra, Toronto Sym-phony Orchestra, and the Vancouver Sym-phony, CBC Radio Orchestra. His pianopieces have been performed, for example byCornelius Cardew, Eve Egoyan, and FredericRzewski, and one of the most recent pieceswas dedicated to the harpsichordist Colin Til-neym. He enjoys strong support for his com-posing activities from the Canadian MusicCentre.

Since his emigration in 1968 RudolfKomorous has never returned to the CzechRepublic.

(The passages quoted have been adapt-ed from interviews held by the author withR. Komorous in November 2005 in Victoria.)

that we now have about harmony needs tobe exploited to enable us to write music thatgenuinely expresses the situation of today’sworld. (…)

People often talk about a crisis over thequestion of whether there is still anything tobe done in composition that has not beendone before.

I would say that is the task of composerstoday. It relates to the wave that is returningto melody and harmony. Now almost every-one writes this music and only a few back-ward composers still think that Boulez ismodern, which he used to be and he wroteamazing music, but to write like Bouleztoday is completely pointless. As I alwayssay: art has to come from life. But notthrough studying music and saying to our-selves – ah nobody’s ever yet done this, soI’ll bend it back and forth like this in thisdirection, and if they used to go up then I’llgo down. That kind of originality is artificial.It’s dreadfully easy to be original in that kindof way, in the sense of just looking at whathas been done and doing it differently andhey presto you’re original. Anyone can dothat. But the point is whether it’s right.Whether the originality comes from the factthat something used to go down and nowgoes up, or whether it comes from the realityof life today. (…)

You know the trends well, you are in con-tact with a lot of people and have travelleda great deal in your life. What are the featuresof composition in Europe? Where is compo-sition going in America, and Canada? Isthere a difference between the two conti-nents?

It differs from place to place, I would say.I don’t believe that Europe is at one in a cer-

Olympia (1964)

czech music 1 | 2006 | competition | 31

Electro-acoustic (EA) music* developed inCzechoslovakia from the end of the 1950s,initially in close association with the poeticsof Neosurrealism in fine art and literature (thecomposers R. Komorous, V. Šrámek, L.Simon, L. Novák, P. Kotík). In the years1964–70 the Union of Czechoslovak Com-posers and Concert Artists organised spe-cialist seminars on EA music that wereattended by a number of Czech composers.Possibilities for studio work appeared, in thetelevision studio in Bratislava and in the Bar-randov film studios from the beginning of the1960s, from 1964 in the radio studio inBrno, from 1965 in the newly founded Radioand Television Research Institute, in thesound laboratory of the Institute of MusicalSciences of the Czechoslovak Academy ofSciences, from 1967 in the new radio studioin Plzeň and later in Prague as well. Personalcontacts were established with composersabroad: in 1961 L. A. Hiller visited Czecho-slovakia, L. Nono came first to Bratislava andthen in 1969 to Prague, regular contactswere maintained with Jozef Patkowski whohad founded the Experimental Radio Studioin Poland in 1957. In 1966 the Groupe deRecherche Musicale visited Prague, in 1968K. Stockhausen came to Smolenice, and inthe following year the Union of Composersinvited staff from the Sonological Institute inUtrecht to their seminar. Composers attend-ed the festival in Warsaw and the Darmstadtcourses. Thanks to seminars for composersthis type of music was linked primarily with

composition and art music, and the situationwas similar in film music.

EA music was also known as “technicalmusic” and in the atmosphere of the 1960s,dominated as it was by faith in the connec-tion between culture and technologicalprogress, it seemed a very progressive phe-nomenon. It brought new material, inspira-tions and themes into music. The largestnumber of pieces were created precisely inthe years 1969–1973, and later at the begin-ning of the 1990s.

The foundation of the competition at theend of the 1960s therefore seemed a naturalstep forward. The first year with the titleMUSICA NOVA took place directly in thePlzeň Radio Studio in 1969. At this point itwas mainly Czech composers who wereinvolved. Prize-winners included the foundersof the field in this country – Rudolf Růžičkawith the composition and spatial projectionGurges, Karel Odstrčil with the compositionGhandí from the cycle Cabinet of Wax Fig-ures, Miroslav Hlaváč with the compositionBiochronos and Arnošt Parsch with Transpo-sizioni II. Miloš Haase obtained anHonourable Mention for his piece Per asperaad astra.

In the 1970s with the “normalisation” ofpolitics and culture the contest was discon-tinued, probably because it was associatedwith risk contact with the avant-gardeabroad. Nonetheless EA music continued tobe created especially at the radio studios andat the Music Faculty of the Academy of Per-forming Arts in Prague. And as it happened,the secretary of the then Union of Czechoslo-vak Composers Václav Kučera was an activeand acknowledged composer in the field.

After 1990, when the Society for EAMusic was formed under the presidency ofKarel Odstrčil, the competition was revived.The first public playback of EA music tookplace in the Theatre of Music in March 1990.The second year of the competition tookplace in 1993. The competition was inspiredby NEWCOMP contest in Boston, withwhich Rudolf Růžička had kept in contact.MUSICA NOVA did not, however, wish tofocus on what is known as computer musiconly, because the local traditions and condi-tions in the studios were closer to the olderphenomenon of French musique concrete

and German electronic music. The idea wasto cover all variants of EA that were actualand of good quality. A category was also cre-ated for young composers. Well-known com-posers and musicologists were nominatedfor the jury. The honorary chairman in1993was Eduard Herzog, the only living memberof the original jury of 1969.

From the outset the competition hasbeen orientated to art music, because thisrepresented the organic symbiosis of the lat-est innovative technology with imaginationand fully thought out form. Of course, theboundary between art and “non” art is nota sharp one. Each piece was and is judgedfrom several points of view: acoustic inven-tiveness, skill in craftsmanship, the corre-spondence between the material and treat-ment, formal consistence and logic, non-musical intentions and their realisation, over-all impression. Clumsy or kitschy pieces areexcluded from the first stage. In 1993 thefirst prize went to Jacques Lejeune, and alsoRadek Rejšek and Fabio Ciardi, with specialprizes for Helmut Decker and the emigrantBohdan Mikolášek. From the outset the com-petition has also involved a presentation inthe form of a public concert by the winnersand a radio programme, and more recently(since 1997) a CD and CD-R has also beenproduced to accompany it. From 1993 thecompetition has had an international dimen-sion that it lacked in its earlier phase.

In 1994 two basic categories wereestablished and these exist to this day. Thefirst is the category for autonomous EA musicand the second the category for live instru-ment (or voice) with electronics. In this yearthe competition attracted 66 composersfrom 17 countries. The prizes went mainly towhat is known as the school of acousmaticmusic following on from the French tradition(Mathew Adkins, Jonty Harrison). Establishedfigures like Charles Bestor from the USA,John Levack Drever from Scotland, and Jean-Claude Risset from France took part. Most ofthem have remained faithful to MUSICANOVA, and the content genuinely showcasestop EA composers from all over the world(they win prizes in other prestigious competi-tions as well and are involved in importantprojects). MUSICA NOVA is also praisedabroad for the fact that the finalists include

the musica nova competition

LENKA DOHNALOVA

32 | competition | czech music 1 | 2006

music in different styles from acousmaticmusic (“cinema for the ear“) drawing mainlyon the French tradition, to autonomouslystructural music (the tradition of Germanelectronic music), to intuitive life electronicmusic and so on.

For several years now the number ofpieces sent into the competition has sta-bilised at around 120–140 from about 35countries. The larges number come from thetraditional countries for EA music – the USA,Italy, France, Germany, England, Japan, butrecently there has been a stronger input fromSouth Korea, China and the South Americancountries and also entries from Australia,Turkey, Greece, Portugal and Spain. Poland,Hungary, Ukraine and Russia have becomesources of entries again. In the last threeyears or so the average age of the entrantshas dropped significantly, and so the catego-ry for young composers is losing point. It isusually now given to the youngest successfulparticipant in the competition. The competi-tion has a Czech round that is meant to stim-ulate the composition of EA music here.

The pace of technological progress isvery fast. An increasing number of pieces arecreated by authors who are sure that theysound “generally good” because currentalready widely available software can evokethis “impression” by standard proceduresdescribed in the manual, sound library andsuchlike. In prestigious competitions includ-ing MUSICA NOVA what is judged, however,is a level ’in advance of’ and ’above’ the givenstandard at a particular time, i.e. the criteria

are acoustic inventiveness in details andcombination, the structural flexibility of the“montage”, virtual spatiality, i.e. the ability tocreate levels that simulate back-front, sur-face-shape-point and motion in this virtualspace, inventiveness in real multichannelsound projection, and ability to identify thepotential of the material chosen in terms ofform and content. Nearly all the composerswho as winners were asked to expressa view on work in EA agreed that the hugerpossibilities for expression and freedomoffered by EA may also be a trap.

In the category for live instrument / voiceand EA there has been a great shift in expres-sion and style. Given the technical possibili-ties, at the beginning it tended to be con-ceived in terms of instrumental concerto. TheEA played the role of “orchestra”, whosesound was fixed. Sometimes it can also hap-pen that someone appears who genuinelysimulates an ordinary orchestra and instru-ment using EA as a way of avoiding the finan-cial and organisational demands of using liveperformers. But this is not what the competi-tion is about. In this category what is crucialis the interaction of the flexibility of live play orsinging with technological music. Since thedevelopment of life electronic music (aboveall thanks to Max/MSP) the style possibilitieshave opened up, from pieces for one instru-ment enhanced by software techniques tovarious combinations in which the boundarybetween live play or song and artificialarrangement is blurred and challenged.

What is the situation at the moment? In

2005 the competition attracted 111 piecesfrom 32 countries. The first prize went to thehusband and wife team Petra Bachratá, origi-nally from Slovakia in the pure EA category,and the Portueguese composer Joao PedroOliveira in the EA with live instrument catego-ry. The second prize went to Robert Sazdovfrom Australia. In the Czech round the winnerwas a student from the Janáček Academy ofPerforming Arts in Brno, Jana Bařinková, withMichal Rataj in second place. As always theconcert took place in the presence of theprizewinners, this time in the Czech Museumof Fine Arts in Prague.

www.musica.cz/musnova

* Electro-acoustic music is a blanket term formusic making major use of electric sourcesand electronic means in the production orrealisation of a composition. Without thesemeans (unlike in the case of merely repro-duced or amplified music) the compositioncould not be played at all. It also includesmusic that combines an electronic elementwith acoustic sound sources. The term origi-nated in France. In Germany and the USA theterm “electronic music”, respectively “musicfor tape” has a longer tradition.

Musica Nova 2005 Jury: Milan Slavický,Rudolf Růžička, ReinerBuerck, Pavel Kopecký,Juraj Ďuriš, LenkaDohnalová

czech music 1 | 2006 | josef horák | 33

On the 23rd of November the Czech bassclarinettist Josef Horák died in Biberach-Riss in Germany. I cannot and do not wishto write his obituary, but I have a need torespond with at least a few words to thedeath of a Czech musical personality parexcellence.

I first met Josef Horák at the beginningof 1960 in Brno, where he was alreadyknown as an outstanding clarinettist whowas raising the status and broadening thepossibilities of play on the bass clarinet.Horák had also had a spell with GustavBrom’s orchestra, the hatchery of Europeanjazz instrumentalist, whether saxophonists,trumpet players or trombonists.

