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CZECH MUSIC

Theatre Institute

The publication was produced in cooperation with the Music Information Centreas a part of the program Czech Music 2004

Editor in chief: Lenka Dohnalová (Theatre Institute)Editorial team: L.Dohnalová, J. Bajgar, J. Bajgarová, J. Javůrek,H. Klabanová, J. Ludvová, A. Opekar, S. Santarová, I. Šmíd

Translation © 2004 by Anna BrysonCover © 2004 by Ditta Jiříčková

Book design © 2004 by Ondřej Sládek

© 2005 by Theatre Institute, Celetná 17, 110 00 Prague 1, Czech RepublicFirst printing

ISBN 80-7008-175-9

All rights of this publication reserved.

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CONTENTS

CALENDER 4

MIDDLE AGE (CA 850 - CA 1440) /Jaromír Černý 11

THE RENAISSANCE (CA 1440 - CA 1620) /Jaromír Černý 14

THE BAROQUE (CA 1620 - CA 1740) /Václav Kapsa 16

BOHEMIAN LANDS AND CLASSICAL STYLE IN MUSIC (CA 1740 - CA 1820) /Tomáš Slavický 20

FIRST HALF OF THE 19TH CENTURY /Jarmila Gabrielová 24

THE PERIOD AFTER 1860 /Jarmila Gabrielová 26

THE TURN OF THE CENTURY AND THE FIRST DECADES OF THE 20TH CENTURY /Jarmila Gabrielová 32

CZECH MUSIC FROM 1945 TO THE PRESENT /Tereza Havelková 38

THE HISTORY OF CZECH OPERA /Alena Jakubcová, Josef Herman 48

THE HISTORY OF CZECH CHAMBER ENSEMBLES /Jindřich Bajgar 59

THE HISTORY OF CZECH ORCHESTRAS AND CHOIRS /Lenka Dohnalová 62

FOLK MUSIC OF BOHEMIA AND MORAVIA /Matěj Kratochvíl 66

CZECH POPULAR MUSIC /Aleš Opekar 70

NON-PROFESSIONAL MUSICAL ACTIVITIES /Lenka Lázňovská 77

FESTIVALS IN CZECH REPUBLIC /Lenka Dohnalová 79

LINKS /Lenka Dohnalová 82

ca 800 emergence of a number of principalities on Bohemian territory and the beginnings of the Great Moravian state

863-885 the mission of Constantine and Methodius sent from Byzantium; they who create a Slav liturgy in Great Moravia

ca 880 the Czech prince Bořivoj (+perhaps 890/891) accepts Christianity

906 fall of Great Moravia

935 murder of Prince Wenceslas, later canonised; establishment of a unified Czech state in the reign of Boleslav I. (+972)

973 foundation of a bishopric in Prague

1019 definitive annexation of Moravia to Bohemia

1063 foundation of a bishopric in Olomouc

1212 The Golden Bull of Sicily confirms and adds to the rights and privileges of the Bohemiankings and the Kingdom of Bohemia, recognising the independence and sovereignty of the Bohemia state later to be advanced still further in 1356 by The Golden Bull of Charles IV.

1306 end of the rule of the Czech Přemyslid dynasty, which becomes extinct in the male line

1310-1437 rule of the Luxembourg dynasty in the Lands of the Bohemian Crown

1344 foundation of an archbishopric in Prague

1348 Charles IV. founds a university in Prague

1378-1417 schism in the church; from the mid-14th century criticism of church abuses (such as sale of “indulgences”) grows in the Bohemian Lands, together with an emphasis on inner piety; inspired by “heretical” teachings of the period (John Wycliff), reformist thinkers and preachers come to the forefront (M. Jan Hus preaches in the Bethlem Chapel from 1402, from 1414 there is a campaign for communion in both kinds for the laity (symbolised by the chalice)

1415 the Church Council of Constance rejects several articles of the teaching of Master Jan Hus, who is then burnt at the stake there on the 6th of July

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CALENDAR

1419-1434 the Hussite Revolution – open rebellion against the existing order of church and state: efforts to make the law of God the highest authority in the life of society (law, politics, morals). The Czechs take up arms to defend their faith (Head Jan Žižka and so on), but the movement is accompanied by ideological disputes between different fractions. The most moderate demands of the Hussites are finally expressed in the so-calledCompacts (e.g. wine at communion for the laity, the punishment of mortal sins)

1436 the Emperor Sigismund confirms the official co-existence of two parallel religions(Catholicism, Utraquism) in the Bohemian Lands

ca 1450 beginnings of printing (Johannes Gutenberg)

1457 establishment of the Unity of Czech Brethren

1458-1471 reign of George of Poděbrady

1471-1526 rule by the Jagiellons (Vladislav, +1516, Ludvík, +1526)

ca 1500 beginnings of printing of music notation (contemporary polyphony: O. dei Petrucci in Venice from 1501)

1517 public protest by Martin Luther (1483-1546), the beginning of the Protestant Reformation in Germany

1526-1918 rule of the Habsburg Dynasty in the Bohemian Lands

1556 the Prague Clementinum becomes the seat of a Jesuit College; beginnings of an increasingly strong Counter-Reformation in the Bohemian Lands

1583 the Emperor and King of Bohemia Rudolf II moves to Prague with his capella

1618-1648 the Thirty Years War; beginning of the Revolt of the Bohemian Estates

1620 defeat of the army of the Bohemian Estates at the Battle of the White Mountain, unconditional capitulation and the occupation of Prague

1621 condemnation of the leaders of the Estates rebellion, 27 of them are executed on Old Town Square; issue of decree banishing all non-Catholic priests from Bohemia

1624 the Catholic religion is declared the only permitted faith in Bohemia by imperial decree

1639 the Swedish armies invade Bohemia (theft of pictures from the royal collections)

1648 Peace of Westphalia, system of peace agreements ending the Thirty Years War. Fighting nevertheless continues, with treachery enabling the Swedish army to take Hradčany and the Lesser Town in Prague and to occupy them for more than a year, while the Old and New Towns resist Swedish attacks

1654 a decree of Ferdinand III establishes the Carolo-Ferdinandea University in Prague under the supervision of the Jesuits

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1679 plague hits the Bohemian Lands, coming from Vienna through Moravia and Southern Bohemia; the largest number of fatalities in 1680 are in Prague and its surroundings

1683 Siege of Vienna by the Turks, the Turkish army is repelled with the help of Polish and German divisions

1711 Charles VI. becomes Habsburg monarch and Holy Roman Emperor

1712 the first working steam engine is made in England

1713-1714 the last plague epidemic in Bohemia and Moravia

1723 coronation of the Austrian ruler Charles VI. as King of Bohemia, one of the works presented in Prague is J. J. Fux‘s Costanza e Fortezza, involving more than 200 musicians including not only the court cappella but local musicians and many virtuosi from all over Europe

1724 start of regular opera performances in Prague

1732 in Brno the Italian impressario Angelo Mingotti starts an opera company

1735 break-up of A. Denzio‘s Italian opera company in Prague, one of its last productions was the opera Praga nascente da Libussa e Primislao (Prague founded by Libuše and Přemysl) with Denzio‘s libretto; after two years another opera company directed by Santo Lapis starts to operate in Prague

1729 massive celebration of the canonisation of John of Nepomuk in Prague (a priest murdered in the reign of King Wenceslas IV., who became the most popular saint of the Bohemian Baroque)

1738 the theatre V Kotcích, the first Prague public theatre set up by the city, starts to operate

1740 Marie Teresie ascends the throne, start of the Wars of the Austrian Succession which severely hit the Bohemian Lands (1743 - Marie Teresie is crowned Queen of Bohemia in Prague)

1744 the Prussian army invades Bohemia and seizes Prague

1756 beginning of the Seven Years War. The conflict acquires global dimensions – the Prussiansinvade Saxony and Bohemia, the Anglo-French War moves to the sea and the colonies (Africa, India, Canada)

1771-72 two years of black frosts and catastrophic harvest failure in Bohemia, triggering a number of peasant revolts. Visit to Bohemia by Charles Burney, the author of an 18th-century musical travel journal

1773 dissolution of the Jesuit order (that had a great effect on the way of education, including musical)

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1774 introduction of compulsory schooling for children from 6 to 8 years old in state schools, designed to provide general education and with German as the teaching language in all cases

1780 death of Marie Teresie, Joseph II. becomes ruler of the Habsburg Monarchy and institutes major reforms: he abolishes serfdom and issues the „Patent of Toleration“ granting freedom of religion (1781). He dissolves, among other things, most monasteries (1782) and religious brotherhoods (1787)

1783 a spoken drama and opera theatre built at the expense of Count F. A. Nostitz-Rhieneck is opened in Prague, in its time the largest theatre in Central Europe (today the Estates Theatre)

1786 W. A. Mozart comes to Prague for the production of his opera The Marriage of Figaro (Le nozze di Figaro)

1787 Mozart‘s opera Don Giovanni, commissioned by the Prague impressario Bondini, is premiered with triumphant success at the Nostitz Theatre

1791 Leopold II. is crowned King of Bohemia. The Bohemian Estates (resp. Guardasoni) commission W. A. Mozart to compose his coronation opera on the libretto La clemenza di Tito. On the occasion of the coronation the first industrial exhibition on the Europeancontinent is organised

1805 The Napoleonic Wars spread to the Bohemian Lands, the “Battle of the Three Emperors” takes place by Slavkov (Austerlitz) in Moravia

1809 Joseph Dobrovský publishes the first Czech Grammar (in German) which standardises the grammar and codifies modern orthography

1811 a conservatory is established in Prague by a group of noblemen. It is the first institution of its kind in Central Europe

1813 defeat of Napoleon at Leipzig in the „Battle of the Nations“

1814-1815 The Congress of Vienna – which determines the nature of the European order after the Napoleonic Wars

1818 founding of the National Museum in Prague

1835-1848 the reign of Emperor Ferdinand V. (I), known as “the Beneficent”

1839 Joseph Jungmann (1773-1847) completes publication of his Czech-German Dictionary

1848-1849 the year of revolution and its consequences: the February Revolution in Paris; March movements in Vienna and in the Hungarian Lands; abolition of the corvée; the Slav Congress and Whitsun Disturbances in Prague; the October Revolution in Vienna; bloody suppression of the revolution in the Habsburg Lands (in Hungary), in Germany and in Italy

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1848-1916 reign of Emperor Franz Joseph I. in Austria (later Austria-Hungary)

1851-1861 period of Bachian Absolutism: hardening of the repressive machinery in Austria

1860 Franz Joseph I. issues the “October Diploma” (promising a constitution and civil liberties in the Austrian Monarchy)

1866 Austro-Prussian War; the Austrian and Bohemian army is defeated at Hradec Králové; Prussian occupation of Prague

1867 the Austrian-Hungarian settlement dualism, i.e. the effective division of the Habsburg Monarchy into two separate parts

1873 the World Exhibition in Vienna; major economic crisis in Austria-Hungary

1881 the new National Theatre in Prague burns down; it is rebuilt in two years

1882 division of Prague University into separate Czech and German institutions

1891 the Jubilee Exhibition in Prague (the second industrial exhibition after 100 years)

1895 the Ethnographic Exhibition in Prague (which strengthened the sense of the national identity of the Czech Lands as part of the Slav nations)

1914-1918 the First World War

1917 the October (Bolshevik) Revolution in Russia

1918 disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy; the establishment of the 1st Czechoslovak Republic (28th October)

1923 the start of regular broadcasts by Czechoslovak Radio in Prague

1933 A. Hitler rises to power in Germany

1937 death of the 1st Czechoslovak president T. G. Masaryk (*1850), E. Beneš becomes president (from 1935)

1938 annexation (Anschluss) of Austria to Germany; The Munich Agreement on the cession of the Czech borderlands to Germany, establishment of the so-called Second Czechoslovak Republic

1939 end of the Second Czechoslovak Republic with the creation of a Slovak state and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (under the administration of the German Reich)

1939-1945 Second World War: starts 1st Sept. 1939 with Hitler‘s attack on Poland

1942 assassination of the Reichsprotector of Bohemia and Moravia R. Heydrich, followed by brutal repression: massacre of the inhabitants of Lidice and Ležáky; beginning of the mass extermination of Jews – the policy of the „Final Solution“ (Endlösung) of the Jewish Question

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1945 capitulation of Germany and Japan, liberation of Czechoslovakia

1945-1946 transfer of the Sudeten Germans on the basis of the decrees issued by President E. Beneš

1946 the Communist Party wins the elections and the Communist leader K. Gottwald becomes Prime Minister

1947 under pressure from Moscow Czechoslovakia refuses the Marshall Plan

1948 the Communists seize power (February), manipulated elections, K. Gottwald becomes president

1950-1954 political show trials

1953 currency reform – rapid growth of cost of living, devaluation of savings, death of J. V. Stalin and K. Gottwald

1956 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party, a political leader N. S. Khruschev criticises the cult of personality of J. V. Stalin; the Soviet army is used in the bloody suppression of the anti-communist revolt in Hungary

1961 building of the Berlin Wall

1968 A. Dubček elected as leader of the Communist Party; Czechoslovkia embarks on a reform course; Invasion of Czechoslovakia by the armies of five member states of the Warsaw Pact(USSR, East Germany, Poland, Hungary and Bulgaria) (21st August)

1969 in protest against the Soviet occupation and the concessions by the Czechoslovak political leadership the student Jan Palach sets himself on fire in Wenceslas Square (January); GustavHusák becomes head of the Czechoslovak Communist Party – start of the so-called period of “normalisation” of internal conditions

1975 G. Husák elected President

1977 founding of “Charter 77”, a civic initiative in defence of civil rights and liberties

1985 M. Gorbachev becomes leader of Soviet Communist Party and initiates the reforms known as Perestroika

1989 mass demonstrations following the suppression of a student march on the 17th of November, beginning of the “Velvet Revolution”; A. Dubček becomes Chairman of the Czechoslovak Parliament, V. Havel is elected President (December)

1990 free elections (June)

1993 division of Czechoslovakia into the Czech and Slovak Republics (1st January)

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Historically Important Music Centers

MIDDLE AGES (CA 850 – CA 1440)

We have no substantial evidence of the state of musical culture and the forms of music and singing in the Bohemian Lands before the advent of Christianity. Christianity (and its liturgical, so-called Gregorian Chant) began to make real headway in the region in the later 9th century. In 863 Rastislav, the Prince of the Great Moravia, summoned the missionaries Constantine (Cyril) and Methodius from Byzantium, and they created gradually the Slavonic liturgy. Bořivoj, Prince of Bohemia, was also christened in Moravia in the 880s. After the Fall of Great Moravia (soon after 900), the Slavonic liturgy survived in pockets in Bohemia (the Monastery of Sázava, 1032-97), but by the Latin liturgy prevailed, and with it the canonical Gregorian Chant including all its forms and types known in Western Christendom. In the 13th and 14th centuries, the period of the great flowering of Gregorian Chant,some new compositions (tropes, hymns, sequences, rhymed offices) were created in the Bohemian Lands too, especially for the feasts of the patron saints of the land – Václav (Wenceslas), Vojtěch (Adalbert), Ludmila, Prokop. In 1363 the firstPrague Archbishop ARNOŠT OF PARDUBICE (+1364) ordered the compilation of a several-volume collection of the plainchant repertory of the archdiocese, which has unfortunately not survived in full. Composers of chants included a DOMASLAV (otherwise unknown) and Archbishop JAN OF JENŠTEJN (+1400). The Church tolerated the performance of several other genres in churches, e.g. sacred plays and certain songs in the vernacular. The song Hospodine, pomiluj ny [Lord, Have Mercy on us] was originally based on Old Slavonic text and may have been created even earlier than in the 10th /11th century, as is conventionally believed. (The Emperor Charles IV. included it in his coronation ceremony). Other well-known Bohemian (practically "state") songs were Svatý Václave, vévodo české země [Saint Wenceslas, Duke of the Czech Land] and later Bóh všemohúcí (i.e. Christ ist erstanden) [God Almighty] and Jezu Kriste, ščedrý kněže [Jesus Christ, Generous Prince]. Latin sacred songs (cantiones) were composed by both clerics and students. They spread to Central and North Europe at the end of the 14th century and were successively

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Medieval notationGradual of Arnošt of Pardubice, 1363

translated into Czech, German and Flemish. In addition to the simple strophic songs the genre included more refined and complex forms, such as lais (Germ. Leich, e.g. O, Maria, matko Božie [Oh Mary, Mother of God]). In the 14th century the Latin sacred Easter plays were also translated into Czech and performed (together with what were known as The Plaints of the Virgin Mary) at schools and during Corpus Christi processions, although the Church authorities tried repeatedly to ban the practice. Secular music and song undoubtedly existed from earliest times but up to the 13th century there are only obscure references to it in the chronicles and we lack reliable testimony and (musical) sources. In the 13th-14th century, a number of well-known German minnesingers were certainly present at the royal court of the last Přemyslids and then the Luxemburgs to sing the praises of the Bohemian kings (REINMAR VON ZWETTER and others), while others would certainly have been known here (NEIDHARDT VON REUENTHAL, HEINRICH VON MEISSEN, known as FRAUENLOB, HEINRICH VON MÜGELN etc.). The great French poet and composer GUILLAUME DE MACHAUT (1300-1377) was in the service of King John of Luxemburg, but it seems to be unrealistic to assume he had much effect on the Bohemian culture of the time. From the 14th century

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The Velislav’s Bible – Women playing musical instruments, mid-14th.cent.

we have records of Bohemian love songs of courtly type Dřěvo se listem odievá [Trees Are Putting on Leaves], the so-called Song of Záviš Jižť mne všě radost ostává [All My Joy is Waning], but in most cases the texts have survived without the music. Polyphony first entered the church liturgy as a tolerated ”decoration” of the monophonic Gregorian Chant. The improvised organum was probably cultivated in clerical communities (chapters, monasteries) from as early as the mid-12th century. We have written records of it from the end of the 13th century (Kyrie, Sanctus, hymns, tropes for the Benedicamus domino, lessons for the Offices and Mass), and some of these pieces were in use right up to the end of the 16th century! The more elaborate mensural (measured) polyphony likewise spread into the Bohemian Lands probably from the end of the 13th century and developed its own specific genres there on the (mediated) models of the music known as (French) ars antiqua – songs of conductus type and polytextual motets. In Europe beyond the Alps these were only two-part forms, and in the Bohemian Lands they were gradually ”modernised” – especially the motet - by the addition of further parts (from three to five), by transformations of rhythm and metrics and so forth. Otherwise, after the mid-14th century the influence of French ars nova (a new system of notation was explained ”to Prague students” in an anonymous treatise of 1369) reached the Bohemian Lands. Indeed, the cultivation of contemporary polyphony seems to have shifted to the sphere of the schools and Prague University, from which the musical theory of the time (including a kind of ”textbook of musical forms”), and knowledge of contemporary French music, to a lesser extent Italian music and home compositions (the isorythmic motet Ave coronata-Alma parens) spread to other Central European universities as well. Unfortunately this contemporary polyphonic music appears to have remained ”the property” of learned men, students and clerics and not to have attracted the interest and support of the court and nobility. The cantilena songs for which Machaut became famous in an aristocratic society that cultivated the courtly love lyric, continued to be bound to sacred texts in Bohemia. The fifteen-year HUSSITE PERIOD (1419-34) had a serious impact on musical culture in the Bohemian Lands, involving as it did the overthrow of church institutions (the dissolution of many monasteries, the emigration of monks), many and various transformations of rites and liturgy, ideological disputes about the permissibility and form of polyphony in the religious service etc. One notable achievement despite the disruption was a relatively sensitive and effective experiment in translating the Gregorian Chant from Latin to Czech (in what is known as the Jistebnice Hymnbook ca 1420). There was a huge upsurge in songs about current events (Ó svolánie konstanské [Oh, Council of Constance]), war songs (Ktož jsú Boží bojovníci [You Who are God’s Warriors], Povstaň, povstaň, veliké město Pražské [Arise, Arise Great City of Prague]) and religious songs. In the wake of the Hussite Wars, the Emperor Sigismund confirmed the legitimacy of two religions in onestate, a move that was to be reflected in the liturgical music of the next historical epoch.

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THE RENAISSANCE (CA 1440 – CA 1620)

While in Western Europe a new style of polyphonic music was undoubtedly crystallising from the 1430s, the period 1440-1620 in the Bohemian Lands should be more properly termed the Bohemian Reformation, when proceeded various changes in liturgical and sacred singing. Elements of Renaissance music style were nonetheless reaching the country from the mid-15th century.The majority of the Bohemian population adhered to the faith known as Utraquism (because the legacy of Hussitism was communion in both kinds = sub utraque specie for the laity), and until the mid-16th century the Catholic church was very much a minority, as were other smaller reformation groups (e.g. The Unity of the Brethren, 16th century churches inspired by Lutheranism etc.). Utraquist liturgical singing did not, however, differ much from catholic. The Utraquists curtailed or almost abolished, perhaps with the exception of Vespers, performing of the Offices (i.e. Day Hours)but they performed the Mass in Latin and, with only a few small deviations, as the Gregorian Chant. They also, however, adopted the singing of (mainly Latin) monophonic and polyphonic songs and polyphony in general into the service. A corpus of church music of this kind (plainchant, songs, polyphony) has been preserved from around 1500 in ornate manuscript graduals in the large towns (the so-called Franus Hymnbook (1505)in Hradec Králové, the Gradual from Chrudim (1530) and others). On the one hand, then, the repertoire of medieval polyphony (songs, polytextual motets, see above) was revived and often modernised. Around the mid-15th century pieces by PETRUS WILHELMI of GRUDZIADZ (1392-ca 1470?), already influenced by the style of the West European Renaissance, reached the Bohemian Lands, later translated into Czech during the 16th century. This repertoire survived into the 17th century, albeit only as entertainment music for the “Literate Brotherhoods” (see below) and students at various schools during carolling. On the other hand, it was at this time that polyphony of the new Renaissance style gradually arrived in the Bohemian Lands (Mass cycles and parts, motets, songs), in many cases written by leading English (W. Frye, J. Plummer) or Franco-Netherlands composers (H. Isaac, J. Obrecht, Josquin Desprez); there are also signs of development in original home production, although most composers were anonymous (Náš milý svatý Václave [Our Dear St. Wenceslas] is an arrangement of a very old sacred song, see above). The so-called Codex Strahov (ca 1470) and Codex Speciálník (ca 1490) are particularly important sources of European significance. Church singing in the era of the Czech Reformation was provided by what were known as the LITERÁTSKÁ BRATRSTVA [Literary Brotherhoods], societies of educated burghers. It was on their abilities that the breadth and complexity of the church music repertoire sketched above depended. Roughly around the middle of the 16th century church singing – evidently under the influence of the LutheranReformation – shifted from Latin to Czech. One clearly associated change was the strikingly increased participation of the congregation in the religious service through the singing of Czech sacred songs. (The liturgy of the Unity of the Brethren was practically limited to this monophonic singing, and in the latter part of the 16th century even Czech and German

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Renaissance notation – collection of masses by Ch. Luython, published in Prague, 1609

Catholics adopted congregational singing in the church.). This explains the huge number of hymnbooks (i.e. collections of sacred songs) produced by all the religious groups, many of them printed (especially in the case of the Unity of the Brethren - the so-called Šamotulský kancionál [Szamotuly Hymnbook], 1561). Some hymnbooks also included sets of polyphonic arrangements of the most widely known songs (e.g. the anonymous Vstalť jest této chvíle [He is Risen at this Hour]).

It can generally be said that the from the 1570s the musical culture of the Bohemian Lands moved closer to the culture of Western Europe, both in basic conditions (a school system linked up to music institutions, printing of music, manufacture of musical instruments), and in musical practice (town trumpeters and organists, amateur circles of burghers, cappellae and instrumental ensembles of nobility, e.g. at the courts of the Rožmberk families in the South of Bohemia where contemporary European secular music was also played) and in original musical production. The leading composers of sacred music (masses, motets, sacred songs) were now no longer anonymous (Missa Dunaj voda hluboká [Danube Deep Water]), but distinguished and widely known composers from the ranks of the literary brotherhoods, who generally signed their names in Latin: GEORGIUS RYCHNOVINUS (in fact JIŘÍ RYCHNOVSKÝ +1616), IOANNES TRAIANUS TURNOVINUS (TURNOVSKÝ +1629), PAULUS SPONGOPAEUS GISTEBNICENUS (JISTEBNICKÝ +1619) and others. There was development from the style of Netherlands composers (Gombert, Clemens non Papa) right up to the (double-choir) techniques of the Venetian School (A. and G. Gabrieli) and together with the works of all the named composers, their compositions were copied into what were known as part books, which were produced (apart from printed music materials) for the needs of all the leading literary brotherhoods of this era (Prague, Hradec Králové, Klatovy, Rokycany and elsewhere). Only occasionally were pieces by Czech composers

actually printed (Bicinia nova by ONDŘEJ CHRYSOPONUS JEVÍČSKÝ +1579; humanist arrangements of psalms and odes by JAN CAMPANUS VODŇANSKÝ +1622).

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The Szamotuly Hymnbook, 1561

With the arrival of the Habsburg court cappella of the Emperor Rudolf II in Prague (1583), important European composers began to work here, including (Kapellmeister) PHILIPPE DE MONTE (+1603 in Prague), the deputy Kapelmeister JACOB REGNART (+1599), the organist CHARLES LUYTHON (+1620 in Prague) and others, who performed internationally popular secular genres at the court (madrigals, canzonettas, ensaladas etc.); these penetrated, at least partly, even into the puritan atmosphere of Bohemian Reformation (in lute intabulations such as Jungfrau, eur wanckelmut – Panno, vrtkavost tvá). At the same time the notable Slovenian composer JACOBUS HANDL GALLUS (+1591 in Prague), was living first in Moravia and then in Prague, where the printer Jiří Nigrin had publish practically all his work. The musicians Ch. Demantius, M. Krumbholz, V. Otto and others were active in the border towns and at the courts of the German nobility. Among Bohemian composers of the era, the nobleman and leading Rudolphine courtier KRYŠTOF HARANT OF POLŽICE AND BEZDRUŽICE (1564-1621) occupied a special position, although only a small fragment of his work has survived (e.g. the motet Maria Kron, Missa super Dolorosi martyr based on a madrigal by L. Marenzio). Towards the end of his career Harant converted to Protestantism and played an important role in the rebellion against the Habsburgs. His execution on Old Town Square in Prague on the 21st of June 1621 may be regarded as the symbolic end of the epoch of the Bohemian Reformation and Renaissance.