When I got to know Horák he was justcreating the chamber ensemble, Musicanova with the aim of cultivating contempo-rary music. Despite the Communistregime’s suspicion of modernist trends, theensemble started to give concerts from1961 in Brno (with flute – OldřiškaVaňharová, bass clarinet – Josef Horák,piano – Branko Čuberka and percussion –Jan Novák or Bohuslav Krška). Over threeseasons in roughly ten concerts Musicanova brought to life original work by thecomposers Pavel Blatný, Zdeněk Pololáník,Bohuslav Řehoř, Václav Řehák, Alois Piňos(see CM 4/05), and Leoš Faltus. The groupplayed music of the inter-war avant gardework – by E. F. Burian (see CM 4/04)I. Stravinsky and B. Martinů – and examplesof the then New Music – Horák obtainedStockhausen’s Kreuzspiel, and BrankoČuberka gave the first performance in Cze-choslovakia of Pierrer Boulez’s 3rd PianoSonata. In addition there were premieres ofwork by Messiaen, Hindemith, J. P. Thilmanand others. It was a small miracle and

above all the birth of what was later tobecome a tradition.

At this time Josef Horák already had onefoot in Prague. From 1963 he establishedhimself there as an outstanding instrumental-ist, first in the theatre in Vinohrady, whereconcerts with philosophical dialogues(Garaudy etc.) were held in the mid-1960s inan atmosphere of relaxation. His chamberduo with pianist Emma Kovárnová Due Boe-mi was soon well-known, and was ever moreoften invited to play at prestigious concerts.For example in the spring of 1968 the twomusicians formed the backbone of the con-cert of Prague Madrigalists “on the steps”.They achieved international success at theend of the 1960s, when for the first timeHorák was called “the Paganini of the BassClarinet”, in a German review. Due Boemiplayed at the Biennale in Zagreb, in London,Paris and a succession of festivals in Ger-many especially Darmstadt, where Stock-hausen invited them to join his project. Theirmoves between Biberach in south-west Ger-many and Prague went one for many yearsand were reminiscent of the musical migra-tions of earlier centuries.

While the two musicians committedthemselves to the cause of post-serial andtimbre music like few others, as these trendswaned and faded in the 1970s and at thebeginning of the 1980s they sought a differ-ent level of music. And their natural spon-taneity led them to create a “second” reper-toire from the melody of tablatures, the pro-fane and forgotten music of the 16th-18thcenturies. I took a share in the choice andrealisation of this repertoire, and can see in ita compensation for the modernist vacuumthat had inevitably occurred in the1970s. The German scene sought to over-

come it with a new simplicity, and from the1960s minimalism and reductionism wasemerging, although of course in Europe theprocess was different and less apparentThe striving for a new kind of melodic char-acter led Josef Horák and Emma Kovárnováto an interesting ambivalent position uniquein the European context. It was one thatgenerated impulses and inspirations towhich musicians can return in the future.

Horák was an apolitical man. His one,lifelong obsession was music and the bassclarinet, and he divided the world accord-ingly. At the end of 2005 there were already600 pieces that he had conjured into life,performed, recorded, published and other-wise established in repertoire. In Rotterdamat a world meeting of bass clarinettists hewas presented as the father founder of thebranch; the organisers saw his concert inthe mid-1950 (in 1955 Horák had given thefirst ever bass clarinet recital in history) asthe beginning of the instrument’s subse-quent rise as a serious concert instrument.Here the Paganini of the bass clarinetplayed for the last time, and at least lived toenjoy international acclaim and gratitude forhis share in making the bass clarinet what itis today.

Josef Horák and Emma Kovárnová usedto come to Brno every year for Christmas,for Horák was keen on maintaining familytradition. For more than twenty years DueBoemi would spent Christmas Eve after-noon with us. We would discuss everythingto do with composition, technical andorganisational matters, and we would remi-nisce… Last Christmas Josef was nolonger with us. We shall never forget him!

the paganini of the bass clarinet is dead…

MILOŠ ŠTĚDROŇ

34 | history | czech music 1 | 2006

Antonín Dvořák (8th of September 1841– 1st of May 1904), one of the mostworld-famous, admired and alsobeloved of Czech composers, was born165 years ago in the village of Nela-hozeves in Central Bohemia. Dvořák’sbiography and his importance for themusic culture of his homeland and thewhole world at large is well known. Weshall not therefore go over it, or list allthe composer’s achievements. Instead,let us pose a question to which thenumerous and often otherwise thor-ough works on his life and work haveoffered only unsystematic and partialanswers. What were the sources, themusical wellsprings of Dvořák’s work?

After all, no composer – not even thegreatest master – composes and refines hismusic just ex nihilo and from nothing morethan the inner resources of his own imagina-tion. Each composer starts out againsta background of music in the sense of what-ever works by predecessors or contempo-raries surround him. Moreover, the mostimportant creative talents have often beenprecisely those who reacted the most sensi-tively to the stylistic, formal technical andimaginative stimuli of the music they havegrown up with or get to know later. Creativityalways involves a tension between theremoulding of inspirations taken from outside– whether consciously or unconsciously –and the composer’s own imagination.

Leoš Janáček put it beautifully in hisstudy Modern Harmonic Music (Hudebněteoretické dílo 2, Prague 1974, 7–14):“What primeval images are lodged in thestorehouse of our souls! No single outstand-ing work of music has escaped the compos-er’s attention. He has discerned everythingand willingly or unwillingly stored it well inhis soul. Musical material of this kind, inher-

ited to some degree and then replenished, isthe germ of our own motifs: our soul isbound by it as we compose. Whether weponderously adhere to clear models or dis-tance ourselves from them, as from picturesin a mist īfloating in the mindī, like it or notour faces are always turned to what we oncehave heard…” It is interesting that Janáčekimmediately illustrates this idea with a refer-ence to Dvořák: “Dvořák is reforging Liszt’sElizabeth with his Saint Ludmila, Berlioz’sRequiem with his own Requiem: quartetsare built on quartets, a sonata on a sonata,choral pieces on choral pieces. The weaktalent sticks to the inherited forms, theintense talent shatters them.”

It is no accident that Janáček’s reflec-tions led him to remark on different degreesof composing talent. What really defines sov-ereign talent is the individuality with whicha master synthesises external impulses withhis own imagination, producing a picture thatis full of originality, and the prerequisite forany distinctive new and unique style. This isthe hallmark of a genius we recognise in onlya few dozen of the most important com-posers in the entire history of classical music.And we know that Antonín Dvořák is one ofthem. Let us try and trace all the elementsthat contributed to the individuality of hismusical expression, and the way in which hemade external inspirations his own andreforged them.

He came to the musical profession as anextraordinary talent from a Central Bohemianvillage. Behind the broad face and stocky fig-ure of a village butcher (the trade for whichhe had once been destined), he hid the sen-sitive soul of a musician of genius, one of themost imaginative creators of 19th-centuryRomantic music. Nonetheless, evident in hisface is the stubborn perseverance withwhich, after graduating from organ school,

he set himself to master the techniques ofcomposition. He studied the works of Schu-bert and Beethoven, and these studies werereflected in the ambitious structure of the 1stSymphony in C minor “The Bells of Zlonice”and the emotional depth of the song cycleCypress Trees. He embraced the nationalsentiments of Smetana and enriched themwith the lyricism of the patriotic Hymn onVítězslav Hálek’s Poem, The Heirs of theWhite Mountain and the earthy humanity ofhis early operas; affinity with Smetana borefurther fruit with the ardent Czech sentimentsof the Symphony no. 8 in G major, TheJacobin, and Amid Nature. He made thearchaic charm of folk modality his own inMoravian Duets and Symphonic Variations,and the other Slav cultures provided him withpowerful inspirations for Slavonic Rhap-sodies, Slavonic Dances, The Dumkas, andhis opera Dimitrij. He managed to infuse evenworks without programmatic titles with folkinspirations of the same kind, as in Concertofor Violin and Orchestra in A minor, Sym-phony no. 6 in D major and no. 7 “The Great”,and various chamber works. In America hebecame interested in the musical cultures ofthe ethnic groups on the continent, and heinfused Symphony no. 9 “From the NewWorld”, Biblical Songs and other works withmelodic inspirations from African-Americanand Indian sources. Closest to his heart,however, was the poetry of Czech fairytales,which he made his own and recast in pro-found form in the symphonic poems basedon Erben’s ballads and the operas Kate andthe Devil, and Rusalka.

Even such a cursory view of his creativelife and best known compositions providesa sense of the complexity of Antonín Dvořák’sartistic development and the range of impor-tant impulses from the world of music andother aspects of culture that influenced hisdirection as a composer. Let us first look at

the sources of antonín dvořák’smusic

JAROSLAV SMOLKA

czech music 1 | 2006 | history | 35

those successive influences that may be con-sidered milestones marking out phases in hiscareer, and that allow us to divide Dvořák’soutput chronologically into a number of basicperiods.

His serious and systematic career ascomposer was, of course, preceded by hiselementary experience of musical life inZlonice, especially in the choir and withdance music. He obtained a more systemat-ic education at the organ school in Prague,where he mastered harmony, counterpointand fugue and musical forms, and anadvanced standard of play on the organincluding improvisation. It is quite possiblethat he wrote some of the polkas preservedunder his name in the repertoire of the bandsof rural Central Bohemia while still in Zlonice.His studies in Prague, however, led him tosystematic composition, in which he had toobserve the rules, form and structure ofpieces longer than dance genres and gov-erned by different conventions. Deep studyof the scores of the old masters, which werethe models for his first serious pieces, wasessential for the knowledge of these rulesand conventions. First and foremost heexplored and mastered the music of the Vien-na classics, especially Ludwig vanBeethoven, and the early romantic FranzSchubert. In Dvořák’s day this was an unusu-ally fortunately choice for a young composerstarting his career. The entire precedingdevelopment of treatment of theme and motifwas concentrated in Beethoven’s work,structurally adapted to ensure that the over-all architectonics of a piece were tight andcompact, with effective use of gradationsand falls in the compositional line, contrastand antithesis. The mature Schubert wasalso a distinguished architect when it cameto large musical forms, but his contribution tothe young Dvořák’s development was ratherdifferent, and lay in his genius as a musicalpoet, a melodist with an inexhaustible imagi-nation and feeling for the lyrical potential ofhighly charged emotional images. The studyof the Vienna classics led Dvořák to composehis first major instrumental works: stringquartets and string quintet, the first two sym-phonies, the early (unfortunately neverorchestrated) Cello Concerto in A major.Schubert’s example led to the first matureflowering of Dvořák’s imagination as a song-writer, with the cycle Cypress Trees.Beethoven and Schubert were indeed toinfluence all Dvořák’s subsequent work:throughout his life he was to strive for tightand thoroughly worked structure in his com-positions, and a unique melodic imagination,lyrical and otherwise, fired by and compara-ble with the genius of Schubert, was to behis right up to his final works. While still inAmerica, and when he was long past fifty, hemade his only published comment on thework of another composer; it was an articleon Schubert which praised precisely hisqualities as a unique melodist and creator ofvivid harmonies. Dvořák dwelt particularly onthe way Schubert alternated between majorand minor without intermediate modulation

(not only between parallel keys, but especial-ly between major and minor), believing this tobe a typical expression of Slav identity, evenin the case of a purely Viennese composerwith only remote ancestors from Moravia. It ishard to agree with these rather rash views onmusical genetics, but they are importantauthentic testimony to the elements Dvořákhad taken from Franz Schubert, made hisown and used as a foundation. The polarityof the same key in major and minor, and alter-nation between the two in brief passages, isone of the basic characteristics of Dvořák’sown Slav-influenced works.