THE BAROQUE (CA 1620 – CA 1740)

The beginning of the Baroque epoch in the Bohemian Lands was moulded by the stormy political and social changes that followed the defeat of the Revolt of the Estates at the Battle of the White Mountain in 1620. The leaders of revolt were severely punished, there were unprecedentedly large-scale confiscations of property,the forced re-catholicisation of the population and, in response, mass emigration; among those who went into exile were many leading figures, such as Comenius (J. A. Komenský). The constitutional changes that Ferdinand II embodied in the Renewed Land Constitution of 1627 established the hereditary rule of the Habsburgs in the Bohemian Lands, curtailed the rights of the Bohemian Estates, made Catholicism the only permitted faith and gave equal status to German with Czech as the official language. The revolt of the Bohemian states also,of course, triggered the Thirty Years War and up to 1648/50 the armies of both sides swept over the Bohemian Lands several times, causing economic and cultural devastation and decimating the population. The pattern of development of new kinds of Baroque music in the Bohemian Lands was strongly

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Kryštof Harant of Požice, 1608

affected by the removal of the royal court with its huge cultural potential and the institution of the court cappella to Vienna (1612). This meant that with few exceptions, major European composers were not attracted to the Bohemian Lands, and opera, the most important and prestigious musical genre of the time, was not cultivated there systematically for a long time. The main seedbeds of cultural development in the country were the seats of the nobility or church aristocracy. In the period of relative calm and economic prosperity in the last decades of the 17th century, the Prague towns also began to develop a degree of cultural leadership as the natural centre of Bohemia, but Moravia was more orientated to nearby Vienna. The most important places for the cultivation of music were ecclesiastical institutions – churches, monasteries and colleges. For the whole period domestic musical production was focused on various kinds of Catholic sacred music.The new musical style already started to penetrate gradually into the Bohemian Lands in the first decades of the 17th century, above all through compositions imported from Italy. In some choirs, however, even after the White Mountain, the brotherhoods of church singers managed to survive, and for a relatively long time continued to cultivate the earlier repertoire of renaissance polyphony. Most of the Catholic hymnbooks also took over the older songs, and in a number of cases even used chants from the Protestant choral tradition. Early domestic expressions of the new style include the Magnificat by the former member of the Rudolphine cappella JAN SIXTUS OF LERCHENFELS (1626). The first important Czech composer ofthe Baroque age was ADAM VÁCLAV MICHNA OF OTRADOVICE (ca 1600-1676), who was active in Jindřichův Hradec where he had studied at the local Jesuit College. His work includes both collections of sacred songs that are outstanding for their original musical treatment and distinctive poetic qualities (Česká mariánská muzyka [Czech Music in Honour of the Virgin], 1647, Loutna česká [The Czech Lute], 1653, Svatoroční muzyka [Music for the Holy Year], 1661), and figuralchurch music (with instrumental accompaniment) on Latin texts. The Obsequium Marianum (1642) was the first of his collections to be printed, in Vienna.Among other editions published, like Michna’s song collections, in the Prague Jesuit press we might mention the lengthy collection of masses and other sacred compositions Sacra et litaniae (1654). The late Missa Sancti Wenceslai (ca 1670) reveals the composer’s capacity to keep up with the development of modern compositional techniques. Michna’s songs were abundantly taken up and used in other hymnbooks. His most conspicuous successor in this field was the organist VÁCLAV KAREL HOLAN ROVENSKÝ (ca 1644-1718), who collected and published a copious set of more than

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Adam Michna of Otradovice – Czech Marian Music, Prague 1647

400 sacred songs Capella regia musicalis (1693) in Prague. This popular title was a special kind of hymnbook combining the form of the practical hymnal, such as the una voce Kancionál český [Czech Hymnary] (1683) of VÁCLAV MATĚJ ŠTEYER, for example, with the form of collection of polyphonic with a figured bass andinstrumental accompaniment following on from Michna’s example. Many of Holan’s arrangements were later adopted in simplified form by JAN JOSEF BOŽAN in his Slavíček rajský [Nightingale of Paradise] (1719). The most distinguished composer to follow Michna was probably PAVEL JOSEF VEJVANOVSKÝ(1640-1693), from 1664 the trumpet player and capelmeister in the service of the Bishop of Olomouc Karl Liechtenstein-Castelcorn in Kroměříž. His extensive output (ca 130 at least partially preserved pieces) contains not only figural church music, but also many instrumental pieces for various instrumental combinations.Mainly sonatas for performance in church (e.g. Sonata vespertina), they also included the secular dance suites called balletti. In the years 1668-1670 the Bishop of Olomouc also employed the well-known composer HEINRICH IGNAZ FRANZ BIBER (1644-1704), who soon departed to make a better career in Salzburg, but kept in contact with Vejvanovský and sent him a number of his own pieces, some of which have therefore survived as unique copies in the valuable Kroměříž music collection. The turn of the 17th/18th centuries saw a visible revival of musical life in Prague, where there was a dense network of parish and monastic church choirs cultivating figural music. The most important, from themusical point of view, were the churches of the Jesuit colleges, the Order of the Cross Church of St. Francis Seraphic by Charles bridge, which later became famous for oratorio productions and which commissioned a number of composers including the then highly rated JOHANN CASPAR FERDINAND FISCHER (1656-1746), and the Cathedral of St. Vitus, where the director of the choir was MIKULÁŠ FRANTIŠEK XAVER WENTZELY (ca 1643-1722), who published a major collection of masses Flores verni [Spring Flowers, 1700] in Prague. We have very little information about domestic instrumental music. Violin sonatas were composed as well as sacred works by the music-loving doctor JAN IGNÁC FRANTIŠEK VOJTA (ca 1660-before 1725), for example. In noble and burgher circles the lute was very popular as well, and Count JAN ANTONÍN LOSY (ca 1650-1721) was an outstanding lute player. Prague was also the place of publication of a noteworthy musical dictionary by the organist at Our Lady before the Týn, TOMÁŠ BALTAZAR JANOVKA (1669-1741) - Clavis ad thesaurum magnae artis musicae (1701, 1715), and it was followed by a similar theoretical work by the Plasy Cistercian MAURITIUS VOGT (1669-1730) - Conclave thesauri magnae artis musicae (1719). The most important composer of the Bohemian Baroque was JAN DISMAS ZELENKA (1679-1745). He was born in Louňovice pod Blaníkem and probably studied at one of the Prague Jesuit colleges. In 1704 he composed music for a school play produced in the Lesser Town Jesuit College. This was his firstknown composition, but it has not survived. Later he wrote a series of pieces for the Prague Clementinum: apart from three sepulchres (cantatas sung at the Good Friday in front of the Holy Sepulchre), they were mainly music for the Latin school drama Sub olea pacis et palma virtutis (Melodrama de Sancto Wenceslao), which was performed as part of the grand celebrations of the coronation of Charles VI as King of Bohemia in 1723. By this time, however, Zelenka was already working abroad. While in 1709 he was still in Prague as an employee of the future Count Hartig, less than two years later he left from Dresden, where he found a place in the famous court cappella there, first as a double bass player and then as a composer. In 1716-19 he probably made a short visit to Italy and then studied with Johann Joseph Fux in Vienna. Both there and in Dresden, where he spent the rest of his life, he had an opportunity enjoyed by no other contemporary Czech musician to perfect his compositional art. His highly individual instrumental output consists of the orchestral

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Capriccios, 6 trio sonatas and 4 orchestral concertante pieces (Hipocondrie, Concerto, Ouverture a Simphonie) composed in Prague in 1723. Zelenka’s main area of composition was, however, Catholic sacred music, and in this field his most remarkable works include six Lamentations of the Prophet Jeremiah (Lamentationes Jeremiae prophetae), twenty-seven Responsions for Holy Week (Responsoria pro hebdomada sancta) and more than twenty masses, particularly the unfinished cycle Missae ultimae [Last Mass]. The three parts of the latter cycle (Missa Dei Patris, Missa Dei Filii a Missa Omnium Sanctorum) together with the late Loreta litanies represent the monumental conclusion of Zelenka’s oeuvre of genius. BOHUSLAV MATĚJ ČERNOHORSKÝ (1684-1742) was likewise a major domestic composer of the first third of the 18th century. A member of the Minorite Order, who worked in the 1720s and early 1730s at the choir of the Prague Church of St. James, he nonetheless spent two decades in Italy, mainly in Padua. All that survives of his work are a few organ fugues and church compositions, and his motet Laudetur Jesus Christus (ca 1728) was printed in Prague. According to later tradition Černohorský was an important teacher; Giuseppe Tartini studied with him in Italy, and in Prague his pupils are said to have included many composers, the most significant being Josef Ferdinand Seger, František Ignác Tůma and Černohorský’s successor at the choir of St. James’s, ČESLAV VAŇURA (1695-1736). Other important domestic composers of this period included above all the BENEDICTINE VÁCLAV GUNTHER JACOB (1685–1734) and JAN JOSEF IGNÁC BRENTNER (1689-1742), who had a number of their compositions printed. Among the church compositions of ŠIMON BRIXI (1693-1735) we find The Prague Water Music in honour of St. John of Nepomuk, concertos, overtures and chamber pieces by ANTONÍN REICHENAUER (perhaps 1694–1730) have survived as well as sacred music, and solo church cantatas were composed by JOHANN CHRISTOPH KRIDEL (1672-1733), JOSEF LEOPOLD VÁCLAV DUKÁT (1684-1717) and JOSEF ANTONÍN PLÁNICKÝ (1691-1732), among others. For a long time opera was rarely heard in the Bohemian Lands. When performed at all it was usually as part of one of the far from numerous visits of the imperial court, while at the beginning of the 18th century a few Italian touring companies gave isolated performances. One important impulse was the monumental production of J. J. Fux’s opera Costanza et fortezza during the festivities held in Prague in 1723 for the already mentioned coronation of Charles VI. Invited to Bohemia in 1724 by Count František Antonín Špork, the Italian opera company of impressario Antonio Denzio then played for ten years in Prague and at Kuks, presenting operas by Italian composers including Antonio Vivaldi. Not long before, Count Jan Adam Questenberg had begun to stage opera at his chateau in Jaroměřice nad Rokytnou, with the cast consisting mainly of his servants. Again the repertoire was primarily Italian, but it seems to be here that Czech was firstused in opera, in a translation of the opera L’origine di Jaromeriz in Moravia [On the Origin of Jaroměřice, 1730] by the count’s capelmeister FRANTIŠEK ANTONÍN VÁCLAV MÍČA (1694-1744). Opera productions were also presented at the seat of the Bishop of Olomouc Cardinal Wolfgang Schrattenbach in Kroměříž, and two operas by the capelmeister there, VÁCLAV MATYÁŠ GURECKÝ (1705-1743) – unfortunately only the librettos have survived – are further evidence of the humble beginnings of Czech opera.

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BOHEMIAN LANDS AND CLASSICAL STYLE IN MUSIC

When the historian of music Charles Burney embarked on his second journey through Europe in 1772, he wanted to see the country from which so many outstanding musicians had come. In every major European musical centre he had seen before he encountered not just Italians, whom he admired, but also Bohemians, who filled him with curiosity. On his several-day visit to the Bohemian Lands, however, the English traveller was surprised and disappointed. From his stagecoach he saw a land gripped for the second year by a great famine, while Prague was still in ruins after the Prussian siege. He came to the conclusion that the prevailing poverty allowed few to use their talents. At the same time he appreciated the importance of the rural schools, where he saw the selfless and apparently fruitless work of the best professionals. Thus he arrivedat the root of a problem later to be called “Czech musical emigration”. In the Bohemian Lands in the latter half of the 18th century we see a perfect fit between a political anda cultural era: the era of “Enlightened Absolutism” in politics and the era of Classicism in music. It is not a fitthat works with Fine Art, because response to Classicism in this area came only at the very end of the century, and almost right up to the end of the 18th century visual taste and life style were still primarily influenced by the Late Baroque spirit. Its decorativeness and emotional exaltation resonated well with the local tradition and entirely saturated both semi-popular and popular visual culture. Even when enlightenment rationalism pushed it out of its position of universal visual style at the end of the century, it retained its grip in the fieldof folk culture. As far as music is concerned, however, “Bohemian Classicism” was exceptionally important, and for the whole of Europe. At this period the Bohemian Lands became distinctive for over-production of talented and well trained musicians who influenced the culture of many European centres; despite the strong competition, they were sought out when orchestras were being founded, and obtained many prestigious positions. The Czech musical emigrants are, indeed, accorded an important place in the crystallisation of musical Classicism – specialists even speak of Bohemia and Prague as of one of the places were the stylistic changes of the mid-18th century were born.

The Peculiarities of Musical Life

This development was made possible by the interplay of several historical circumstances. In this period the general musicality of the Bohemian Lands reached an unprecedented peak, both in quantity and in quality. It was during the 18th century that the results of several decades of systematic development of education (Jesuits, Piarists) began to emerge. Music had played an important part in re-catholicising policies, and every school leaver was usually a trained singer and instrumentalist. Active musical knowledge was a socially valued attribute, often a condition of admission to a monastery, and in one specific case (the Waldstein estates) a condition for permission to learn a trade. The absence of a royal court (which had been formally moved to Vienna) was an anomalous feature of the Bohemian Kingdom. This created a brake on the development of fundamental musical genres (opera, instrumental music), but on the other hand, relatively dense network of music centres not limited to the metropolis had developed. Grammar schools and colleges famous for their music were often located

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in the smaller towns. The country monasteries, which had schools and professional ensembles, were also important centres (and there is evidence that people from the surrounding areas attended the sung ceremonies in great numbers); in the rural schools singing was one of the main subjects. A number of leading musicians came from the countryside, getting a livelihood and education as vocalists in town or monastery churches on the recommendation of their teachers. The noble residences also had an influence on the general musicality. Among the nobility there wasa large percentage of descendants of “war entrepreneurs” from the Thirty Years War, who did not have local ties to the estates they acquired from Habsburgs as confiscated from former Bohemian nobility, but whononetheless wanted to put on a grand show and discovered that they could put together a good ensemble from their own serfs. Their attitude to the musicians often reflected the fact: they regarded them as theirproperty, refused permission for marriage (F. Benda) and harshly punished attempts to escape (the famous case of the escaped horn-player J. V. Stich-Punto, whose front teeth were supposed to be taken out). Others, however, proved generous patrons who supported the local schools, made it possible for talented children to study and made their seats remarkable local centres (the Pachtas in Citoliby). A whole series of capable composers therefore could find a livelihood as teachers in small towns and villages where schools were undernoble patronage (J. I. Linek, J. Dusík), and where they educated the new generation. The general musicality of the Bohemian Lands was clearly not the result of these efforts alone. Prefaces to hymnals of the 18th century paradoxically show that earlier there had been much more singing in churches and families. The decisive advantage of Early Classicism lay rather in the convergence of all the musical genres, which were gradually linked up into a single universal style. This process started at the beginning of the 18th century, when new direct contacts with Italy opened up. Often the same arias as in the theatre were performed in church choirs, composed music drew inspiration from folksong (symmetry and simplicity were the overall ideal of classicism) and folk music, conversely, was much refined by theItalian music of the time. A generation that had grown up as children in this universal musical language was not inhibited from cultivating “serious” music by the sense that it was something that must be learned additionally. The moment they started professional training, the future composers usually had a head start in imaginative power and the capacity for spontaneous improvisation, which they had gained from an ordinary folk culture background.