While short, Dvořák’s second develop-mental phase, – his Neo-Romantic orienta-tion at the turn of the 1860s and 70s – wasnonetheless important. It was associatedwith his first encounter with the works of Ber-lioz, Liszt and Wagner, which were performedin Prague at the time and which he played asan orchestral viola player. It is very probablethat he was playing at all three events thatbrought Neo-Romantic music to Prague andwere considered sensational as revelationsof the new possibilities of music. They wereSmetana’s Prague premiere of Berlioz’s dra-matic symphony, Romeo and Juliet, present-ed as part of the celebrations of the 300thanniversary of the birth of William Shake-speare in the 1864–65 season, Liszt’s Ora-torio St Elizabeth and a Žofín Academy con-cert with a programme of vocal and orches-tral excerpts from the operas of RichardWagner. It was clear to Dvořák that this musicwas the expression of his time, the mostrecent and supreme contribution to thedevelopment of composition. It seems tohave made him aware that his models wereincreasingly slipping into the category oflegacy of the past as compared with the newmovements. While not abandoning the prin-ciples by which his masters had enrichedEuropean music, he no longer stuck to theirparticular musical idioms. He began to culti-vate opera, a typical neo-Romantic genre,and to project the innovations of the newstyle not only into his operas Alfred and thefirst version of The King and the CharcoalBurner, but into quartets and other chamberpieces as well. Interestingly, however, heshowed absolutely no sign of taking up themain new feature introduced by the Neo-Romantics, that is to say programme music,not even in the sense of the programmerecasting of established genres, such as theprogramme symphony and programme over-ture (when he presented the overture to hisfirst opera Alfred as an independent concertpiece he simply called it Dramatic Overtureand for the purposes of non-theatrical perfor-mance did not explicitly connect it with thetitle or plot of the opera or any related story),and nor was he yet moved to write a singlework in the new programme genre known asthe symphonic poem. Yet this influence hada deep effect on Antonín Dvořák, althoughinsofar as it found expression at this time oreven earlier, it did so in latent form. The titleSymphony no. 1 in C minor, “The Bells ofZlonice” suggests a markedly depictive ele-

ment of the piece drawing on Dvořák’s expe-riences from his youth, including a stylisationof the actual sound of the bells, even thoughDvořák did not convey such experiences bymeans of any stylised literary programme.Since this was a work that the composer nev-er heard played and wrote off after losing it,we know little about it, of course, but certain-ly the title provided a general situating con-text, an indication of general character in thesame way as such titles as Beethoven’sEroica, or Destiny, Mendelssohn’s Scottish,Italian, Reformation, of Schumann’s Springor Rhine. The influence of the Neo-Romanticdiscovery of programme music therefore onlycame to the fore in Dvořák’s work after a con-siderable time lag, not until the 1890s. It iswell known that his symphonic poems metwith general surprise in their time, but if todaywe recognise how important the music of theNeo-Romantics was for the composer’sdevelopment, we can more easily understandthis sudden change in Dvořák’s musical poet-ics.

At the beginning of the 1870s AntonínDvořák was literally carried away by a move-ment that went far beyond music. Czechsociety experienced a wave of ardent, mili-tant patriotism after the Habsburg emperordenied Czechs the promised, “constitutionalsettlement” having granted it to the Hungari-ans. The party known as the Young Czechsorganised huge protest demonstrations cel-ebrating the writer Karel Havlíček Borovskýas a national martyr, while Bedřich Smetanaworked feverishly on the patriotic operaLibuše. In 1872, the year in which Libuše wascompleted, Antonín Dvořák started anothermajor phase in his career with the cantataHymn on a Poem by Vítězslav Hálek: Heirsof the White Mountain. It was a phase domi-nated by a sense of discipleship to BedřichSmetana. This was a very powerful influ-ence, which not only affected Dvořák’schoice of subjects (the first cantata and thenthe Six Songs on the Králův Dvůr Manuscriptof October 1872 and later the comic operasTvrdé palice [The Stubborn Lovers] and Šel-ma sedlák [The Cunning Peasant] with theirthemes from rural life, following on from thestyle of the Bartered Bride), but also led himto adopt some of Smetana’s musical idioms,so that Smetana’s influence becomes mani-fest in Dvořák in a deeper and broader sense,and not simply in pieces with patriotic sub-jects using Czech rural themes. Dvořák’smusic becomes warmer as it takes onSmetana’s lyricism, as is clear not only in theHymn mentioned above, but also in purelyinstrumental works like the String Quintetwith Double Bass in G major, the Serenadein E major for string orchestra, the next twosymphonies, No. 3 in E flat major and No. 4in D minor (sometimes known as the “smallsymphony”) and other pieces. We also findthe patriotically celebratory intonations of themarch and the fanfare entering Dvořák’smusic, and an energetic flow of fast musicwith very pronounced dynamics. These ele-ments are not only strikingly employed in theHymn but had a major impact, for example,

on the tectonic conception and form of theSymphony no. 3 in E flat major. Alone amongDvořák’s nine symphonies this has threemovements (the others have four) and it isa symphony of strongly finale type (whereaswith the others it is the first movement that isthe most important, longest and structurallythe most complex and full of conflict, and thefinale is at most a secondary and lower kindof climax, which may perceptibly raise thetectonic line of the cycle but not to the levelof the 1st movement, as for example in theNo. 8 in G major or in the No. 9 in E minor“From the New World”). In the Third theemphasis is very strikingly on the march (or ifyou prefer the “processionary” – ceremonialfinale, which as interpreted by listeners of theperiod was a symphonically generalisedimage of undaunted ascent, and can be con-sidered a musical stylisation of mass demon-stration for sacred national goals. It was nocoincidence that the work was introducedand the premiere conducted by BedřichSmetana himself, in the year before he wentdeaf. This Smetanian, and in the narrowersense of the term Smetanian nationalistdevelopmental phase was something that leftpermanent traces on the work of AntonínDvořák and would later from time to time leadto a powerfully Smetanian eruption, for exam-ple in the Hussite, The Jacobin and otherpieces or passages.

In the mid-1870s, Dvořák’s cre-ative world was expanding. Of course, at thisstage he wrote music that still referred backto one or more of the sources and earlierphases already mentioned, for example in theessentially Beethovian stylisation of the solopart in the Piano Concerto in G minor,although the musical ideas are entirely dis-tinctive and Dvořákian. It was also at thisstage that he composed the Stabat mater,a piece that drew on sources other thanthose that we have mentioned (see below),and can seem like a jewel from a differentworld entirely. Nevertheless, in 1879 Dvořákfound a new source which he rapidlyemployed and developed and applied ona broad front, and which for two years entire-ly dominated his work. Here Dvořák is enter-ing his “Moravian Period”. The impulsebehind it is sometimes considered to havebeen sheer accident. The merchant Neff,whose family Dvořák used to visit to accom-pany singing on the piano, gave him a chanceto look at Sušil’s collection of Moravian folksongs, with a view to arranging some of themfor vocal duet and piano. Dvořák was verytaken with the songs, some of them basedon material known as “church modes” andsome on other modes that can be consid-ered combinations of different church modesor modulate – melodically – from one to theother. He submerged himself in the materialand finally brought the Neffs two-part songsthat were not just arrangements but indepen-dent compositions, sometimes employingmodal approaches and sometimes peculiarand unconventional modulations that drewon folk modality, lively rhythms, and inge-niously declaimed folk texts, but above all

melodically and harmonically original andfresh. Neff was enchanted and wanted tohave the Moravian Duets printed immedi-ately. Encouraged, Dvořák added the cycleto the major compositions that he was sub-mitting with his application for a statestipend. Johannes Brahms, who was sittingon the Vienna commission assessing theapplications, was enthusiastic and recom-mended the Moravian Duets to his own pub-lishers, Simrock in Berlin, and Simrockagreed to print them as publicity for theyoung composer, without offering a fee.Especially after an excellent review fromLouis Ehlert, the work was a tremendous suc-cess with critics and on the market, andopened Dvořák’s path to the catalogue of animportant music publisher and Europeanfame.

Dvořák sensed that the new style towhich folk modal melodics had led him neednot be just a chance excursion in his music.In any case he soon felt at home in it, sincehe had affinities with the world of folk music,even if earlier this had been mainly the differ-ently structured Bohemian folk music basedon classical tonality and periodic melodicconstruction. He had grown up with folkmusic, lived its original life in village condi-tions and very often in Prague, where therewas still a nationalist vogue for it. Nor wasthe old modality based on the so-calledchurch modes entirely new to him. Back inorgan school he had taken a course calledHarmonisation in Church Modes. Organistswho graduated from the school and werehired to play in Roman Catholic services hadto learn to accompany Gregorian chant,which had a primarily modal structure. Sometechniques, for example the phrygiancadence with which he several times enlivensand varies the two-part song Zajatá [Cap-tive], had been well-known to him since hisyouth, and now, with his experience in com-position, he could employ it in different musi-cal contexts.

He therefore did not leave MoravianDuets as an isolated episode in his work butfound other opportunities to work with modalmaterial, employing it in choral works onMoravian folk texts that he also took from theSušil collection, and for poetry written in arti-ficial folk style of the Adolf Hejduk kind. Allthese the composer brought together incycles for four mixed and four male choirs.The most impressive and most successfulwas the song for male choir Já jsem huslař[I am a fiddler] with its strikingly lyricallygraduated chant at the beginning. In itsmelody he soon recognised an idea withsuch potential that he made it the theme ofa new orchestral work, Symphonic Variationsin C major. In my view, in this piece togetherwith the Symphony no. 5 in F major that hewrote shortly before, what we see here isDvořák emerging as a mature symphonist ofgenius for the first time. With 27 variationson this theme, culminating in a grandly expan-sive fugue, he brilliantly combines a solidstructure with an apparently inexhaustibleimagination in terms of style, mood and

instrumentation: here an exquisite and excit-ing theme acquires ever new forms, and isilluminated from every new angles, while thevivid mosaic thus created is also structurallya superb, monumental musical unity. It is pre-cisely here in the context of the influence ofMoravian folk music, that Dvořák the musicalarchitect of genius is born.

Viewed in a longer perspective, the useand development of melodic and harmonicimpulses from Moravian folk music was infact the beginning of a much more vital andlonger-lasting tendency in Dvořák’s work,one which had a strong intellectual motiva-tion from outside music itself but involveddistinctive aspects of musical expression. In1878, the idea of Slav solidarity revived asa subject of ardent interest in Czech soci-ety. Russia had just liberated Bulgaria fromTurkish rule, and Czech political passionswere also stirred up by the emperor’srefusal grant the Bohemian part of themonarchy more constitutional autonomywhen the success of the Hungarians wasenshrined in the change of the state’s offi-cial name to Austria-Hungary. There wasrenewed talk of Austro-Slavism, i.e. the soli-darity of Slav nations living in the empire.The Old Czech politicians, whose leadingfigure František Ladislav Rieger was tryingto win Antonín Dvořák over to his side, wereonce again considering putting their hopesin Russia, a strategy that had earlier beenemphatically rejected by Karel HavlíčekBorovský on the grounds of the tyrannicalnature of the Russian Tsarist regime. As citi-zen and patriot Antonín Dvořák was intense-ly interested in these developments, and it isnot suprising that a Slav orientation soonbecame manifest in his music we well, allthe more so when stimulated by Simrock’scommission for Slavonic Dances. Musically,for pieces with Slav themes as well as innon-programme works that had a Slav orien-tation, Dvořák drew on three sources. Thefirst was the folk music of the other Slavonicpeoples. This often had common roots withMoravian folk music, since for examplesome of the South and East Slavs usedmelodics based on modal tonal material, butDvořák was also inspired by the differences,nationally characteristic genre and dancetypes. Modality, or at least hints of modality,an affinity to modality, appears in some pas-sages of his pieces of the period, but aboveall his work now bubbled over with thegenre or intonational characteristics of themusic of the other Slav nations. At this pointDvořák became particularly interested in theUkrainian lyrical genre known as the dumka.First he took it up in isolated cases, forexample as a piano piece of the slow move-ment of what is known as the SlavonicString Quartet in E flat major, but later, in1890 he created a whole six-movementcycle for piano trio under the title Dumkas.The Polish Mazurek inspired him to createa virtuoso piece for violin with orchestra orpiano, and he used several dance types ofdifferent Slav nations in the 2nd series ofSlavonic Dances of 1886, including a fierily

36 | history | czech music 1 | 2006

spectacular Serbian Kolo (wheel dance).For Dvořák it was of course self-evident thathis own nation, the Czechs, were part of thegreat Slav family, and so at this point hemade much more frequent use of impulsesfrom Czech musical folklore. This was thesource of seven out of the eight SlavonicDances of the 1st series. In 1879, when hisenthusiasm for all things Slav was at itsheight, he composed the Czech Suite, anda year later the Symphony no. 6 in D major,which has a distinctively Czech charactercrowned by the furiant instead of the scher-zo movement – the first such substitution forthe traditional scherzo or minuet from theabundant legacy of national dances in majorworld classical music. At this period he alsoemployed furiant-style movement in thefinale of the Concerto for Violin andOrchestra in A minor, and we find stronglyCzech folk moments in such entirely non-programme and pure, uncharacterisedmusic as the String Quartet in C major andothers. The third musical source behindDvořák’s Slavism was not derived from anyfolklore but was more intellectual. Pan-Slavidentity of the Romantic epoch was con-ceived – just like Wagner’s Germanism, thenational awareness of the Scandinaviancountries as Bedřich Smetana had encoun-tered it in Sweden, and mutatis mutandis ofall European countries – as having its rootsin a supposed ancient common origin of allSlavs and a historical-mythical background,eagerly elaborated in authentic or lessauthentic tales of heroes, epic battles anderotic episodes sung by bards and rhap-sodists and entering the historical memoryof nations. Naturally Dvořák had plenty ofmodels and material for this kind of conceptof Slavhood, and relating them as closely ashe did to his Czech patriotism, Smetana’sVyšehrad was clearly the closest. Dvořák’sfirst creative work of this kind consisted ofthe three Slavonic Rhapsodies, and thecontext to which we have just alludedmakes sense of the way Dvořák draws onthe symphonic poem Vyšehrad in the harpintroduction of the Slavonic Rhapsody no. 2in A flat major, although unfortunately thisreference annoyed Bedřich Smetana. Thesource of inspiration for the Legends lay inthe generalisation of similar ideas. Thesewere not legends in the original sense of theterm, i.e. stories from the lives of saints, buta matter of the epic atmosphere of deedsfrom the Slavonic past. Dvořák employedSlavonic historicism in his own way in anopera on an episode from Russian history,Dimitrij, and a few years later he producedan even more distinctive, striking vision ofSlav pagan deities and their defeat byChristianity in the oratorio St Ludmila.

In this context, in his non-programmemusic, the 1st movement of his Concertofor Violin and Orchestra in A minor is partic-ularly remarkable; here repeated quasicadence passages of the solo violin overa sequence of D minor – E major triadssound like archaic phrygian cadences(although in the framework of the overall

harmonic plan they may also be related tothe key of A minor as a sequence of sub-dominants and dominants, with the tonic notuttered for a long time); together with thepredominance of “rhapsodic” scoring thismusic likewise creates an image that can betaken as mythic narration.

It is no accident that when looking at thetechniques adopted by Dvořák in his firstflush of Slavonic enthusiasm I have oftenmentioned pieces actually written in the fol-lowing decade. This is because the compos-er’s Slavism soon flowed, via numerous rich-ly inventive works, into the broad current ofhis output of the 1880s. These were com-positions that drew on the whole range ofinspirations mentioned above including Slav-ism, Czech national ideology and folk culture,but they also present some distinctively newapproaches and situations in whole groupsof pieces. One instance is the strikingepisode in the years 1883–85, when Dvořákmainly wrote music full of struggle and tragicexaltation. The episode begins with the PianoTrio in F minor, and a recently discoveredsketch for the piece shows the composer’sstrenuous efforts to achieve dramatic upliftof this kind. It then continues in the darklycombative symphonic image of the Hussitedramatic overture and the Symphony No. 7in D minor, known as “The Great”, which isstructured around conflict and contrast toa greater extent than any other Dvořák sym-phony. The longest piece that Dvořák wroteduring this episode is the balladic cantatathe The Spectre’s Bride, based on the poemby Karel Jaromír Erben.

Another comparably compact develop-mental episode in the 1880s was the waveof folk-based and sometimes SmetanianCzech sentiment in his output of roughly1887–91. This had been prefigured in theearlier 1880s by the orchestral prelude Můjdomov [My Homeland] – music commis-sioned for Josef Kajetán Tyl’s play, but at this

point it was an isolated instance. Now theinterest burgeoned in the song cycleV národním tónu [In a Folk Tone], which inte-grated entire folksongs into larger wholesand was thus a highly individual developmentof the approach taken by Pavel JosefKřížkovský in his choral works. Perhaps themost beautiful crystallisation of this particu-lar lyrical sensibility, inspired by Czech folkculture but also distinctively personal, is theSymphony no. 8 in G major where, in the firstmovement Dvořák makes space for the fullexploitation of a broadly conceived introduc-tory lyrical theme by choosing an unusual for-mal design for the whole work. We hardlyneed emphasise that the composer himselfdid not write the subtitle English on thescore, and that it refers not to the musicalcontent of the piece but to the circumstancesin which it was performed. Another importantwork in this phase was the opera, TheJacobin where the story set in a small Czechtown lends itself to a Smetana-style Czechfolk treatment, and in V Přírodě [AmidNature], from the free cycle of symphonicovertures Příroda, život a láska [Nature, Lifeand Love]. Just one major piece, the dark andinwardly contemplative Requiem of 1890,deviates from the overall mood of tranquillityand ease.

This generally radiantly melodious moodwas interrupted – or perhaps more accurate-ly complicated, since it was to reappear insubsequent works – by Dvořák’s prepara-tions for travel and his period in America in1892 to 95. Dvořák was compelled to side-line his earlier creative plans and focus oncantatas for the celebrations of the 400thanniversary of Columbus’s discovery ofAmerica. The Americans were late sendingthe texts and so Dvořák began to work ona neutral celebratory Te Deum, but JosephRodman Drake’s words for the cantata TheAmerican Flag arrived before the Te Deumhad taken even fragmentary form. In the end

czech music 1 | 2006 | history | 37

Nelahozeves (by Vilém Randler, mid-19th century)

Dvořák was to finish both pieces, but onlythe Te Deum was ready in time for the cele-brations. It was a piece based on the style ofhis earlier sacred works, while the text on thesymbolism of the American Flag and pane-gyric on the individual weapons of the Amer-ican army failed to engage him at any deeplevel. The music he wrote for it bears all theexternal marks of his techniques as a com-poser, but is lifeless: it has rarely been playedand arouses no enthusiasm. Dvořák’s imagi-native genius depended on his interior feel-ings, and needed the heat of passionateengagement to ignite it. In America, it wasnot until Antonín Dvořák discovered themusic of the ethnic minorities through hisblack students, and identified with the prob-lems of the African Americans and NativeAmericans because they reminded him of thetroubles of his own people, that this imagina-tive fire blazed up to the full. The inspirationthat he took from negro spiritual and nativeAmerican melody in pieces from the Sym-phony No. 9 in E minor “From the NewWorld” to the Concerto for Cello andOrchestra in B minor is very well known. Onthe other hand, today we are often remindedthat Dvořák refused the honour of beingdeclared the founder of American nationalmusic and considered the Americanisms inhis music to be simply the fruits of a Czechcomposer’s view of America. In any case,however, what is perceptible and easily ana-lytically demonstrated is that the symbiosisand interplay of Czech and American impuls-es in these works represents real synthesis,not just charming juxtaposition. The famousmelody at the beginning and end of the Lar-go in the New World Symphony is undoubt-edly based on negro spiritual pentatonics, ashas been pointed out many times, but in themiddle section, the radiant climax is conspic-uously and movingly Czech (using a melodicprogression VIII-VII-VI on a subdominant har-mony – a device we find in numerous Czechfolksongs). The Scherzo movement has a dis-tinctively Red Indian dance at the beginningand end, but the trio shines with a recollec-tion of the homeland, Czech intonation anda trill passage associated by tradition withDvořák’s beloved doves at Vysoká. And totake a third example: the secondary theme ofthe 1st Movement of the Concerto in Bminor, carried in the orchestral exposition bythe French horn and in the second, solo expo-sition by the cello, is structured almost entire-ly out of the material of Gospel pentatonic,but the line in the basic melodic segmentscorresponds to the melodic types of Czechlyrical folksongs. Furthermore, the nostalgiccharge of the music is literally raised bya striking deviation from pentatonic: the chro-matic passing note of raised dominant fifthevokes the harmonic nexus of the “Smetanadominant”, particularly familiar fromSmetana’s patriotic and nature lyrics. Thisduality in the handling of American andCzech musical inspirations and their synthe-sis can also be found in Biblical Songs, TheSonatina for Violin and Piano in G major, TheString Quartet in F major known as the

“American” and other pieces. The last piecethat Dvořák composed in America, the Con-certo for Cello and Orchestra in B minoralready has predominantly Czech intonation,and includes a quotation and variations ofthe melody of the song Kéž duch můj sámfrom his own cycle Cypress Trees. Dvořákused the quotation in the 2nd and 3rd move-ments of the work as a memory of his ownfirst – unrequited – love, later his sister-in-law Josefina Kounicová née Čermáková,whose own life was drawing to a close; thisof course was a source of inspiration relatingentirely to home.