Musical Emigration and its Causes

Despite the quantity and diffusion of musical activity, there was no large centre were the best home musicians could make their careers. In the surrounding lands this function was fulfilled by ruling courts thatlavished a great deal of money on cultural prestige and had a many-sided cultural life. The first musiciansfrom Bohemia were therefore leaving to pursue careers in neighbouring centres as early as the first third of the 18th century (J. D. Zelenka, F. I. Tůma, F. Benda). But the real rise in emigration came with the War of the Austrian Succession, when the Bohemian Lands once again became a battle field. The first wave of the exodus of skilled musicians from Prague occurred in the first years of the war (J. V. Stamic, J. Zach, the Lapis opera company). In the countryside the situation was even more hopeless and deteriorated further with economic measures that gave landowners further powers to exploit their serfs as free labour force.

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Knowledge of a music profession thus held out the hope of a better life – escape abroad might mean prosperity and recognition, or at the least a liberation from an undignified status. There was a substantial demand for musicians abroad, too, since especially in the German Empire there were dozens of courts that needed a cappella and theatre in order to keep up their reputation. By the mid-18th century large communities of musicians from Bohemia (both Czech- and German-speaking) were working in many of them, including highly rated composers, kapellmeister and instrumentalists who had fled from the war and were clearly willing to enter service even under the most unfavourable conditions. The situation was different in the Hungarian Lands, where noble authority was being restored after liberation from Turkish rule and many musicians earned enough to save for their future careers in the service of magnates (J. Vaňhal, J. Družecký). Finally Czech musicians were attracted to Vienna as the capital of the monarchy (here it is not quite appropriate to speak of “emigration”), where towards the end of the 18th century they already had an influence equal to that of the Italians. Here a whole generation of composers came to maturity whowere among the best in Europe and helped to create high “Viennese” Classicism (J. K. Vaňhal, L. Koželuh, J. A. Vranický, J. V. H. Voříšek). Their compositions naturally returned to their homeland and cultivated the local environment.

The Results of the Joseph’s reforms

A lasting peace finally emerged in the reign of Josef [Joseph] II. It was at the same time a period of major reforms aimed at modernising the economy in the spirit of enlightened rationalism, and affecting almost all aspects of life. In a few years the institutional structures that had maintained the standard of musical life were in ruins. Enlightened centralism strengthened its position above all with thorough measures against the church, whose educational and cultural activities had hitherto filled the gaps left by the absence of some of the secular institutions that had developed elsewhere in Europe. The policy of Josesph II consisted in curtailing the influence of the church on education, concentrating all charitable activities in the hands of the state, and dissolving all institutions that were not regarded as beneficial to the economy. Joseph’s II. liturgical reforms banished elaborate music from the churches, which at that time had often fulfilled thefunction of concert halls. For the whole of the first half of the 19th century people were to remember the sharp decline of general musicality, seeing the cause in the dissolution of the “Literate Brotherhoods” and monasteries whose schools once produced educated teachers. After the loss of institutional background the standard of musical life was maintained usually only until the first generational transition. Especially inthe countryside, however, the situation was saved by a “schoolmaster’s music” often now akin to the semi-folk. After the coronation of Leopold II as King of Bohemia hopes revived for the renewal of the dissolved institutions and perhaps even the renewal of a royal court in Prague. But soon came the Napoleonic Wars... In a time of apparent chaos, however, the conditions necessary for the gradual creation of a modern civic society, and with it for the emergence of new forms of musical life, were developing slowly and unobserved. The abolition of serfdom allowed the towns to develop normally and local culture to acquire a new form. The secularisation of cultural life forced the new local government organs to take on patronage obligations towards schools and church choirs. In Prague and the larger towns a concert life based on private patronage started to awaken. The patriotic nobility financed the Estates Theatre and founded a conservatory

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in Prague. As the Napoleonic Wars and their immediate consequences faded, an entirely new kind of musical life, typical for the 19th century, was already beginning to develop.

Important Composers

FRANTIŠEK IGNÁC TŮMA (1704-1774) was for a time vocalist at the Minorite church St James in Prague. Then he went to Vienna, and settled there probably before 1929. He studied composition with a court composer J. J. Fux, and soon became a well known mostly for his church compositions. They were noted by his contemporaries for their solidity of texture and sensitive treatment of the text as well as for their new musical expression. FRANTIŠEK XAVER BRIXI (1732-1771) was among the most striking and prolific composersto remain in the Bohemian Lands. The son of the Prague teacher Šimon Brixi BRIXI (he was orphaned at 3) at the age of 27 he obtained the prestigious (lifetime) post of Kapellmeister at the Prague Cathedral. As a composer he mainly wrote church music, but he also composed oratorios, for example and instrumental pieces. Brixi’s work (several hundred opuses) is distinguished by lively melodic with abundant syncopation and a perfect feeling for sung Latin. Copies of his pieces have been preserved all over Central Europe and they were frequently performed throughout the 19th century and in some places the 20th century. JAN VÁCLAV STAMIC (STAMITZ) (1717-1758) decided as a young violinist to go abroad in the first war years. He settled at the court in Mannheim, where he became director of instrumental musicand built up an orchestra with a good reputation, consisting mainly of his fellow countrymen from Bohemia. As a composer he was the founder of the “Mannheim School” and a leading pioneer of musical Classicism in the field of instrumental music. FRANTIŠEK BENDA (1709-1788) worked from 1733 at the royal Prussian court in Berlin. He was a sought-after violin virtuoso (in his biography he expresses gratitude and honour for his first teacher, a blind Jewish violinist from a rural ensemble) and the author of instrumental pieces. His brother was the versatile composer JIŘÍ ANTONÍN BENDA (1722-1795), who became famous primarily for his influence on thedevelopment of stage melodrama and singspiel. JAN ZACH (1713-1773) had an extremely eventful life. He was born the son of a rural publican, and in Prague worked his way up to become the organist of several churches and a respected composer. During the war years he left for Germans and took over direction of the prestigious cappella of the Elector Archbishop of Mainz. He was dismissed after disputes and lived as a travelling performer and composer. An influence on the formation of the sonata principle is attributed to his surviving symphonies, and his church music represents a synthesis of Late Baroque expression with the style of developed Classicism. It is distinguished by ingenious rhythm and instrumentation. JOSEF MYSLIVEČEK (1737-1781) was one of the few foreigners to make a name for himself as an opera composer in Italy. He composed for leading Italian theatres (Naples, Milan, Rome), distinguished for strong melodies and virtuosity of a kind that responded to the needs of the leading soloists. Mysliveček’s opera and oratorio works were very popular in their time and were admired even by Mozart. They were

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František Benda

František Ignác Tůma, 1782

performed in Central Europe as well – individual arias, based on Latin text, became core elements of many Czech church archives. JAN ANTONÍN KOŽELUH (1738-1814) was for a time Kapellmeister of the Prague Cathedral, and at the same time a member of the theatre orchestra. He was the only Bohemian composer to try to compose an Italian opera seria. His music was based on the Italian opera style. His meeting with music of an earlier time when the church archives were sold off (in 1780s) led Koželuh to a great interest in earlier music (for example he performed the Zelenka’s masses) and it influencedhis later work. JAN LADISLAV DUSÍK (1760-1812) became one of the most celebrated pianists of his time, working as a soloist and teacher in German centres, St. Petersburg, London and Paris. In his piano compositions he combined the sonata form with an emotional and dramatic content, so presaging the later emergence of Romanticism. JAN VÁCLAV STICH-PUNTO (1746-1803) became famous as a virtuoso on the French horn. He perfected the technique of play on the natural French horn (without keys) to the standard of a solo instrument. He worked in Paris and Vienna, where Beethoven consulted him on his Sonata for French Horn and Piano. ANTONÍN REJCHA (1770-1836) was still a boy when he went to Germany. Since 1785 he played the violin and the flute in the court orchestra in Bonn, where he met L. v. Beethoven as well as outstandingmusic educationalist C. G. Neefe. Later he was employed as a flutist, conductor, teacher and composer in Hamburg and Vienna. Finally he settled in Paris (1808), and was appointed professor at the Conservatory in 1818. His extensive musical output is distinctive especially in the field of piano fugues and chamber musicfor woodwind.

FIRST HALF OF THE 19TH CENTURY (CA 1810 – 1860)

This period has traditionally been considered a comparatively unimportant period in the history of music in the Czech Lands, a mere dull echo of the rich musical life of previous years and a modest foreshadowing of the great era yet to come. This is not entirely fair. A music-loving traveller arriving in Prague and other places in Bohemia and Moravia at the time would even then have noticed – like the English music critic Charles Burney half a century before – much of interest, testifying to the changing social needs and demands on music as a serious art, but also and strikingly as entertainment and representation. At the same time – and probably with satisfaction – he would have discovered that the musical conditions here did not essentially differ from those he had met in surrounding (German-speaking) towns and lands. The greatest interest continued to be opera, which at that time – unlike today – relied mainly on new pieces from the contemporary French-Italian repertoire. In contrast to 18th-century practice, it was now performed in translation, i.e. in German or very occasionally in Czech as well. The conductors of the Prague Opera included the famous German composer CARL MARIA VON WEBER (1786-1826), who worked here in 1813-16, and later, in 1827-57, FRANTIŠEK ŠKROUP (1801-1862), originally a student of philosophy and law, the author of the comic singspiel Dráteník [The Tinker] (1826), the Czech national anthem Kde domov můj [Where is My Home] (1834) and several serious operas on Czech and German texts. In his later years at the opera Škroup was responsible for staging the early works of Richard Wagner

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Jan Ladislav Dusík

(Tannhäuser, Lohengrin, The Flying Dutchman) and Giuseppe Verdi (Il Trovatore, Rigoletto). After discharge from the services of the Prague opera he left to work in Rotterdam in Holland. Public concerts were also well-attended musical events. In 1803 Jednota umělců hudebních ku podpoře vdov a sirotků [the Union of Musical Artists for the Support of Widows and Children, Tonkünstler-Societät] was founded on the Viennese model, organising one or two concerts annually for charitable purposes. Other institutions that developed concert activities included music schools, above all the Prague Conservatory, which opened in 1811 under the first director Friedrich Dionys Weber and slightly later the Organ School,established in 1830. In the same period the blind teacher JOSEF PROKSCH (1794-1864), later the teacher of Bedřich Smetana, opened a private music school in Prague. The year 1840 saw the launch of the concert and educational activities of the Cecilská jednota [Cecilia Association, Cäcilien-Verein] and the Žofínská akademie [Sophien-Akademy], in which capable amateurs played alongside professional musicians. Naturally, there was great public interest in the visits and concert appearances of leading European composers and virtuosos, including NICCOLO PAGANINI (1782-1840), CLARA SCHUMANN (1819-1896), FRANZ LISZT (1811-1886) and HECTOR BERLIOZ (1803-1869). All important musical and opera events were at this time recorded and discussed in detail in the period press. Among leading Prague music critics we find, for example, the lawyer and music historian AUGUST WILHELM AMBROS (1816-1876), active in Prague up to 1872, or the young EDUARD HANSLICK (1825-1904), a pupil of Václav Jan Tomášek, who later made a name as an influential music critic in Vienna. At this period entertainment or service music was primarily dance music. In the Bohemian Lands as elsewhere fashionable dances such as the écossaise, quadrille and above all the waltz became very popular. Conversely the Bohemian Lands exported the polka, a „hit“ which from the end of the 1830s quickly spread throughout Europe and to the American continent. The first composer of polkas seems to have been the schoolmaster FRANTIŠEK HILMAR (1803-1881), who composed the polka Esmeralda, for example. One of the most famous composers of polkas and other dance pieces was JOSEPH LABITZKY (1801-1881), for long years the conductor of the spa orchestra in Karlovy Vary (Karlsbad). “Entertainment music“ of the time also included social singing for all kinds of occasions. In Czech-speaking society, this is represented particularly by the song collection Věnec ze zpěvů vlastenských [A Garland of Patriotic Songs], published in 1835-1839 by FRANTIŠEK ŠKROUP and JOSEF KRASOSLAV CHMELENSKÝ and by the powerful male choral works on texts of Moravian folk poetry composed by the priest and Augustinian monk in Brno, PAVEL KŘÍŽKOVSKÝ (1820-1885), later the teacher of Leoš Janáček. The song and dance music demanded by the public popular in the period came our promptly at the Prague publishing houses of Marco Berra and Jan Hoffmann. Composers aspiring to create music in more demanding genres, however, had relatively limited possibilities for professional advancement in these years. JAN AUGUST VITÁSEK (1770-1839) established himself in church music, becoming successor to Jan Antonín Koželuh in the Cathedral of St. Vitus in Hradčany and the first director of the Prague Organ School. A generation younger, JAN FRIEDRICHKITTL (1809-1868), who had friendly relations with Richard Wagner and composed the successful opera Bianca und Giuseppe oder Die Französen vor Nizza on his libretto, was director of the Prague conservatory in 1843-1865. Other composers of the time like the scion of the famous architectural family and Rector of Charles University JAN NEPOMUK KAŇKA (Kanka, 1772-1865), the country farmer and brother-in-law of the historian František Palacký, LEOPOLD EUGEN MĚCHURA (1803-1870),

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or the lawyer and court official in Prague, Cheb and Litoměřice WENZEL HEINRICH VEIT (1806-1864), devoted themselves to music only in their leisure time. In the course of the 19th century as before, many outstanding musicians from the Bohemian Lands left for Vienna or beyond the frontiers just in order to have a hope of making a living. They included, for example, V. J. Tomášek’s pupils JAN VÁCLAV HUGO VOŘÍŠEK (1791-1825) and IGNAZ MOSCHELES (1794-1870), and also JAN VÁCLAV KALIVODA (Johann Wenzel Kalliwoda, 1801-1866), who made a successful career as a Kapellmeister and composer in South Germany, the composer of church music ROBERT FÜHRER (1807-1861), who was highly rated in his time, and violin virtuoso JOSEF SLAVÍK (1806-1833), a genius who died tragically young, or else another of Tomášek’s pupils, the piano virtuoso ALEXANDER DREYSCHOCK (1818-1869). The most important composer of the first half of the 19th century in the Bohemian Lands was VÁCLAV JAN TOMÁŠEK (1774-1850). He studied philosophy and law in Prague, and as a composer was particularly distinguished for his piano music (sonatas and in particular lyrical pieces like eclogues, rhapsodies, dithyrambs and so on) and for his songs on German but also Czech texts, which make him one of the forerunners of Franz Schubert. He also wrote three symphonies, overtures, piano concertos, church music – the most outstanding being his Missa solemnis, composed in 1836 for the coronation of Ferdinand V, and his autobiography, which originally came out in German in the Prague journal Libussa. Up to 1815 Tomášek worked as a composer and music teacher in the house of Count Buquoy, and later he became a sought-after and well paid private teacher of piano and music theory.