The two longest and most famous worksof Dvořák’s American creative phase alsorepresented a significant moment in terms ofthe composer’s relationship to the conceptof programme music, as mentioned earlier.These two pieces are not in fact programmemusic in the true sense of the word. The char-acterising subtitle From the New World wasone that the composer did not add to his sym-phony until shortly before the premiere, and itsimply indicates the important role played inthe piece by the composer’s experiences andimpressions from America. Dvořák neveroffered a literary commentary on his works,and for preceding and subsequent pieceslinked to non-musical themes or inspirationschose titles informative enough to forestallthe need for any further explanation (Můjdomov [My Homeland], Husitská [The Hus-site], V přírodě [Amid Nature], Othello,Karneval [Carnival] and then SymphonicPoems on Ballads from Erben’s Bouquet).Here the situation was different in the senseeven less specific information was provided,and the composer never offered any addi-tional explanation even when the workbecame exceptionally famous (as Smetanadid in the case of My Homeland, subse-quently producing a “Short Sketch of theContent of the Symphonic Poems”). In thecircumstances, traditions emanating frompeople close to Dvořák, and musicologicalscholarship based partly on knowledge ofsketches and other sources, soon linkeda number of passages with particular experi-ences that the composer had in America, orwith the specific themes of the pieces forwhich parts of the music had originally beendestined before being incorporated into thesymphony. The public and a broad circle ofexperts and lovers of Dvořák’s music thencame to accept these associations asauthentic. This endowed the work with a kindof programme character, indirect and relat-ing only to certain parts. However unconven-tional, this was not completely unknown inmusical history, i.e. programmatic elementsnot declared authentic by the composer, butgenerally considered to be genuine. First andforemost, the introduction to the 1st Move-ment of the work, where the principal themeappears first in hints and then emerges out ofthe swelling current of the music to be fullyexpressed and developed at the beginningof the exposition, is held to depict Dvořák’simpressions at the end of his passage acrossthe Atlantic. This means the way the first out-

lines of the city of New York take shapeagainst the twilight and mist, and the realAmerica comes into view, to be celebrated inthe rest of the movement. The composer tookthe second and third movement of the sym-phony from a sketch he had written for anopera on a Native American theme witha libretto based on Longfellow’s The Song ofHiawatha. In the end he abandoned the ideaof composing the opera and used his sketchfor two scenes as a basis for the middlemovements of the symphony. The Largo hadinitially been conceived for a scene of an Indi-an burial, and the first and last sections of theScherzo movement Molto vivace for an Indi-an ceremonial dance. Lastly, as has beenindicated, the passage with trills of stringsand woodwinds is often associated withDvořák’s recollection of the cooing of thedoves he had left at home in Vysoká.

In the Cello Concerto, to which the com-poser did not give even the vaguest charac-terising title, we have also already mentionedpassages linked to the memory of Josefina.From the point of view of programme inter-pretation, we might attach a certain sublimi-nal meaning, a characterisation of expressivepurpose, to Dvořák’s words in a letter to thepublisher Simrock of the 3rd of October1895: “The finale ends gradually witha diminuendo like breath – with reminis-cences of the first and last movement, thesolo part drops as far as pp – then a dynam-ic surge and the orchestra takes up the lastbars and produces a stormy finish.”

After his return from America Dvořákembarked on the last creative phase of hiscareer. In the string quartets in A flat Majorand G Major he seems to be returning to hispre-American predominantly Czech musicalpoetics, which he then takes further in workson rural folk themes, sometimes of a fairytalekind. He wrote four symphonic poems on bal-lads from Karel Jaromír Erben’s collectionKytice – Bouquet. Here he approached therelationship between the music and the liter-ary programme in quite an unusual way. Theinventor of the symphonic poem, Franz Liszt,had seen it primarily as a matter of generalreflections on the theme (before he chosethe technical term symphonic poem, he hadcalled such pieces philosophical epics).Bedřich Smetana in My Country had lookedfor the kind of subject that could be clearlyand effectively expressed in music, and thiswas why he adopted an existing story as theprogramme subject for only one of his sixsymphonic poems (Šárka) and invented hisown programme for the five others. In con-trast to both, Dvořák’s approach was pre-cisely to follow and musically depict theactions and situations evoked in the poemsin the order described by the poems, and thisnaturally involved the risk that the musicwould be too dependent on the literary mod-el, and would lack sufficient cohesive struc-ture of its own. In many passages he formu-lated the musical idea directly to correspondwith the declamation of some of Erben’s vers-es or extracts from them: for example in theVodník [Water Goblin]: “sviť, sviť, sviť, ať mi

38 | history | czech music 1 | 2006

The Prague Conservatory ranks among the oldest musicschools of this type in Europe. It was established in 1808and began its regular instructional program focused onprofessional education of orchestral players in 1811. Duringthe more than 190 years of its existence the Conservatoryhas educated a host of instrumentalists, singers,composers, and conductors. The post of director hasalways been held by renowned musicians, includingAntonín Dvořák who led the school from 1901 to 1904.Presently the Prague Conservatory is the largest institutionfor musical education in the Czech Republic, trainingprofessional artists both in music and in theatrical arts. Ithas an enrollment of some 550 Czech and 50 foreignstudents, taught by a faculty of 220 instructors who areoften outstanding performing artists and leadingeducators. Renowned teachers from abroad are invited togive master classes and seminars. The Conservatory has asymphonic orchestra, a chamber orchestra, string andwind orchestras, many chamber ensembles, and a theatrecompany. Each year it presents approximately 250concerts (orchestral, chamber and graduate recitals) plusabout 35 theatrical performances. The school is housed inthree locations in the center of the city and is characterizedby a unique atmosphere of creativity, enhanced by the richmusical life of the Czech capital, Prague - the city of

Smetana, Dvořák, Janáček, and Martinů, and the site of theannual Prague Spring Music Festival among other majormusical events.

Foreign students may choose to study any subject offeredwithin special courses (paid, taught in a foreign language).Applicants are admitted entirely on the basis of passing theentrance examinations which can be completed bysending an audio or audio-video recording. The academicyear at the Prague Conservatory begins on September 1and ends on June 30. Foreign applicants may also enrollduring the course of the academic year. Special coursesprogram can be arranged for periods ranging from fivemonths (one semester) to several years. Upon completingthe course graduates receive a certificate giving thesubject, duration, and scope of studies, the name of thehead instructor in their major, and a brief description ofthe student's academic performance.

Addresses: Pražská konzervatoř/The Prague ConservatoryNa Rejdišti 1110 00 Prague 1Czech Republic

www.prgcons.cz; e-mail: conserv@prgcons.cz; fax (+420) 222 326 406

THE PRAGUE CONSERVATORY OFFERS MUSIC COURSES

in all orchestra instruments, piano, organ, guitar, accordion, composition and conducting.

šije niť” [“shine, shine, shine, to sew me mythread”], “půjdu matičko k jezeru, šátečkysobě vyperu” [“I’ll go to the lake, mother, tolaunder my clothes”] and “Nevesely truchlivyjsou ty vodní kraje, kde si v trávě podleknínem rybka s rybkou hraje” [Cheerless,mournful are these watery regions, wherefish plays with fish in the green under thelilies”]. Polednice [The Noon Witch] hasa repeated menacing motif based on theemphatic declamation “polednice”, and Zlatýkolovrat [The Golden Spinning Wheel] startswith a theme based on the verses “Okololesa pole lán, hoj jede, jede z lesa pán”[“Around the woods the fields, look thererides a lord out of the wood”] and so on.Some critics and writers on Dvořák have not-ed the disadvantage of this approach andseen shortcomings in the work, but the sym-phonic poems live on, and especially inBohemia they remain very popular as inge-nious and instructive musical translations ofwhat are very well-known poems by Erben.

Dvořák went further and deeper in thisdirection in his fairytale operas Kate and theDevil and Rusalka. Here we see the climac-tic outpouring of his Czech folk-inspiredmusical poetics and feeling for rural settings,but also his highly developed imaginationwhen it came to striking musical characteri-sation of all kinds of dramatic situations andhuman types. Recent attempts to reviveDvořák’s early operas have really only con-firmed that in his youth he lacked dramatic

nerve, but his perseverance bore fruit andDimitrij, which he several times reworked,represented significant progress, and theupward curve continued with The Jacobineand beyond it. The two fairytale operas fromthe turn of the century, in which he was alsoworking with excellent and dramaticallyeffective librettos, are perfect as theatre aswell as music. Unfortunately this cannot besaid of his last opera Armida, where he failedto overcome the drawbacks of Jaroslav Vrch-lický’s romantically schematic libretto. It wasan opera for which he created superb choralscenes and individual arias, and it shows aninteresting conception of the oriental colourof the setting, but overall it is not persuasivemusical drama.

In his last years Dvořák suffered from anaffliction previously unknown to him –a shortage of ideas and perhaps even a dis-taste for composing. This was why somemajor creative plans, for example for two full-length biblical oratorios, were never realised.Another reason for his lack of drive may havebeen insecurity and dissatisfaction withsome of the new trends in world composi-tion. He was particularly unnerved by someof Richard Strauss’s pieces and spoke ofthem pessimistically, saying that it was theend of music and that music was going toperish in misery. No doubt a certain depres-sion at his own approaching end colouredhis opinions, but it was a very peculiar atti-tude, at odds with Dvořák’s own lifelong

search for new musical worlds and creativecapacity to make them his own.

In conclusion we should mention somesources of Dvořák’s music that are not a mat-ter of chronological stages but informed hiswhole output. In first place we should empha-sise his innovative spirit as a composer, andhis determination to enrich his work stylisti-cally with impulses from elsewhere that heoften sought out on his own initiative. Themajor example here is the modality alreadymentioned. It was something that he usedwith explicit reference to the musical idiom ofthe distant past, especially in quotations fromas it were “musical historical monuments”,such as the chorales Kdož jste boží bojovní-ci [For that we are God’s Warriors] in theHussite Overture or Hospodine pomiluj ny[Lord Have Mercy upon Us] in St Ludmila,but in his Moravian and Slav period it had thebeneficial effect of allowing him to break outof the closed circle of Baroque-Classical-Romantic tonality. As early as the1980s some of his pieces use other tech-niques that also clearly go beyond the tradi-tional circle of melodic and harmonic imagi-nation. Thus the expanded tonality in theorchestral introduction to St Ludmilaappears not as a folklore element, but asa way of achieving unusual musical situationswith the effect of notably weakening of tonal-ity. And at the climax of the scene of paganidolatry in the first part, in the double choralfugue Vše láme se a bortí [Everything is

40 | history | czech music 1 | 2006

breaking and Collapsing], the harmonic pro-gression is already unclassifiable in terms oftonality. The fugue develops in the harmonyof concurrently expounded themes out ofa harmonic progression that corresponds toSmetana’s leitmotif for Rarach in the Devil’sWall, i.e. from a perfectly non-tonal sequenceof three different augmented triads. Probablywe will never know whether this borrowingwas deliberate or unconscious, but it showsthat Dvořák was well acquainted with theinnovative direction of Smetana’s last works.Another example of this kind of peculiar,tonality-undermining approach is the intro-ductory theme to the Requiem, based on sur-rounding the first tone by minor seconds fromabove and below. In the 1890s such har-monic or melodic devices, which correspondto the efforts of contemporary composersseeking to expand tonality and weaken tonecentrality, became more frequent in Dvořák’smusic. They include the tonally ambiguousmodulation in the introduction to the Largo inthe Symphony no. 9 “From the New World”,variations on which continue to permeate themovement with one variation returning in thefinale. Other instances may be found in theevocative depiction of the creeping deathlyspectre in The Noon Witch and the passageusing an incomplete whole-tone scale (i.e.whole-tone pentatonic) in the hell scene fromThe Devil and Kate, the sequences of majortriads in a tritone relation (we find an isolateduse of these much earlier in the cantataPsalm 149 from the end of the 1870s) andthe techniques close to what is known asTristan chord in Rusalka.