THE PERIOD AFTER 1860

is one that may rightly be considered the culminating era in the history of music in the Bohemian Lands. The rapid ascent was made possible by a deep change in social and economic conditions that became fully manifest in the atmosphere of political relaxation at the beginning of the 1860s. At this period music became definitely the most important and internationally the most successful aspect of a Czech culturebased on a new bourgeois society and reflecting the gradual transformation of the multinational Habsburgmonarchy into a modern constitutional state. Opera, still regarded as the most modern and the most prestigious form of music and drama, was once again at the centre of efforts to create a new national art. At the end of 1862 Prozatímní divadlo [The Provisional Theatre], designed exclusively for Czech performances, was opened in Prague. The big Národní divadlo [National Theatre] was built in the years 1868-1881, and after a fire in August 1881was re-opened in November 1883. German opera production continued to be served by the Stavovské divadlo [The Estates Theatre], from 1861 Zemské [Landestheater], and from 1888 to 1945 Nové německé divadlo [New German Theatre], today’s Státní opera [State Opera] in Prague. Since 1868 there was also a permanent Czech opera stage in Pilsen, while in Brno Czech productions could be staged regularly from 1884. In contrast,

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Jan Václav Hugo Voříšek, c.1820

Václav Jan Tomášek

public concert life in Prague and other towns (with the exception of the West Bohemian spa centres) for many years lacked a professional symphony orchestra, and acquired one only at the beginning of 1896 in the form of the Czech Philharmonic. Concerts of chamber music, which had previously mainly been performed in private settings, were organised from 1876 by the Prague Kammermusikverein [Association for Chamber Music] and from 1894 Český spolek pro komorní hudbu [Czech Association for Chamber Music]. 1861 saw the launch of the Prague choral society Hlahol, which in subsequent years, like Beseda brněnská [The Brno Association] choir or the Olomouc Žerotín choir presented many major choral works, cantatas and oratorios from the Czech and international repertoire. In 1863 Umělecká beseda [The Arts Association] was formed, bringing together Czech writers, musicians and fine artists. Its foundation fund Hudební matice [Music Foundation] financed the publication of major works by Czech composers, mostly in the form of piano arrangements.

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The National Theatre in Prague

BEDŘICH SMETANA (2. 3. 1824 Litomyšl-12. 5. 1884, Prague) carved out for himself the position of founding father in the field of national music. After studies under Josef Proksch,he worked in the years 1848-56 as a music teacher, pianist, composer and conductor in Prague, and from the autumn of 1856 to the spring of 1861 in Göteborg in Sweden. In these years he mainly composed piano pieces and symphonic poems inspired by the model of Franz Liszt, and his crowning work of the period is his Piano Trio in G Minor of 1855. From 1861 Smetana worked in Prague as conductor of the Hlahol choir, chairman of the music section of the Arts Association, music and theatre critic, music director of the Provisional Theatre (1866-74) and composer of choral music and operas. In the period up to 1874 he composed five operas in quick successes.While Braniboři v Čechách [The Brandenburgers in Bohemia] was an attempt at a grand historical opera on the French model, Prodaná nevěsta [The Bartered Bride] – in its original two-act “operetta” version with spoken dialogues of 1866 – was soon proclaimed the exemplar and prototype of Czech national opera. The tragedy Dalibor (1868), on the other hand, once again conceived with the French opera tradition in mind, was rejected by the public and the critics as “unCzech” and “Wagnerian”. The ceremonial mythological opera Libuše,

completed in 1872 and originally planned as a coronation opera for the heir to the throne Rudolf Habsburg, was firstperformed only much later, at the opening of the National Theatre in June 1881. The comic opera, Dvě vdovy [The Two Widows] (1873), originally also written with spoken dialogues in the style of the French opéra-comique, had its premiere in the spring of 1874. After tragically losing his hearing in October 1874 Smetana withdrew from the limelight and concentrated on composing, hampered by progressive mental illness. The work of his last decade includes the operas Hubička [The Kiss] (1876), Tajemství [The Secret] (1878) and Čertova stěna [The Devil’s Wall] (1882) on texts by the poet Eliška Krásnohorská, the piano cycle Sny [Rêves, Dreams] and České tance [Bohemian Dances], the monumental cycle of six symphonic poems Má vlast [My Country or My Fatherland] (1874-1879, performed as a cycle 1882), and both string quartets (1876, 1883). He left only fragments of the opera Viola (based on Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night) and the symphonic dance cycle Pražský karneval [Prague Carnival].

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Bedřich Smetana, drawing by M. Švabinský, 1904

score: Vltava, 1st edition

ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK (8. 9. 1841 Nelahozeves - 1. 5. 1904, Prague), a contemporary and friend of Johannes Brahms, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Edvard Grieg and Leoš Janáček, was one of the greatest and most versatile European composers of the latter half of the 19th century. He studied at the Prague Organ School and worked for a time as a violist at the Provisional Theatre and organist in the Church of St. Vojtěch in Prague. From the mid-1870s he was one of the few composers of his day to work “freelance”, and later he was appointed first professor of composition at the conservatory in Prague and directorof the National Conservatory of Music in New York, where he spent the years 1892-95. His creative development was quite complex. His early instrumental pieces of 1861-1870 are distinctive for expansiveness of form and compositional daring, sometimes anticipating the musical idiom of the beginning of the 20th century. In the 1870s he wrote his first operas (Alfred, Král a uhlíř [The King and Charcoal Burner], Vanda, Tvrdé palice [Stubborn Lovers], Šelma sedlák [The Cunning Peasant]), kantáty (Dědicové Bílé Hory [The Heirs of the White Mountain], Stabat mater, 1875), songs and other pieces. In his instrumental work there is now a clear effort at concision and transparency and a great deal of inspiration from dance music (4th and 5th Symphonies, The String Sextet in A Major, The String Quartet in E flat Major, Symphonic Variations on the Theme of theSong “Já jsem huslař”, Violin Concerto in A Minor etc.). The interest of the public and the publishers was, however, caught more by his small occasionally pieces - Moravské dvojzpěvy [Moravian Duets], Slovanské tance [Slavonic Dances] (1878) and others. In his crowning period in the 1880s he returned to major symphonic works - The 6th, 7th (1885) and 8th (1889) Symphonies, the programmatic overtures V přírodě [In Nature’s Realm], Karneval [Carnival] and Othello, and wrote chamber music - String Quartet in C Major, Piano Trio in F Minor, Piano Quintet in A Major, The Piano Trio “Dumky” and others, piano and vocal music - Poetické nálady [Poetic Moods] for piano, Cigánské melodie [Gypsy Melodies], including the famous song Když mne stará matka…[Songs my mother taught me...], Milostné písně [Love Songs] and others, operas - Dimitrij, Jakobín [The Jacobin] (1888), cantatas and oratorio Svatební košile [The Spectre’s Bride], Svatá Ludmila [Saint Ludmila] and Requiem, performed to great

acclaim in England. The composer’s experience in America brought a clear change of style with The Symphony No. 9 “From the New World” (1893), The “American” String Quartet in F Major (1893), The String Quartet in E Flat Minor, Biblical Songs, The Cello Concerto in B Minor (1895) and the two last string quartets in A flat Majorand G Major. Dvořák’s last years were characterised by a return to programmatic music, evident particularly in his symphonic poems Vodník [The Water Goblin], Polednice [The Noon Witch], Zlatý kolovrat [The Golden Spinning Wheel] and Holoubek [The Wild Dove] based on poems by Karel Jaromír Erben, and the romantic fairytale subjects of the operas Čert a Káča [The Devil and Kate] (1899), Rusalka (1901) and Armida.

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score: Symphony no. 9 in E minor “From the New World.“

Antonín Dvořák, c. 1879

The Prague composer ZDENĚK FIBICH (1850-1900) likewise ranged across all the musical genres of the period in his output, which included symphonies, overtures and symphonic poems, chamber and piano pieces, songs, cantatas and melodramas. He devoted himself most strenuously, however, to music drama. He enriched the repertoire of Czech opera with the titles Nevěsta messinská [The Bride of Messina] based on the tragedy by Friedrich Schiller, Bouře [The Tempest] based on William Shakespeare, Hedy based on Byron, Šárka, Pád Arkuna [The Fall of Arcona] and others. His trio of stage melodramas Hippodamie on a text by the poet Jaroslav Vrchlický Námluvy Pelopovy [The Courtship of Pelops], Smír Tantalův [The Atonement of Tantalus], Smrt Hippodamie [Hippodamia’s Death] represented an unique stage experiment in its time and one that was hard to repeat, while his chamber or concert melodramas with piano or orchestral accompaniment developed a form that was very much cultivated and enjoyed great popularity throughout the 19th century. In the years 1892-1898 Fibich then wrote several hundred short piano pieces that he arranged and published in ten instalments under the title Nálady, dojmy a upomínky [Moods, Impressions and Reminiscences].

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K. Bendl, A. Dvořák, J. B. Foerster, J. Kaan z Albestů, K. Kovařovic, Z. Fibich (from the left), 1885

Other opera composers who enjoyed success at the time were KAREL ŠEBOR (1843-1903), whose debut opera Templáři na Moravě [The Templars in Moravia] successfully competed with Smetana’s Braniboři [Brandenburgers in Bohemia], and the professor of flute at the Prague Conservatory VILÉM (Wilhelm) BLODEK (1834-1874), who contributed the comic one-acter V studni [In the Well] to the domestic repertoire. KAREL BENDL (1838-1897), a friend of Antonín Dvořák and for two years the choirmaster of the Prague Hlahol choir, was a prolific composer the most successful of whose works were the opera Lejla on a historical-oriental theme and the village comedy Starý ženich [The Old Bridegroom]. JOSEF RICHARD ROZKOŠNÝ (1833-1913) had particular success with his romantic opera Svatojanské proudy [The St. John Rapids] and the fairytale Popelka [Cinderella], while the piano virtuoso and professor (later also director) of the Prague Conservatory JINDŘICH KAAN z ALBESTŮ (HENRI DE KAAN-ALBEST, 1852-1926) attempted, among other things, to produce a musical arrangement of Emile Zola’s novel Germinal. Among younger composers we should mention the harpist and conductor of the National Theatre orchestra KAREL KOVAŘOVIC (1862-1920), who wrote the operas Psohlavci [Dog-Heads] and Na Starém bělidle [At the Old Bleaching Ground] on popular stories by Alois Jirásek and Božena Němcová, and Dvořák’s pupil and later collector of South Bohemian folksongs KAREL WEISS (1862-1944), whose most successful opera Polský žid [The Polish Jew] was premiered at the Prague German Theatre in 1901. In the field of popular dance and marching music, these were years of success for KAREL KOMZÁK senior (1823-1893), whose band played in Prague in 1854-1865 (for a short time the young Antonín Dvořák was a member) and later FRANTIŠEK KMOCH (1848-1912) and JULIUS FUČÍK (1873-1916). Among performers, violinists FERDINAND LAUB (1832-1875) and FRANTIŠEK ONDŘÍČEK (1857-1922), the first performer of the Dvořák Violin Concerto, won international recognition,

as did the cellist HANUŠ WIHAN (1855-1920), to whom Dvořák dedicated his famous Concerto in B Minor. The Brno born WILHELMINE NORMAN-NERUDA (1839-1911), who came from a large family of musicians, became the most famous female violin virtuoso of the latter part of the 19th century and during her long concert career appeared not only throughout Europe, but also in the USA, South Africa and Australia. The singer TEREZIE STOLZOVÁ (TERESA STOLZ, 1834-1902), a close friend of the composer, excelled on Italian stages in the years 1863-79 in the leading roles of the operas of Giuseppe Verdi. For almost half a century the first conductor of the Court Opera in St. Petersburg was the composer and conductor of Czech origin EDUARD NÁPRAVNÍK (1839-1916). At the turn of the 19th/20th century the opera soprano EMMA DESTINNOVÁ (EMMY DESTINN, 1878-1930) and the tenor KAREL (Carl) BURIAN (1870-1924) won worldwide fame, as did the violin virtuoso JAN KUBELÍK (1880-1940).

Czech music theory, aesthetics and criticism also developed strongly in the latter third of the 19th century. The major figure here was the professor at Prague University OTAKAR HOSTINSKÝ (1847-1910), a supporter of Bedřich Smetana and friend of Zdeněk Fibich, the author of numerous reviews and theoretical aesthetic studies of Czech music, and of several opera librettos. The opponents of Hostinský included, for example, FRANTIŠEK PIVODA (1824-1898), whose private singing school produced a number of leading singers on the Czech and international operatic stage.

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Terezie Stolzová

THE TURN OF THE CENTURY AND THE FIRST DECADES OF THE 20TH CENTURY

saw the climax of the developmental trends of the previous period. Czech music culture in the period before the 1st World War was a highly distinctive and rich complex, comparable in quality of composition, representation of genres and kinds and breadth of musical production with the cultures of the major European nations. The events of the war, the disintegration of the Habsburg Empire and the establishment of the First Czechoslovak Republic in October 1918 naturally meant a radical break and fundamental transformation of the institutional framework, but it was one that the overwhelming majority of Czech musicians and public viewed in unambiguously positive terms. There is no doubt that the towering personality of these years was LEOŠ JANÁČEK (3. 7. 1854 Hukvaldy – 12. 8. 1928 Ostrava). He was born in Northern Moravia and studied in Brno, Prague, Leipzig and Vienna. From the beginning of the 1880s he worked in Brno as choirmaster, conductor, professor and director of the local Organ School (which he himself founded on the model of Prague) and as a collector of folksongs. Up to the 1890s he composed relatively little and in the spirit of tradition: Suite for String Orchestra, Lašské tance [Lachian Dances], the operas Šárka (1887, 1925) and Počátek románu [The Beginning of a Romance] (1891), the cantata Amarus (1897) and others. The culminating achievement of this period is his opera Její pastorkyňa, otherwise known as Jenůfa (1894-1903) based on the drama of the same name by the writer Gabriela Preissová, premiered in Brno in 1904, although its performance in Prague had to wait until 1916. From the end of the 19th century Janáček turned to the study of spoken language as the bearer of emotional communication and collected and recorded in note form what he called speech-melodies (nápěvky mluvy), or short extracts of utterances and dialogues in all kinds of speech and life situations, which later formed the starting point for his own specific form of vocally dramatic expression as a composer. He was also distinctive for his love of Russian culture and literature. Janáček produced most of his important work after 1904, when he gave up regular teaching activity. By 1918 he had written the operas Osud [Fate] (1906), Výlety pana Broučka [The Excursions of Mr. Brouček] (1917), the male choral works The Teacher Halfar (1906), Maryčka Magdonova (1907), 70 000 (1909) on words by the Moravian poet Petr Bezruč, the piano works Po zarostlém chodníčku [On an Overgrown Path] (1900-11), V mlhách [In the Mists] (1912)

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Leoš Janáček, c. 1880

and The Sonata 1. X. 1905 (1905), the symphonic ballad Šumařovo dítě [The Fiddler’s Child] (1913) and the three-movement orchestral rhapsody Taras Bulba (1915). After 1918 Janáček achieved international recognition and came to rank with composers more than a generation younger such as Béla Bartók, Igor Stravinsky and Paul Hindemith as the leading representatives of European music between the two world wars. Today he is justly regarded as one of the greatest operatic composers of the 20th century. Among the works of his last creative period we should mention the operas Káťa Kabanová (1921), Příhody Lišky Byxtroušky [The Cunning Little Vixen] (1923), Věc Makropulos [The Makropulos Case] (1925) and Z mrtvého domu [From the House of the Dead] (1928), the male choral work Potulný šílenec [The Wandering Madman] (1922), the song cycle Zápisník zmizelého [The Diary of One who Disappeared] for tenor, alto, female choir and piano (1919); two string quartets (1923, 1928), The Concertino (1925) and Capriccio for piano (1926), Říkadla [Nursery Rhymes] for voice and small instrumental ensemble (1926), Sinfonietta for orchestra (1926) and the great Glagolská mše [Glagolitic Mass] for soloists, choir, orchestra and organ (1926). Janáček’s writings on musical theory, reviews and feuilletons are an important part of his work.

Janáček’s contemporary JOSEF BOHUSLAV FOERSTER (1859-1951), son of the professor at the Organ School, music theorist and choir director at St. Vojtěch’s, JOSEF FÖRSTER (1833-1907), worked in the years 1893-1918 in Hamburg, where he became friends with Gustav Mahler, and later in Vienna. In his extensive output, printed only in part and mainly written in a traditional spirit, what stand out most are his songs on Czech and German texts, including Písně na slova K. H. Máchy [Songs on Words by K.H. Mácha] and Milostné písně na slova R. Thákura [Love Songs on Words by R. Tagore], the male choral pieces on texts by Josef Václav Sládek Oráč [The Ploughman], Polní cestou [Field Path], Velké, širé, rodné lány [Great, Wide, Native Fields] etc., among his symphonies The 4th Symphony in C Minor with the title Veliká noc [Easter] and of his operas Eva, composed on the basis of Gabriela Preissová’s stage play Gazdina roba [The Farmer’s Wench]. Foerster’s memoirs, published in four volumes under the title Poutník [The Pilgrim] are of both literary and documentary value. The two leading figures in the generation of composers born around 1870 were both pupils of Antonín Dvořák. These were Vítězslav Novák and Josef Suk, considered to be protagonists of Czech musical modernism.

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A Diary of One Who Disappeared, authograph

VÍTĚZSLAV NOVÁK (1870-1949) studied not only piano and composition, but also law at Prague University. At the beginning of his career as composer he was strongly influenced by the Romantic tradition. At theend of the 1890s he discovered Moravian and Slovak folk music, and this was reflected in his arrangement of folksongs Slovenské spevy [Slovak Songs] etc., and his compositions on folk texts, but also in his piano Sonata in F Major (Sonata eroica, 1900) and his popular Slovácká suita [Slovácko Suite] for small orchestra (1903). Novák’s best works in the period before the 1st World War include the song cycles Melancholie [Melancholia], Melancholické písně o lásce [Melancholic Songs about Love] (1906) and Údolí nového království [The Valley of the New Kingdom] on texts by the poet Antonín Sova (1903), his Piano Trio in D Minor, String Quartets in G Major and D Major (1899, 1905), piano cycles Písně zimních nocí [Songs of Winter Nights] and Pan – inspired by the novella of the same name by the Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun, the symphonic poems V Tatrách [In the Tatras], O věčné touze [The Eternal Longing] (1904) and Toman a lesní panna [Toman and the Wood Nymph] (1907), the cantatas the Bouře [The Storm] on words by Svatopluk Čech (1908-12) and Svatební košile [The Spectre’s Bride] on the poem by K. J. Erben. Ballet Signorina Gioventù (1926-28) was influenced by avant-garde aesthetics. Of his later works the moststriking is his Jihočeská suita [South Bohemian Suite] for orchestra (1937). For many years a professor at the Prague Conservatory, Vítězslav Novák taught several generations of composers, who came to him not only from the Czech Lands, but from the lands of the former Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Rumania, the Ukraine and elsewhere. JOSEF SUK (1874-1935), for many years a violinist in the Czech Quartet (the first professional Czech quartet, and active 1892-1933), firstbecame a composer under the influence of his teacher and father-in-lawAntonín Dvořák, as is clear, for example, from his popular String Serenade in E flat or early Symphony in E Major. He then developed his own distinctive tone with stage music for Julius Zeyer’s fairytale plays Radúz a Mahulena and Pod jabloní [Under the Apple Tree] (1899 and 1901), the piano cycles Jaro [Spring], O matince [About Mother], Životem a snem [Things Lived and Dreamt] and Ukolébavky [Lullabies], and also Four Pieces for violin and piano, Phantasia in G Minor for violin and orchestra, Fantastic Scherzo for Orchestra, the symphonic poem Praga and especially The Second String Quartet of 1911. Suk’s free cycle of four programmatic symphonies and symphonic poems Asrael (1906, in memory of Antonín Dvořák and Otilie Dvořák-Suk), Pohádka léta [A Summer Tale] (1909), Zrání [Ripening] (1917) and Epilogue (1932) rank among the best European orchestral works of the first third of the 20th century.

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Vítězslsav Novák

Josef Suk, 1906

A fellow student of V. Novák and J. Suk in Dvořák’s composition class, OSKAR NEDBAL (1874-1930) became violist of the Czech Quartet and later a well-known conductor. He also made a name for himself as a composer of ballets including Pohádka o Honzovi [The Tale of Johnnie] (1902), Z pohádky do pohádky [From Tale to Tale] (1908) and the operettas Polská krev [Polish Blood] (1913) and Vinobraní [The Vintage] (1916). OTAKAR OSTRČIL (1879-1935) was a private pupil of Zdeněk Fibich. He worked first as a teacherof foreign languages at secondary school, but then as conductor in the The Town Theatre in Královské Vinohrady and from 1918 to his death as head of the opera at the National Theatre in Prague, where he could take credit not only for the staging of the complete operas of Bedřich Smetana and W. A. Mozart, but also for the Prague premiere of Alban Berg’s opera Wozzeck. The orchestral variations Křížová cesta [Calvary] are among the high points of his work. Among his operas we might mention at least Honzovo království [Johnny’s Kingdom] (1933) based on a tale by Lev Tolstoy, which was Ostrčil’s last work. Of the composers who came to prominence after the First World War, pride of place must go to BOHUSLAV MARTINŮ (8. 12. 1890 Polička - 28. 8. 1959 Liestal by Basel), pupil of Josef Suk and Albert Roussel. He worked first in Prague (for a short time as a violinist in the Czech Philharmonic) and then in Paris in the years 1923-40. The Nazi invasion of France forced him to emigrate to the USA. After the end of the 2nd World War he lived and worked successively in France, Italy and in Switzerland, where he died. After the communist takeover he could never return to his homeland. Bohuslav Martinů’s early works such as the ballet Istar or the cantata Česká rapsodie [Czech Rhapsody], performed with great success at the beginning of 1919, grow out of the late romantic musical tradition. With his arrival in Paris, however, the composer changed direction, influenced by new trends and particularly enchantment with jazz and other expressionsof modern metropolitan civilisation. From the end of the 1920s he then turned to the Neo-Classicism represented by Igor Stravinsky, but also to the sources of Bohemian and Moravian folk song and folk theatre. His work from his American and post-war periods revives and more explicitly develops the legacy of the 19th century (as far as instrumental settings, genres and forms are concerned). Of the more than 400 works of Bohuslav Martinů we should mention the operas Voják a tanečnice [The Soldier and the Dancer] (1927), jazz ballet Kuchyňská revue [The Kitchen Revue] (1927), opera-film Tři přání [Three Wishes] (1929), the sung ballet Špalíček [The Chapbook] (1932) and the opera-ballet Hry o Marii [The Miracles of Mary] (1933-34), Hlas lesa [Voice of the Wood] {1935), famous opera Julietta aneb snář [Julietta or the Book of Dream] on a Surrealist stage play by Georges Neveux (1936-37), Divadlo za bránou [The Theatre behind the Gate] (1937).

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Bohuslav Martinů

Among his major orchestral works we should then mention the six symphonies and particularly the last, which bears the name Fantaisies symphoniques (1953), further Památník Lidicím [Memorial to Lidice] (1943), Fresky Piera della Fransceska [Frescoes of Piero della Francesca] (1953) and Paraboly [The Parables] for large orchestra (1958), as well as the five concertos for piano and orchestra (especially No. 4 – Incantations), the two violin concertos, the two cello concertos and the Concerto for oboe (1955). The most remarkable pieces that he wrote for chamber and smaller ensembles include the seven string quartets, the Concerto grosso and Tre ricercari for string orchestra (1938), and the Double Concerto for two string orchestras, piano and timpani (1938). Martinů’s outstanding achievements in cantata and oratorio include Kytice [Bouquet of Flowers] (1937) on folk poetry, Polní mše [Field Mass] (1939) and in the 1950s Epos Gilgameš [The Epic of Gilgamesh], Proroctví Izaiášovo [The Prophecy of Isaiah] (1959), and the trio of small cantatas Otvírání studánek [The Opening of the Wells], Legenda z dýmu bramborové nati [A Legend of the Smoke from Potato Fires], Romance z pampelišek [The Romance of the Dandelions], and Mikeš z hor [Mikeš from the Mountains] on texts by his compatriot Miloslav Bureš. Further Martinů’s famous operas are The Greek Passion (after the novel by Nikos Kazantzakis, 1954-61 in two versions), and Ariane (again after Georges Neveux), composed in the years 1927-58. The main protagonist of the experimental line in composition in this country was ALOIS HÁBA (1893-1973), who studied in Prague with Vítězslav Novák and in Vienna and Berlin with Franz Schreker. He made a name as the creator and propagator of quarter-tone and sixth-tone music. His main works include the operas Matka [Mother] (1929), Nová země [New Land] (1936) and Přijď království Tvé – Nezaměstnaní [Thy Kingdom Come-Unemployeds] (1942), 13 string quartets and other instrumental pieces. He was apparently inspired to micro-interval composing by the study of Wallachian and Moravian Slovak folksong, he designed and constructed special musical instruments (the four-tone piano etc) and developed a system for the written notation of micro-intervals. Another important composers of this generation included for example LADISLAV VYCPÁLEK (1882-1969), who worked for more than thirty years in the University (today National) Library in Prague, where in 1922 he founded the music section. As a composer he was a student of V. Novák and wrote mainly vocal works with serious spiritual content such as Kantáta o posledních věcech člověka [Cantata on the Last Things of Man] (1921) on Moravian folksong texts, Blahoslavený ten člověk [Blessed Is That Man] (1933) or České rekviem [Czech Requiem] (1940). JAROSLAV KŘIČKA (1882-1969) studied in Prague and in Berlin, and later became well-known primarily as a teacher and choirmaster and the author of songs and other pieces for children. OTAKAR JEREMIÁŠ (1892-1962) made a name as an important conductor and radio worker in the period between the two world wars and as the author of the opera Bratři Karamazovi [The Brothers Karamazov] (1927) based on Dostoyevsky’s famous novel. Another composer closely associated with Czechoslovak radio was KAREL BOLESLAV JIRÁK (1891-1972), who left to live in the USA after the Second World War. PAVEL BOŘKOVEC (1894-1972) was a pupil of Josef Suk and later professor of composition at the Prague Academy of Performing Arts. He composed numerous instrumental works most of them with a Neo-Classical orientation, and of his stage works the ballet Krysař [The Pied Piper] of 1939 is outstanding. Leoš Janáček’s pupil PAVEL HAAS (1899-1944) was imprisoned in Theresienstadt and perished in the Auschwitz extermination camp. A somewhat younger group included IŠA KREJČÍ (1904-1968), son of the philosopher and university professor F. V. Krejčí and a composer whose Neo-Classical musical idiom possessed great individuality and humour. Other representatives of this age group were EMIL FRANTIŠEK BURIAN (1904-1959), who devoted