All these techniques enlivened Dvořák’smusical idiom and gave a peculiar characterto some key passages in the compositionsmentioned. They are not frequent enough,however, to have fundamentally changed thebasis of Dvořák’s style. It was only modalityof folklore or historical origin, and nothingmore recent, that can be said to have doneso. And of course in Dvořák’s music up to hislast pieces all this worked alongside or indirect symbiosis with romantic tonal struc-tures including techniques as overworked byhis immediate predecessors and contempo-raries as diminished sevenths or theirsequences. Emancipation from such ties tothe musical language of the past, the sys-tematic use of a significantly expanded tonal-ity or even a challenge to tonality as the mainelement in the structure of composition wasto be achieved only in the mature work of themost important innovators of the generationof Dvořák’s pupils.

Dvořák’s sacred music forms a sepa-rate chapter in his output. Surprisingly it wasnot based on the older tradition of churchmusic and neither was it indebted to the new-er trends marked out in Roman Catholic litur-gical music by the “Witt Reform” or Cecilian-ism. Dvořák addressed and glorified his Godfreely, in the musical idiom peculiar to him. Tothe techniques characteristic of the differentstages of his development as a secular com-poser he added a few italianisms in melod-ics, most frequently akin to Verdi – particu-larly in the Stabat mater, but also in theRequiem and the Te Deum, but no longerwhen it came to the Mass in D major and not

at all in the Biblical Songs, which in musicalidiom belong in full to the American periodand the broader framework of Dvořák’ highlyindividual lyrical musical language. We finda certain Italianism outside his sacred musicin Rusalka: some prominent vocal parts andmost strikingly the heroine aria Měsíčku nanebi hlubokém [Moon in the Deep Sky],including stylisation and the instrumentationof the orchestral accompaniment, have affini-ties with the contemporary idiom of Italianverism. This is something that sets Dvořák –like the isolated examples of expanded andweakened tonality – in the wider context ofthe Secession.

We have, it seems, covered all the mostimportant sources of Dvořák’s music. Theywere many, and show Antonín Dvořák to havebeen an extremely sensitive and receptivecomposer, closely following various trends inmusic, and open to all kinds of stimuli andnew discoveries. This is not, however, themost important point, since what is soadmirable is how he managed not just toabsorb it all, but perfectly and unerringly torecast it into his own consistently individualand marvellously poetic and imaginativelyrich musical language.

YOUNG BLOODThe Music of Young Czech Composers

Michal Nejtek: Nuberg 05, Miroslav Srnka: StringQuartet no. 3, Ondřej Adámek: Strange Night in Day-light, Miloš Orson Štědroň: Prosper and Gamble,Markéta Dvořáková: Waters, Petr Bakla: Wind Quin-tet, Martin Hybler: Echoes of Trees and Rocks, MarkoIvanovič: Rock’s Goin’ On?

The Czech Music Information Centre has just pub-lished the CD Young Blood as a representative sam-pler of the work of the young generation of Czech com-posers. We are offering this CD free of charge to allexisting and new subscribers to the magazineCzech Music. If you are interested in the CD, pleasesend us your request at info@czech-music.net or atthe postal address HIS o.p.s, Besední 3, 118 00Prague 1 Czech Republic, and we shall be plesed tosend you the CD. It comes with a booklet in English.

announcement

revie

ws

Due Boemi di Praga

Due Boemi di Praga Yesterday and Today

(·tûdroÀ, Parsch, Blatn˘)

Due Boemi di Praga: Josef Horák – bass clarinet,Emma Kovárnová – piano; Václav Kunt – flute,Rudolf ·Èastn˘ and Jifií Bene‰ – viola, BedfiichHavlík – violoncello, Franti‰ek Vlk – percussion,The Jazz Orchestra of Czechoslovak RadioPrague, Lubomír Mátl, Pavel Blatn˘ – conduc-tors. Production: not stated. Text: Czech, Eng., Ger.Recorded: Czech Radio Prague, Czech Radio Brno.Released: 2005. TT: 62:38. 1 CD 2000 Forza, s.r.o.,Brno 859406296002.

revie

ws

Antonín Dvofiák

Concerto in B minor for Cello and Orchestra op. 104

Dumkas op. 90

Jean-Guihen Queyras – cello, Isabelle Faust –violin, Alexander Melnikov – piano, ThePrague Chamber Philharmonic, JifiíBûlohlávek. Production: Martin Sauer, PhilippKnop. Text: Fr., Eng., Ger. Recorded: 8,12/2004.Released: 2005. TT: 69:43. 1 CD Harmonia mun-di HMC 901867 (distribution Classic).

czech music 1 | 2006 | history | 35

in cooperation with the magazine

revie

ws

This CD of the legendary duo bass clarinettist Josef Horák and pianist Emma Kovárnová, focuses on pieces written

specially for them over the almost forty years of the partnership. Although the choice of composers has been further

narrowed down to figures linked to Brno, Miloš Štědroň, Arnošt Parsch and Pavel Blatný, the range of compositional

perspectives is very wide and colourful. Štědroň’s timbre Meditation (1963) for solo bass clarinet is paradoxically more

modern than Intrada e Sarabande triste (1999) which reflects the composer’s long term interest in inspiration from

Renaissance and Baroque music. But be that as at it may, both pieces have the stamp of originality. The first is a gift to

the art of the “Paganini of the bass clarinet” and the second combines the historical approach with the contemporary

(there are several later versions and arrangements of this piece including an orchestral version – see for example the

composer’s profile CD Malý koncert pro ovci – A Little Concert for Sheep). Arnošt Parsch offers a different view of the

combination of bass clarinet and piano in For Josef Horák. Here a tape is added to the two acoustic instruments, in

places creating minimalist passages – entirely in the spirit of the time (1969). Parsch exploits various folksong phe-

nomena in “…ausufernd” as does Štědroň (Aksaky). Pavel Blatný’s pieces involve another two different angles. His

trio of “hits” In E, In A, In D is built on the traditional melodic-harmonic system, which in his text commentary he defines

as a matter of the “post-modern” spirit of the 1980s and 1990s. His Uno pezzo per Due (Boemi) is a fusion of jazz

and classical (the so called Third Current). Blatný’s pieces give the CD a notable shot of melodic relief. It is pleasant to

see melody still being used in contemporary music, and in a way that doesn’t sound hackneyed. The choice of pieces

for Due Boemi di Praga here may be small in terms of quantity, but it is nonetheless a varied genre cross-section of

the compositions written specially for the duo or inspired by them over the years.

TOMÁŠ KUČERA

The decision to record one of the most important works in international repertoire always involves a certain risk.

Dvořák’s second Cello Concerto in B minor op. 104 already exists in a number of grand recordings from the Czech

Philharmonic (for example with Georg Szell, Václav Talich or Václav Neumann), making it very difficult for anyone to

come up with a different interpretation that bears comparison. And the danger is even greater when orchestra and

soloist belong to the young generation that may not yet be mature enough to understand the full spiritual depth of one

of Dvořák’s crowning works. It is essential to be aware that the composer wrote his Concerto in B minor at a time

when he was greatly looking forward to returning home after his long stay in America, but also realised that he would

never return to the country in which he had lived for three years. Moreover, in Bohemia his first love Josefina Dušková

née Čermáková was dying, and the overtones of the funeral march and adaptation and melodic quotation of Josefína’s

favourite song “Kéž duch můj sám” are definitely not just imaginative elements designed to put an extra emotive stamp

on the piece.

The Prague Chamber Philharmonic with Jiří Bělohlávek plays the work with great precision and polish, and reliably

partners the subtle and chiselled performance by the French cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras . There is no doubt that the

soloist understands Dvořák and offers a very persuasive interpretation in the emotionally highly charged passages

(and elsewhere). I am not, however, completely sure if the two partners used the same note edition. Keeping my eye

on the score edition published in 1955 by SNKLHU there seemed to me to be definite divergences between orches-

tral parts and the solo in the area of dynamics.

For the Piano Trio Dumkas op. 90 on this recording, on the other hand, I have only words of praise. The Russian pianist

Alexander Melnikov has a wonderful talent for listening and using this ability to draw from the instrument phrases that

do not just sound, but really speak. Together with the brilliant violinist Isabelle Faust all three performers unerringly

capture Dvořák’s wit, energy and sparkle and also the melancholy that is an inseparable part of this opus. Their

approach shows perfect professionalism and a luminous artistic concept.

TEREZA KIBICOVÁ

Last year the London Symphony Orchestra made a major dent in the Prague Spring Festival budget when it opened

the festival with Smetana’s My Homeland. If you heard the performance in Prague you now have the chance to com-

pare your feelings at the time with a recording released under the orchestra’s own label. (Incidentally, from the details

it emerges that the LSO had performed the cycle in London, which means that it “worked the piece up” in London,

“flew it over” to Prague, and then probably remedied problematic passages back at home). The Londoners coped with

the difficult and for them unaccustomed score, and coped at a top world professional level. In rehearsal Sir Colin Davis

was less interested in the composer’s literary commentary on the pieces than Harnoncourt, for example, and saw the

mythological connotations as a mere starting point. The fundamental matters for Davis are musical relationships, and

what might with a touch of exaggeration be called music as an absolute phenomenon. I even get the feeling that with

all respect he regarded the legendary Czech model, Rafael Kubelík, as an anti-model. But of course as a great musi-

cian nearing the end of his career he has a complete right to do so. The result is a technically quite exceptional project

(and remember that for the most part this is a live recording!) with full-blown, Berliozian colour, a wonderfully refined

sound culture but at the same time the capacity to astonish in places with its phrasing, dynamics, articulation and tec-

tonics. For our conservative ears it is a genuinely hard test. But thank you, Sir Colin, for recording My Country!

The interest shown by famous orchestras abroad is a good index of the international standing of our composers, and

which of their works are in world repertoire. One leading repertoire direction told me some time ago that in his view

the last world composer from Bohemia or Moravia was Martinů and in that sense we were today worse off than

Lithuania, Estonia or Hungary. But thanks among others to Davis, at least Smetana’s world reputation has been

Bedfiich Smetana

Má vlast – My Country

czech music 1 | 2006 | reviews | 41

42 | reviews | czech music 1 | 2006

Bedfiich Smetana

Piano Works

(Macbeth a ãarodûjnice [Macbeth and the Witches],Zvûdav˘ [Curious], Vidûní na plese [Vision at theBall], Bettina polka [Betty’s Polka], Concert Etude inC major, Concero Etude in G sharp minor op. 17 “Onthe Seashore”, Vzpomínky na âechy ve formû polek[Memories of Bohemia in the form of polkas] op. 12and 13, Fantazie na ãeské národní písnû [Fantasiaon the Czech National Songs])

Jitka âechová – piano. Production: Petr Vít. Text:Eng., Ger., Fr., Czech. Recorded: 6/2005,Rudolfinum Prague. Released: 2005. TT: 57:58.DDD. 1 CD Supraphon SU 3841-2.

revie

ws

London Symphony Orchestra, Sir Colin Davis.Production: James Mallinson. Text: Eng., Fr., Ger.Recorded: 10. – 15. 5. 2005, Barbican, London.Released: 2005. TT: 75:15. DDD. 1 CD LSO LiveLS00061 (distribution Euromusica).

strengthened. And just as an afterthought: do read the CD details at the top of this review carefully, especially the

catalogue number. At this moment the Czech Philharmonic is losing 61 points to the LSO. Having wasted the chance

to establish its own label, the Czech Philharmonic is never going to catch up on that sort of lead.

LUBOŠ STEHLÍK

So far only three Czech pianists have managed to record Smetana’s complete piano works. They are Věra Řepková,

Jan Novotný and more recently Ivan Klánský. The symbolic baton passed between generations is now being taken up

by Jitka Čechová, one of the most important contemporary interpreters of Smetana. The first CD in the Supraphon

Complete Piano Works of Smetana offers us Smetana’s work of the years 1858 – 1862, i.e. the Swedish period and

the period immediately following it. Here we have the chance to appreciate the pianistic art of Jitka Čechová in

supreme form. Her brilliant Lisztian technique adds an unusual lustre to Smetana’s virtuoso pieces and her mastery of

sound colour gives them the potency of great romantic paintings. Jitka Čechová treatment of agogics is fascinating.

All the time shifts from the most subtle tremors to the great swelling waves sound entirely natural and self-evident.

And underneath all her rubatos we feel a firm rhythm that never allows the music to lose strong contours. In the

dance pieces the ravishing rhythmic pulse often almost lifts us out of our chairs (Polka in E flat major from theMemories of Bohemia, op. 13), but on the other hand we have a chance to hear the metro-rhythmic shifts performed

with unexpected audacity (Polka in A minor from Memories of Bohemia op. 12). Dominating everything, however, is

a unique feeling for structure and gradation. The architecture of each individual work is so clear and strong that it

sounds – if feminists will forgive me – as if formed by a masculine hand. The solid and transparent structure is never

lost even in technically difficult passages, or places where the music flows in several concurrent layers, and even at

points where the heavy charge of emotion can seduce pianists into a diffuse outpouring. Smetana was excellent in

his feel for tectonics and in Jitka Čechová he has found a kindred spirit. And Jitka Čechová and Bedřich Smetana

have something else in common: an admirable vitality, which literally radiates from this recording. The high quality of

the CD is enhanced by the erudite accompanying text from Olga Mojžíšová and David Port’s distinctive photographs.

If this Smetana project continues as successfully as it has started, we have a lot to look forward to.

VĚROSLAV NĚMEC

Bohuslav Matěj Černohorský (1684 – 1742) is mentioned in nearly every book on the history of Czech music but we

need to ask ourselves if we really know him well enough. This new recording with its erudite but readable biographi-

cal sketch in the CD booklet and the fresh musical interpretation offers answers. Perhaps the most Baroque of Czech

composers, persecuted and pampered by fate, evidently an excellent organ improviser, teacher, a Minorite much more

acclaimed abroad than at home, the author of the famous motet Laudetur Jesus Christus, the only one of his works to

be printed in his lifetime, and so forth, and so on – even in the few surviving works by Černohorský this multiplicity is

there to be found and appreciated.

The design of the CD sets the emotionally heightened offertorium Quare Domine irasceris, full of dissonance and

Baroque grandeur, and performed with great subjective engagement, at the very centre of the project. This is the

most inward part of the album, which contrasts with the preceding Marian pieces and the “small” vespers as well as

with the following virtuoso Regina coeli laetere for soprano, cello and basso continuo (solo Jana Chocholatá), which is

like scintillating fireworks, and with the final solemn Laudetur Jesus Christus. The two ensembles, the instrumental

Hipocondria Ensemble and the vocal Societas Incognitorum, are not working together here for the first time and are

drawing very effectively on their existing experience with the music of Bohemian masters of the 17th and 18th cen-

tury. They can derive strength from their commitment to obtaining a compact sound, unclichéd, full of inner strength

and pleasant despite some excessively authentic cacophonies. The organ pieces were recorded by Pavel Černý on

the valuable organ in the Church of the Holy Trinity in Smečno, which has acoustic possibilities that evoke the atmos-

phere of Černohorský’s own improvisations and closest followers.

DAGMAR ŠTEFANCOVÁ

Although Dvořák called St Ludmila an oratorio, many listeners cannot help feeling that it is a peculiar sacred opera or

musical epic. It is most certainly one of the most beautiful and with its strong message one of the most powerful of

19th-century works of sacred music. The last recording of the work came out in the 1960s (with the famous and to

this day unsurpassed Beno Blachut). After forty years the time was ripe for a new project that would reflect a contem-

porary view on this spiritually patriotic subject, in which the period known as pagan mingles with the advent of Chris-

tianity. A suitable moment came at the Prague Spring, where the work was performed twice, financial support was

found from the state project Czech Music 2004 with help from the Czech Savings Bank as the general partner of the

Prague Spring, the conductor Jiří Bělohlávek lent his great authority to the project as conductor and an interesting

group of soloists came together.

How did it all turn out? First, I shall begin at the end. The recording company, which has invested a remarkable

amount of work in the project, deserves all praise, and so in particular does the special recording team, for whom it

must have been far from easy to make the live recording and then edit it in the studio. (This is the first released Czech

Bohuslav Matûj âernohorsk˘

Laudetur Jesus Christus (selection from the work)

Pavel âern˘ – organ, Hipocondria Ensemble, JanHádek – Art. Dir. Societas Incognitorum, EduardToma‰tík – Art. Dir. Production: Vítûzslav Janda.

Recorded: 3/2004, 6/2005, Church of the Holy Trini-ty, Smeãno, 7/2005, Parish Church of the CzechBrethren, Nymburk. Released: 2005. TT: 49:10.DDD. 1 CD Arta F10139 (distribution 2HP Produc-tion).

revie

ws

revie

ws

czech music 1 | 2006 | reviews | 43

recording in SACD.) The choice of cover picture is witty: it is a painting showing St Ludmila teaching the young St

Wenceslas in Tetín, and the artist was Josef Václav Hellich, who has given his name to the street in the Lesser Town

where the Prague Spring management, a co-initiator of the project, has its offices.

Jiří Bělohlávek devoted a great deal of time and energy to the performance and this is evident both in the details and

the macrotectonic musical lines of force. The huge work is as it were carved out of a single block, while there is also

a mass of beautiful details both in the choral parts, which are the leading element of the work, and in the solo parts.

After quite a long interval we have a chance with this CD to judge the current quality of the Czech Philharmonic in

a recording on the domestic field, and to judge by the sound it is very good (I definitely had a better feeling about it

than at the Prague Spring concert in the hall). The Prague Philharmonic Choir is clearly the best and deserves the seal

of complete approval apart from one or two unimportant details. One way to recognise the very best soloists is by the

way that their live recordings are just as good as their studio recordings From this point of view the two female fingers

acquitted themselves particularly well. Eva Urbanová is an ideal Ludmila, and in the case of the Bernarda Fink with her

celebrated voice we can only regret that Dvořák was so stingy with the part of Svatava. Peter Mikuláš sings the part of

Ivan beautifly, very tenderly and appropriately sonorously, but I cannot help thinking that a profounder bass would have

been ideal here. As far as the tenors are concerned, Aleš Briscein sings pleasantly, did what he could and the result is

acceptable. Unfortunately the same cannot be said of Stanislav Matis, who has problems with intonation, rhythm and

consistency of enunciation, and sometimes struggles with colour. Given that this was an exceptional project unlikely to

be repeated again soon, and with the prospect of a recording, it is doubly a pity that an entirely balanced solo ensem-

ble was not put together. Nonetheless, the recording as a whole radiates a strong emotional charge and at the final

Hospodine, pomiluj ny [Lord Have Mercy on Us] you catch your breath.

LUBOŠ STEHLÍK

In terms of numbers of recordings, Dvořák’s New World Symphony must be near the top of any list of world classics.

This means we rightly expect any new recording to be in some way exceptional and to have some specific distinctive

features. Thanks to its title Dvořák’s Ninth Symphony is very popular with orchestras across the Atlantic, but it cannot

be said that this new recording fulfils our expectations. The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra has excellent qualities and

in terms of sound – the individual groups and the whole – fully lives up to the reputation of American orchestras for

the highest technical standards. It is not, however, in the top league, despite being headed by the charismatic Paavo

Järvi. Real punch in the strings is something that is more the domain of European orchestras, of course, but here we

honestly would have liked more of it. The orchestral sound is dense rather than lucid – perhaps partly due to the views

of the sound masters. Whatever the reason, it reduces our opportunity to savour the details and the internal structure

of the score, which is precisely the most interesting thing when it comes to Dvořák. Clearly very experienced with the

piece, the orchestra plays it with ease, and the concept is on the traditional side. With just a few pronounced differ-

ences (more or perhaps on the whole less interesting), it offers no surprises. Listening to the 1st Movement one can-

not but remember some of the ravishing creations of other orchestras including ours. The beautiful opposite pole to

the principal theme of the 1st Movement – the final theme – is presented extremely slowly, which means that instead

of melodiousness we develop a feeling of uncertainty! As it is well known, the repetition of the exposition does not

usually contribute much to the music, unless of course the interpretation is vigorous and full-blooded, which is not the

case here. The Largo on the other hand comes out better and stresses the Dvořák’s superb lyrical passages in an

almost ideal way, but we would have expected a little more cantilena from the cor anglais solo. Pleasant moments

await us in the central section: the theme supported by the famous pizzicatto of the double basses has a very beautiful

free leisurely tempo (in this respect Järvi shows affinity with Talich’s recording at the end of the 1940s!). The 3rd

Movement is pleasantly light and airy, and the wind instruments solos emerge well. The central part with its purely

Czech temperament is delightful in sound, although the casting of the second section of the theme in legato detracts

from the folk ease clearly intended by Dvořák. The main theme of the 4th movement has a very elegant accompani-

ment. One positive element is the attempt to get rid of a certain pose that has crept into performance of some of

these passages. In places where the listener is unambiguously appreciating the melodic line, the conductor also draws

attention to interesting subtleties in the accompaniment. The orchestra’s approach is deeply serious, and it plays with

care and precision, but even here there is a problem in a kind of inhibition of expression to the point of deliberate

asceticism. The construction of the brilliant Dvořákian climaxes before the end is only partially successful.

The best thing about this CD is the recording of Bohuslav Martinů’s 2nd Symphony. It is not just a happy pairing (both

the pieces on the album were written in America) but of a thoughtful artistic rendering of this lesser known score. It is

remarkable how well the orchestra and conductor have understood the composer’s world, his modern musical idiom in

which there is no lack of distinctive lyrical passages, presented here without sentimentality but definitely not abruptly

(2nd Movement), and distinctive Czech melody, here emphasised with a fidelity full of admiration! The technically

excellent orchestra masters the typically Martinůian passages in a way that is rhythmically pregnant and with masterly

overall grasp!