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himself to experiments in music theatre, and JAROSLAV JEŽEK (1906-1942), well-known as the conductor and composer of songs at the popular Osvobozené divadlo [Liberated Theatre], but who also composed serious works (two string quartets, a Concerto and Fantasia for piano and orchestra, the Sonata for piano and others). VÍTĚZSLAVA KAPRÁLOVÁ (1915-1940), daughter of the composer and music teacher VÁCLAV KAPRÁL (1889-1947), a pupil and intimate friend of Bohuslav Martinů in Paris, was a composer of great promise who died tragically young. The outstanding Czech reputation in the field of orchestral and opera performance owed much to VÁCLAV TALICH (1883-1961), who became famous as a conductor of the works of J. Suk, L. Janáček and B. Martinů, among others, and later KAREL ANČERL (1908-1973), who survived imprisonment in the Theresienstadt Ghetto. Likewise the phenomenal pianist RUDOLF FIRKUŠNÝ (1912-1994), who settled permanently in the USA from 1939, often performed works by Czech composers, above all Bohuslav Martinů. In the same period JARMILA NOVOTNÁ (1907-1994) became a world famous singer. The composer JAROMÍR WEINBERGER (1896-1967) gained an international reputation for his popular folk opera Švanda dudák [Švanda the Bagpiper] (after the fairytale play by J. K. Tyl, 1927). In 1938 he emigrated to the USA, as the highly successful operetta composer RUDOLF FRIML (1879-1972) had done years before him, or the Brno born ERICH WOLFGANG KORNGOLD (1897-1957), who made a career as the composer of film music in Hollywood. Among composers of light and popular music we should mention at least the names of the cabaret singer, actor and director KAREL HAŠLER (1879-1941), who died in a concentration camp, and the composer JAROMÍR VEJVODA (1902-1988), author of the world famous melody Škoda ásky [Rosamunde or the Beer Barrels-Polka] (1934). Up to the outbreak of the 2nd World War, German musical culture in Bohemia also produced notable composers and performers. Its central institution was the Prague German Opera, which particularly in the twenty-five years when it was directedby ANGELO NEUMANN (1838-1910) could boast excellent performers and a vibrant repertoire. In the 1885-1886 season the young GUSTAV MAHLER (1860-1911) worked here as conductor after a short engagement in Olomouc. After Neumann’s death, ALEXANDER VON ZEMLINSKY (1872-1941) came to Prague and was later engaged as director of the opera and professor at the German music academy in the years 1911-1927. In 1924 he directed the world premiere of his Lyrical Symphony on texts by R. Tagore here, and the opera monodrama Erwartung by his friend Arnold Schönberg. He was later to go to Berlin and in 1938 into emigration in the USA. Many talented Bohemian German composers and musicians who did not manage to emigrate in time perished in Nazi extermination camps. They included ERWIN SCHULHOFF (1893-1942), PAVEL HAAS (1899-1944), VIKTOR ULLMANN (1898-1944), HANS KRASA (1899-1944) and GIDEON KLEIN (1919-1945).

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Hans Krása

CZECH MUSIC FROM 1945 TO THE PRESENT

The Post-war Years and the Fifties

The immediate post-war years (1945-1948) saw a great deal of musical activity and many fundamental changes. Contacts were re-established with the outside world, new musical institutions were founded and old institutions were transformed. In October 1945 The Czech Philharmonic became a state institution, new symphony orchestras were formed (e.g. The Moravian Philharmonic) and new opera companies were established in former German theatres (Ústí nad Labem, Liberec, Opava). In 1946 the international Prague Spring Festival, the brainchild of R.Kubelík, was held for the first time. The music of Shostakovich, Prokofiev,Stravinsky, Honegger, Messiaen, Britten, Bartók, Hindemith and other modern composers was played in Bohemia, and leading artists who came to perform in the country included the conductor Charles Munch, the violinist David Oistrakh and Leonard Bernstein. Czech music was played at festivals abroad. Many works written in reaction to the German occupation were now premiered, for example Májová symfonie [May Symphony] (1939-43) by VÍTĚZSLAV NOVÁK (1870-1949), České rekviem [Czech Requiem] (1940) by LADISLAV VYCPÁLEK (1882-1969) or the Symfonie svobody [Symphony of Liberty] (1940-41) by ERWIN SCHULHOFF (1894-1942). Among the younger generation MILOSLAV KABELÁČ (1908-1979) caught public attention with his chamber cantata Neustupujte [Do not retreat] (1939). Film music developed rapidly as a genre. The most notable stage and filmmusic composers of the time were VÁCLAV TROJAN (1907-1983), who from 1945 worked mainly with the artist-animator Jiří Trnka and won various prizes in the genre (e.g. with the music for the fairytale filmBajaja in 1950, Sen noci svatojánské [A Midsummer Night’s Dream], 1960) and JIŘÍ SRNKA (1907-1982), who had been active in the Thirties and wrote the music for more than a hundred and twenty films (Řeka čaruje [The River Bewitches], 1945, Měsíc nad řekou [Moon over the River], 1953, Vlčí jáma [The Wolf Pit], 1957 Občan Brych [Citizen Brych] 1958).

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Miloslav Kabeláč

The communist takeover in February 1948 meant another sharp change for Czech musical life. The theories of the Stalinist ideologue A. A. Zhdanov became official doctrine in the arts and control overnew music and its performance was soon handed over to the centralised Union of Czechoslovak Composers. The “Zhdanovites” raged against “formalism, subjectivism and cosmopolitanism”, and initially regarded not just “Western Modernism”, but Leoš Janáček, Bohuslav Martinů and Alois Hába as thorns in their side. They called for a return to traditional national values, above all to the work of Bedřich Smetana, and demanded “socially engaged themes”. The cantata and mass song became prominent musical genres. The leading proponents of Zhdanovite aesthetics were the musicologist Antonín Sychra, the music critic Miroslav Barvík and composers JOSEF STANISLAV (1897-1971), JAN SEIDEL (1908-1998; e.g. the mass song Kupředu, zpátky ni krok [Forward, not a Step Backwards]) and VÁCLAV DOBIÁŠ (1909-1978), the composer of the cantata Buduj vlast, posílíš mír [Build the Homeland and You will Strengthen Peace] (1950) and the nonet O rodné zemi [Oh, Native Land] (1952), but also Sonatas for Piano, Strings, Wind Quintet and Tympani (1947), which was regarded in the Fifties as a “concession” to modernism. In the background, however, works were being written by composers who refused to tow the officialline. ALOIS HÁBA (1893-1973) continued to compose his microtonal and twelve-tone music (e.g. Concerto for Violin and Orchestra Op. 83, string quartets), while Miloslav Kabeláč carried on with the development of his highly individual musical idiom, founded on a strict attention to structure (Mysterium času [The Mystery of Time, 3rd and 4th Symphonies). KLEMENT SLAVICKÝ (1910-1999) drew on Moravian folklore (Moravské taneční fantasie [Moravian Dance Fantasies], Rapsodické variace [Rhapsodic Variations]) in his music and JAROSLAV DOUBRAVA (1909-1960) used similar sources. JAN HANUŠ (1915-2004) composed highly expressive stage and symphonic music and liturgical pieces for use in church. In the later Fifties the work of the younger generation showed the increasing influence of Neo-Classicism, clear for example in the music of ILJA HURNÍK (*1922), VIKTOR KALABIS (*1923), JINDŘICH FELD (*1925), or LUBOR BÁRTA (1928-1972). One reason was undoubtedly the fact that at this period the leading Czech pre-war representatives of Neo-Classicism were still active: they were IŠA KREJČÍ (1904-1968) and PAVEL BOŘKOVEC (1894-1972), who as a professor at the Prague Academy of Performing Arts educated several generations of pupils. The music of BOHUSLAV MARTINŮ (1890-1959) was also a source of inspiration. For a short time the Brno composer JAN NOVÁK (1921-1984) was a pupil of Martinů. The crowning work of this period is considered to be Vokální symfonie [The Vocal Symphony] (1958) by VLADIMÍR SOMMER (1921-1997) on texts by F. Kafka, F. M. Dostoyevsky and C. Pavese.

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Vladimír Sommer

The Sixties

After the mild political thaw at the end of the Fifties, information about the new trends in western post-war music began to get through to Czechoslovakia. Debates about the compositional techniques of what was known as the “the New Music“, and above all twelve-tone and serial music, initially took place on a purely theoretical level. New specialised chamber groups were needed if people were actually to have the chance to hear specific pieces. Over the Fifties only The Novák Quartet (up to 1955 The Hába Quartet) attempted to keep up with world trends, but the beginning of the Sixties saw the founding in Prague of the wind Chamber Harmonic led by conductor Libor Pešek and much of its repertoire written by Jan Klusák. A little later came Musica viva Pragensis, an instrumentally variable ensemble led by Milan Kostohryz. It was associated with the circle of composers Jan Rychlík, Zbyněk Vostřák, Vladimír Šrámek and Marek Kopelent, and also played music composed by its own flautist Petr Kotík and bassoonist Rudolf Komorous. In Brno the Musica Nova group emerged, whose founder, bass clarinettist Josef Horák, later moved to Prague where he founded the Sonatori di Praga ensemble and then the duo Due Bohemi di Praga . Brno was also the home of Studio autorů [The Studio of Authors]. Composers‘ groups were formed. Brno Skupina A [The Group A] brought together the composers Josefa Berg, Miloslav Ištvan, Alois Piňos, the musicologist Milena Černohorská and others, and Pražská Skupina Nové hudby [The Prague New Music Group] included the composers Marek Kopelent, Rudolf Komorous, Vladimír Šrámek and Zbyněk Vostřák and the theoreticians Vladimír Lébl, Eduard Herzog and Josef Bek. Communications with the outside world continued to improve – Czech composers attended the Warsaw Autumn Festival and went to Darmstadt, while guests in Czechoslovakia included Olivier Messiaen, Luigi Nono, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Pierre Schaeffer.

In the course of the Sixties composers of the young, middle and older generation gradually came to understand the impulses of the New Music, but the influence was expressed in their music in variousdifferent ways. Some were inspired to a radical stylistic transformation (Zbyněk Vostřák), others used the new composing techniques to enrich personal musical idioms that they had already refined (Jindřich Feld), while yet others were only glancingly touched by the movement (Ilja Hurník).

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The Prague New Music Group: Marek Kopelent, Rudolf Komorous, Vladimír Lébl, Josef Bek, Zbyněk Vostřák, Eduard Herzog, Vladimír Šrámek (from the left)

One of the first to apply the principles of the twelve-tone scale and serialismwas JAN KLUSÁK (*1934). While still a student Klusák had attracted attention with a series of pieces in Neo-Classicist style, but this creative phase ended in 1959 with his 3rd Symphony and in 1960 Klusák wrote his first piece influenced by the NewMusic - Čtyři malá hlasová cvičení [Four Small Voice Exercises] on texts by Franz Kafka. This was soon followed by Klusák’s most important work of this period, the orchestral Variations on a Theme of Gustav Mahler (1962), in which he varied the Adagietto from Mahler’s Fifth Symphony using serial technique. In his Inventions Klusák elaborated the idea of a one-movement serial form as a sound monolith with the maximum density of internal relationships. An interest in astrology and magic also played an important role in the development of Klusák’s composing techniques. MAREK KOPELENT (*1932) initially composed in Neo-Romantic style, but at the beginning of the Sixties he turned to twelve-tone music and serialism. His first piece to reflect these new influences was the freely dodecaphonic Nénie s flétnou za zemřelou Hanu Hlavsovou [Nenie with Flute for the Late Hana Hlavsová] (1961), but in the composer’s view his first genuine work in the new mode wasthe 3rd String Quartet (1963). This combines serial technique with the principles of classic drama, and was performed abroad by The Novák Quartet. Kopelent also wrote a series of vocal pieces in which he explored the acoustic quality of the word (Snehah, 1967). The bassoonist and composer RUDOLF KOMOROUS (*1931) had already leant towards the avant-garde in the Fifties, when he had been part of the group of mainly visual artists, “Šmidrs”, that developed the “poetics of strangeness“ under the influence of Dada. This tendency was reflected in his music as well,which has more affinity with John Cage and American experimental music than to the European avant-garde. Komorous worked with concrete sounds, unconventional musical instruments (water nightingale, mass bells, castanets and suchlike) and silence played a major role in his pieces (e.g. Sladká královna [Sweet Queen], 1963). Another who was attracted to experiment and Cage was the composer and flautist PETR KOTÍK (*1942), leader of the performance-art orientated QUAX Ensemble (1966-69). LUBOŠ FIŠER (1935-1999) found inspiration in the music of Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Martinů, and was influenced by aleatoric and timbre music developedby what was known as the “Polish School” (Lutosławski, Penderecki and others). He used concise forms with a reduction in the tone material. His best works of the period are the chamber opera Lancelot (1960), the orchestral Patnáct listů podle Dürerovy Apokalypsy [Fifteen Prints Based on Dürer’s Apocalypse], which won prizes in the Prague Spring and UNESCO competitions (1965), and the choral Caprichos (1966). Fišer composed for film as well as for the concert hall – he has written more than 300 film scores, some of them integral to the whole cinematopgraphic concept(Bludiště noci [Labyrinth of Night], Dotek Motýla [The Butterfly Touch] etc.).

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Jan Klusák

Marek Kopelent

Luboš Fišer

Several composers of the middle generation also made basic changes to their musical language under the influence of the New Music. Up to the beginningof the Sixties ZBYNĚK VOSTŘÁK (1920-1985) had been a successful composer of ballets and operas in the Late Romantic and Neo-Classicist style, but around his fortieth year he radically changed his entire idiom. He tried out a series of New Music techniques – serial composition (Kyvadlo času [The Pendulum of Time], 1966-67), aleatorics (Metahudba [Meta-Music, 1968), conceptual music (Kniha principů [The Book of Principles], 1973) and electronic music (Váhy světla [Scales of Light], 1967, Dvě ohniska [Two Foci], 1970). The unifying principle of Vostřák’s compositional style was his own special method of organising contrast within a composition.