BOHUSLAV VÍTEK

On this re-edition of a recording by Collegium 1704, a Czech group specialising in the performance of Bohemian,

Moravian, Saxon, Bavarian and Austrian Baroque music, we find compositions written for the celebration of the

coronation of the Habsburg emperor Charles VI as King of Bohemia in Prague in 1723: Ouverture a 7 concertantiZWV 188 and Hipocondrie a 7 concertanti ZWV 187. It also includes Concerto a 8 concertanti ZWV 186 and Sim-phonie a 8 concertanti, compositions written for the orchestra of the Prague Count Hartig. In addition to four

orchestral pieces by Jan Dismas Zelenka, the title Composizioni per Orchestra also surprisingly hides the third of

his set of chamber sonatas, Sonate a due Hautbois et Basson con due bassi obligati ZWV 181.

Zelenka’s musical idiom combined the influences of German, Italian, French and Czech musical traditions. Present-

ed here by the Collegium 1704 Ensemble under the direction of the harpsichordist Václav Luks, it speaks to listen-

ers in bright musical colours that are not broken up even by the long reverberation that detracts from the concrete

revie

ws

Antonín Dvofiák

Symphony no. 9in E minor op. 95 “From the NewWorld”

Bohuslav MartinÛ

Symphony no. 2

Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Paavo Järvi.Production Robert Woods. Text: English. Record-ed: 2005. Released: 2005. TT: 68:16. DSD. 1 CDTelarc CD-80616 (distribution Classic).

Antonín Dvofiák

Svatá Ludmila – St Ludmila op. 71 B 144

Eva Urbanová, Bernarda Fink, Stanislav Matis,Ale‰ Briscein, Peter Mikulá‰, The Prague Phil-harmonic Choir, Bambini di Praga, The CzechPhilharmonic, Jifií Bûlohlávek. Production: Jifií·tilec. Text: Eng., Czech, Ger., Fr. Recorded: live,15. and 16. 5. 2004, IMF Prague Spring, SmetanaHall in the Municipal House. Released: 2005. 2SACD/DSD Arco Diva UP 0078-2 232 (distribu-tion Classic).

revie

ws

revie

ws

quality of the expression of individual instruments in the cause of enhancing the “churchiness” of the sound. As is

the custom with most ensembles specialising in Baroque music in our country, the continuo instruments, the theor-

bo and archlute, sound very cautious, especially in the fast passages. There just isn’t that proper “drive” on theorbos

in tutti, which anyone used to listening to recording of Baroque groups especially from Italy expects. But the situa-

tion is different in the slow movements and especially in parts of the Aria from the Ouverture a 7 concertanti ZWV

188. The lute and viol instruments together in the continuo create a soft quilt for the melodic instruments, embroi-

dered with the colourful thread of the spread chords; the final Folie from the Ouverture a 7 concertanti is truly

madly ravishing in its tempo and energy.

In the interpretation of the ensemble Concertus musicus Wien under the direction of Nikolaus Harnoncourt, the

Ouverture a 7 concertanti abounds in a playful lightness more definable masculine. The dotted rhythm in the open-

ing Grave is heavy but not protracted, while the articulations and dynamic contrasts are taken to extremes, unlike

Luks’s bubbling loftiness. Like that of Luks, Harnoncourt‘s recording is stirring, but the individual details and

nuances are easier to make out in the overall sound. The listener can compare this CD with another recording by

the ensemble Fondamento under the direction of Paul Dombrecht, which among its other qualities has a precision

of articulation. Its interpretation of all the pieces including Ouverture a 7 concertanti, Hipocondrie a 7 concertanti a

Simphonia a 8 concertanti is charmingly elegant, but here the conception of play on the basso continuo lute instru-

ments cannot compare with the performance of the archlute and theorbo players of Collegium 1704.

The booklet for the CD is thin, and leaves the listener searching for information about which instruments the

soloists are playing. Some people may even find it but of a puzzle to make out the real key of some of the pieces in

the confusion of different systems for indicating keys. But despite inconsistencies in the booklet the recording is a

worthy and good quality interpretation of the brilliant musical ideas of Zelenka and is definitely worth listening to.

ONDŘEJ JALŮVKA

The Czech soprano Martina Janková has been living and working for a decade in Switzerland where she has devel-

oped her talent and is making significant solo appearances on the international music scene. The cult of stars apart,

the young soprano has a very pleasant and very well controlled voice and her singing can be judged according to the

highest standards. If she has now decided to make a song recording, it is at a moment when she has achieved a matu-

rity that allows her to do so with complete persuasiveness. What is more to the point and more interesting, however, is

that she has done so not with the primary aim of presenting her virtuosity, but above all to convey specific spiritual val-

ues, her view of the world and reasons for the making this particular selection of music – it is something straight from

the soul. She has called the project “Voyage”. The songs are chosen and set in an order that in terms of theme and

expression creates a series from childhood to the search for maturity to the finding of meaning in life. Janková is out-

standing from the beginning, in the first song, Mussorgsky’s The Children’s Room: smiles, indignation, obstinacy, sighs,

secrecy and tearfulness follow each other in a pure uncomplicated register, and in a very realistic style the singer

employs hints of declamation, and an agogic and emotional mutability explored in minute detail. The little prayer is

delightful and so if the very accurately represented earnestness and sincere naivite of the child in the next song

cycles. Fine cantilenas are developed suggestively underscored by the piano in the nostalgic songs of Richard Strauss

(Mädchenblumen), and the listener is struck by the interesting darker timbre in Dvořák’s calm love poetry (Milostnépísně – Love Songs). If some limits are perceptible in her lucid and stylistically appropriate rendering, then this is only

in a few places with the highest tones, which sound thinner than the listener would expect, but this is not irritating. The

three songs by Othmar Schoeck are sung with a slightly melancholy seriousness and great empathy. Dvořák’s BiblicalSongs – at least some of them – in this version for high voice come across as more dynamic and tense, not so obvi-

ously inward, but still soulful, concentrated and with full awareness of their content. This album captures Janková at

a moment when she finds herself able to complement what has hitherto been mainly an operatic profile in a striking

way. The interpretation of lieder is something for which she is clearly predestined by the character and dimensions of

her voice, chamber discipline and internal emotional wealth.

PETR VEBER

The recital bringing together two legends – Rudolf Firkušný after decades of exile and rejection, and the truly national

figure Josef Suk, was one of the main magnets of the Prague Spring festival in 1992. Both musicians were in top

form, and with all the experience of their long careers behind them they had no interest in pretension or false senti-

ment and simply wanted to share the beauty of music with the people in the audience. From the Czech repertoire they

naturally chose the pair Dvořák – Janáček (Sonatina for Violin and Piano in G major op. 100 B 183 and Sonata forViolin and Piano), and from the wider European repertoire Beethoven – Brahms (Violin Sonata no. 10 in G major andViolin Sonata no. 3 in D minor op. 108), to which they gave romantic wings. The Suk conception is impressive, clearly

chiselled, yet broad and sweeping, and it arouses great respect. The Rudolfinum Steinway literally sung under the fin-

gers of Rudolf Firkušný. The absolute foundation of the recording is the melodic line, whether inward in the Sonatina

or expressive in the Janáček. For me it is the latter’s Sonata that is the high point of the recording, which by lucky

chance has been taken from the original video recording thanks to the firm BVA International. It is to the firm’s credit

that we have a record of an important moment in the history of the Prague Spring Festival since 1989.

LUBOŠ STEHLÍK

Jan Dismas Zelenka

Composizioni per Orchestra

Collegium 1704: Václav Luks - harpsichord, XaverJulien Laferriere – solo violin, Helena Zemanová,Markéta Zemancová – 1st violins, David Plantier, OliviaCenturioni – 2nd violins, Marie-Liesse Barau, VasiliosTsotsolis - viola, Petr Skalka - cello, Luděk Branný -contrabass, Ann-Kathrin Brüggenmann, - solo oboist,Elsa Frank - oboe, Eckhard Lenzing - bassoon, IgorParo - theorbo, Přemysl Vacek - archlute. Production:not stated. Text: Eng., Ger., Fr., Czech, Recorded: 9 -10/1994 studio Motorlet, Prague. Published: 2005.TT: 67:45. DDD. 1 CD Supraphon SU 3858 - 2. Alter-nativa: Paul Dombrecht/Passacaille Pas 9524, Niko-laus Harnoncourt/Teldec 6.42415.

Martina JankováVoyage

(Mussorgsky, R. Strauss, Schoeck, Dvofiák)

Martina Janková – soprano. Production: MartinaJanková, Malgorzata Albinska-Frank, Daniel Good-win. Text: Ger., French, Czech. Recorded: RadioStudio DRS Zürich, 9/2004. Released: 2005. TT:70:03. DDD. 1 CD Philips 476 301-9 Universal MusicSwitzerland.

44 | reviews | czech music 1 | 2006

revie

ws

revie

ws

Josef Suk, Rudolf Firku‰n˘

(Dvofiák, Janáãek, Brahms, Beethoven)

Josef Suk – violin, Rudolf Firku‰n˘ – piano. Pro-duction: Petr Vít. Text: Eng., Ger., Fr., Czech.Recorded, IMF Prague Spring, Dvofiák Hall of theRudolfinum, 18. 5. 1992. Released: 2005. TT: 70:24.DDD. 1 CD Supraphon SU 3857-2.

revie

ws

Anthology of Czech Music• selected works from the earliest times

to the present (CD 1–4)• folk music of Bohemia and Moravia (CD 5)• Czech-English brochure

www.musica.cz/antologieOrders:Hudební informační středisko [Music Information Centre], Besední 3, 118 00 Prague 1, tel: +420-257 312 422, e-mail: his@vol.cz

Price: € 22 + shipping

5 CD

An Anthology of Czech Music is the first project of itskind. It provides more than 6 hours of excellent record-ings of the most important works in Czech musicalhistoryfrom the Medieval period to the music of contemporaryclassical composers In addition, one of the five CDsoffers samples of Czech folk music in authentic form. The anthology also features a bilingual brochure with a wide-ranging and accessible account of the historyof Czech music written by leading experts on each partic-ular period. The text includes references to the specificsamples on the CDs and is lavishly illustrated. -

Founded in 1946 by Rafael KubelíkUnder the patronage of the President of the Czech Republic Václav KlausWith kind support of the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic and the City of Prague

Emanuel AxJIfií BûlohlávekPeter EötvösBernarda FinkEdita GruberovaKen-Ichiro KobayashiJifií KoutZdenûk MácalZubin MehtaShlomo MintzIvan MoravecCharles NeidichGarrick OhlssonMaxim ShostakovichChristian Tetzlaf f

Czech Philharmonic OrchestraEnsemble IntercontemporainJapan Philharmonic OrchestraPrague Radio Symphony OrchestraPrague Symphony OrchestraSlovak Philharmonic OrchestraSt. Petersburg Chamber SoloistsWiener Philharmonikerand many others

Detailed programme on www.festival.cz

Ticket sale:■ Ticketpro outlets: www.ticketpro.cz

Phone +420 296 329 999Fax +420 234 704 204

■ Prague Spring box office:Rudolfinum, nám. Jana Palacha, Prague 1Phone +420 227 059 234

19462006

61. mezinárodní hudební festival

praÏské jaroprague spring61st international music festival

11. kvûten – 3. ãerven 2006 11 may – 3 june 2006

General Partner Official Partner