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Zbyněk Vostřák - Kyvadlo času / The Pendulum of Time, autograph, 1966-67

Zbyněk Vostřák

JAN RYCHLÍK (1916-1964) was a very versatile figure and from the beginning his musical range includednot only classical music but also jazz, to which he devoted himself as a drummer, arranger, composer and theoretician. For Rychlík, interest in New Music was connected with his long years of fascination with non-European and Medieval music, as is reflected in his best-known composition Africký cyklus [African Cycle] (1961), which seems to prefigure the Steve Reich’s Minimalist pieces of the Seventies. New Music in the Sixties also had a major impact on JAN KAPR (1914-1988), a composer who had succumbed to the influence of Socialist Realism in the Fortiesand Fifties. Inspired by the techniques of the New Music, Kapr began to devote more attention on sound colour and seek out new possibilities in musical instruments and the human voice (Cvičení pro Gydli [ Exercises for Gidli], 1967). The composer and musicologist JARMIL BURGHAUSER (1921-1997) created his own composition technique, which he called “harmonic serialism” and employed together with the principles of aleatorics in his “anti-opera”, Most [Bridge] (1964). The impulses of New Music were also taken up by the young Brno composers. As a student MILOSLAV IŠTVAN (1928-1990) admired Janáček and Bartók and studied Moravian, and later also Balkan, Asian and African folklore. At the beginning of the sixties he adopted twelve-tone technique, but modal series associated with Moravian folk music still dominated his work. In his vocal compositions Zaklínání času [Putting a Spell on Time] (1967) a Já, Jakob [I, Jacob] (1968) Ištvan developed the method of cutting and montage that became the distinctive feature of his work. It allowed Ištvan to juxtapose all kinds of different musical material, from Renaissance and Baroque music to rock. He was also the author of concrete music (e.g. Ostrov hraček [Island of Toys], 1968). ALOIS PIŇOS (*1925) developed his own system for the rational organisation of tone material and pioneered team composition in this country – together with ARNOŠT PARSCH (*1936), RUDOLF RŮŽIČKA (*1941) and MILOŠ ŠTĚDROŇ (*1942). He composed the pieces Peripetie [Peripetia], Divertissement and Ecce homo. He also produced multimedia work (Statická hudba [Static Music], Mříže [Grille], Geneze [Genesis]) and happenings. He is the author of many theoretical studies. JOSEF BERG (1927-1971) was a multitalented artist, with interests in literature and theatre as well as music. He is known primarily as the composer of highly individual chamber operas, including Evropská turistika [European Tourism] (1963), Eufrides před branami Tymén [Euphrides before the Gates of Tymen] (1964) and the unfinished magnum opus Johannes Doctor Faustus. From the mid sixties, electro-acoustic music was taken up and developed in Czechoslovakia. It was mainly on the initiative of Miloslav Kabeláč, Eduard Herzog and Vladimír Lébl that a specialised studio was set up at the Plzeň Radio (1965), and seminars were organised involving important figuresfrom abroad (Pierre Schaeffer, G. M. Koenig etc.). Kabeláč’s E fontibus bohemicis (1965-72) may be regarded as the high point of this kind of music in the period, but the electronic opera Nevěstka Raab [The Harlot Raab] (1971) by JAROSLAV KRČEK (*1939) is also a remarkable piece. Other founders of Czech electro-acoustic music included the composer RUDOLF RŮŽIČKA (*1941): Elektronia A, 1964, Gurges, 1969, MILOŠ HAASE (*1948): Pocta A. Dürerovi [In Honour of A. Dürer], 1968, Per aspera ad astra, 1969, and MILOSLAV HLAVÁČ (*1923): Logogenesis, 1968, Astroepos, 1969, Chimerion, 1969. Jaroslav Krček, a pupil

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Jan Kapr

Miloslav Ištvan

of M. Kabeláč, is also a specialist on research into folk music and its stylisation, which he successfully presented with two ensembles, Chorea bohemica and Musica bohemica. Apart from work orientated to the New Music, more traditional, expansively tonal compositions continued to be written in the sixties, and in quantitative terms these predominated in musical life. Certain symphonic works of the time are particularly effective, for example the cantatas of SVATOPLUK HAVELKA (*1925) Chvála světla [In Praise of Light] (1959), Heptameron (1963) or Variace na téma a smrt Jana Rychlíka [Variations on a Theme and the Death of Jan Rychlík] by OTMAR MÁCHA (*1922). PETR EBEN (*1929), for whom early sacred music, especially Gregorian chant, is a central source of inspiration, took his own path. Among his most important works of this period are the oratorio Apologia Socratus (1967) on a text by Plato and the symphonic movement for three trumpets and orchestra Vox clamantis (1969). Eben is also a highly respected organist and improviser. His organ pieces became favourites with performers (Nedělní hudba [Sunday Music], Okna [Windows], Job, and others). It was in the sixties that Miloslav Kabeláč, one of the greatest figures in Czech music of the later20th century, wrote his best works. Kabeláč’s music always took its place within the context of the most recent movements in world music and the new composing techniques arriving from the West were not so much a surprise to him as a confirmation of his own direction to date (Zrcadlení [Mirroring], 1963-64). Kabeláč had a long-term interest in non-European music and this left traces in both his way of working with modes (Ohlasy dálav [Echoes of remoteness], 1962-63, Eufemias Mysterion, 1964-65), and in his works for solo percussion (Otto invenzioni, 1962). The word was also acquiring every greater weight in his compositions (7th and 8th Symphonies, 1967-68 /1969-70).

The Seventies and Eighties

The events of 1968 had a huge impact on the next two decades of Czech music. A number of important figures in Czech culture emigrated, among them the composers Jan Novák (Denmark, Italy, West Germany) and Rudolf Komorous, who became a leading teacher of composition and theory in Canada (at institutions including the University of Victoria). Petr Kotík left for the USA, where he founded the S.E.M. Ensemble specialising in American experimental music (Cage, Feldman, Wolff, Brown etc.). KAREL HUSA (*1921), who had already emigrated to the United States after his studies in Paris back in the fifties,now wrote Music for Prague 1968 as a response to the Warsaw Pact invasion, and it became one of the most frequently performed American symphonic works of all time. Many composers who stayed were hit hard by what was euphemistically called the “normalisation” of political conditions. Jan Klusák, for example, whose concert music was banned from performance, had to fall back on commissions for film and television to make a living, the works of Marek Kopelent were playedmore or less only abroad, while Zbyněk Vostřák, like many other composers, writes his most mature works in complete isolation. The Union of Composers in Bohemia and Moravia was dissolved and re-founded with just a handful of conformists. Here the determining factor was political attitude, since unlike in the Fifties there was no major pressure on the style of art. This meant that even some composers who had adopted techniques from the New Music could go on working officially, and representing this kind of music at festivals abroad

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(VÁCLAV KUČERA, *1929, JAN TAUSINGER, 1921-1980, LADISLAV KUBÍK *1946). For many composers the Seventies and Eighties were a period of synthesis of musical techniques very much in the service of messages from outside music as such. These decades saw the culminating works of composers born around the beginning of the 20th century. KLEMENT SLAVICKÝ (1910-1999), for example, wrote his 4th Symphonietta “Pax hominibus in universo orbi” for strings, keyboard and percussion instruments, soprano solo, recitation and organ (1984) dedicated to the 40th anniversary of the founding of the UN, while Jan Kapr composed, among other pieces, his 8th Symphony “Campanae Pragenses” for mixed choir (on the texts of the inscriptions on Prague bells), large orchestra and tape of bells (1971-77). Composers of the middle generation also wrote significant works – Petr Eben: the cantata Pocta Karlu IV [In Honour of Charles IV], the ballet Kletby a dobrořečení [Curses and Benedictions]. Svatopluk Havelka: the symphonic fantasia Hommage à Hieronymus Bosch and others or Luboš Fišer: Nářek nad zkázou města Ur [Lamentations over the Destruction of the Town of Ur], the television opera Věčný Faust [Eternal Faust] and others. The Seventies saw a new generation of composers, born during the war and in the first post-war years, come strongly to the fore. The women-composer IVANALOUDOVÁ (*1941) who had studied with Olivier Messiaen in Paris, wrote music influenced by the „Polish School“ (Spleen, 1971), and by further trends in the New Music. Percussion often plays a major role in her orchestral and concertante pieces (Hymnos, 1972) and work with the human voice is also a significant element in hermusic (Italský triptych [Italian Triptych], 1980, series of choral works for children). Instrumental music predominates in the work of MILAN SLAVICKÝ (*1947), son of the composer Klement Slavický. From the beginning of the seventies Slavický developed a method of fixed interval selection combined with the principleof thematic continuities inside a piece and strove for the maximum emotional impact - Prosvětlení IV [Illumination IV], Dialogy s tichem [Dialogues with Silence]. This generation also included IVAN KURZ (*1947): Nakloněná rovina [Tilted Surface], JAROSLAV RYBÁŘ (*1942) and VÁCLAV RIEDLBAUCH (*1947). While harshly repressive “normalisation” conditions were in force at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague in the seventies, the atmosphere at the Janáček Academy of Performing Arts in Brno was a great deal freer. Even in these years Miloslav Ištvan and Alois Piňos were allowed to teach in Brno, and they trained notable students in a spirit that has led people to speak of a “Brno School of Composers”. A number of students from Prague even commuted to Brno, for example Petr Kofroň, later to be the main protagonist of the Agon Ensemble. One of those to study in Brno and then to work there was Alois Piňos’s pupil PETER GRAHAM (*1952, real name JAROSLAV ŠŤASTNÝ-POKORNÝ). Graham is a unique phenomenon on the Czech music scene. Rather than focussing on the formulation of a distinctive composition style of his own, he sensitively takes up and internalising many different kinds of musical impulses (from classical music, jazz, non-European music). He is less interested in the finished outcome of composing than in the process of search - and is an expert on the work of John Cage. His most successful works include a chamber symphony with a naivistic text Bosé nožky [Bare Feet] (1986-92).

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Ivana Loudová

Peter Graham

Graham held views similar to those of the circle of composers who came together in the mid-eighties around the newly founded Agon Ensemble. It was thanks to Agon that Czech audiences had a chance to hear works of the American avant-garde otherwise never played here (Cage, Feldman) and European and Czech New Music (Varèse, Berio, Scelsi, Vostřák, Kopelent). The ensemble also naturally played pieces by its “in-house” composers Martin Smolka and Petra Kofroň. PETR KOFROŇ (*1955) initially composed tranquil, nostalgic pieces in the spirit of what was known as the “new simplicity” (Valčík na rozloučenou [Parting Waltz], 1977, Růžový pokoj [The Rose Room], 1977-78), but moved towards sharp even aggressive sound and Minimalism (Alfa a Kentaur [Apha and Centauri], 1988-89 and others). Today he devotes himself mainly to conducting. The music of MARTIN SMOLKA (*1959) takes impulses from European New Music (Netopýr [The Bat], 1990) and American Minimalism (Slzy [Tears], 1983), but is also informed by a lyricism derived from the heritage of Romanticism (Hudba hudbička [Music Little Music], 1985). Smolka also likes to work with unusual instruments and unconventional forms of play (Hudba pro přeladěné nástroje [Music for Retuned Instruments], 1988) and with period quotations. Before the revolution of 1989 Agon represented an island of free performance of music, but in the context of the musical life of the time it was still marginal. It could only develop its activities fully after November 1989.

Post 1989

“The Velvet Revolution” of November 1989 meant the beginning of a new era in contemporary Czech music. First and foremost its institutional basis was transformed. In February 1990 the hitherto hegemonic Union of Composers was dissolved to be replaced by the Association of Musical Artists and Scientists which is the umbrella for many smaller organisations. Societies that had been dissolved under the communist regime were revived – the Umělecká beseda [Arts Association] (founded 1863) and Přítomnost [Presence] founded 1924, and new association were established, such as Ateliér 90 and Společnost pro elektroakustickou hudbu [The Society for Electro-Acoustic Music]. New ensembles focusing on the performance of new music were founded alongside the ever popular Agon. In Prague they notably included the ensemble MoEns (earlier the Mondschein Ensemble) , and in Brno the percussion ensemble Dama Dama and Ars Incognita. There were changes at the music academies as composers previously barred from them came to teach. Marek Kopelent, Svatopluk Havelka, Ivana Loudová and Milan Slavický, for example, started to teach at the Prague Academy of Performing Arts. New composition courses and competitions were initiated. In 1996 Marek Kopelent instigated the International Summer Courses for Students of Composition Český Krumlov which annually invites important composers from abroad (Sofia Gubaidulina, Vinko Globokar, Sigmund Krauze), while since 2001 the Ostrava New Music Days have been held every two years, organised by the composer Petr Kotík, and led by composers such as Christian Wolff or Alvin Lucier. The international competition in electro-acoustic music, Musica Nova, originally founded in 1969, has been revived and is today a prestigious event. Musical life has also been enriched by new festivals of contemporary music. The Marathon of New Music takes place

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regularly in Prague, The Exposition of New Music is a major annual event in Brno, and Kroměříž is now home to The Forfest Festival focused on contemporary spiritual music. Composers who had made a name for themselves in the Sixties have now had the chance to present their larger-scale works. For example in 2001 Marek Kopelent presented his major spatial oratorio Lux mirandae sanctitatis (1994) for soprano, recitation, mixed choir, children’s choir, and instrumental ensemble, the National Theatre has staged Jan Klusák’s two opera Zpráva pro akademii [Report for the Academy] (1997) and Bertram and Mescalinda (2002) and Petr Eben’s opera Jeremiáš [Jeremiah] (1996-97) based on a story by Stefan Zweig, was premiered at the Prague Spring Festival. Alois Piňos has also been active, and since 1989 has returned to collective composing (Anály avantgardy [Annals of the Avant Garde], with Miloš Štědroň and Ivo Medek). His 3rd String Quartet (1993) and composition for chamber ensemble Stella Matutina (1999) won considerable acclaim and earned him two Classic Prizes for the best work of the year. Milan Slavický has written several new pieces as commissions for Czech and foreign ensembles. They include Porta coeli for large orchestra (1991), Dvě kapitoly z Apokalypsy [Two Chapters from the Apocalypse] for large orchestra (1995) and Ich dien’ for chamber orchestra (1995). Peter Graham has continued to seek out and explore all kinds of musical spaces, and his chamber music on a text by Franz Kafka, Der Erste (1993), has attracted particular attention. The music of Martin Smolka, now clearly one of the best-known contemporary Czech composers abroad, has been heard in international concert halls (Déšť, nějaké okno, střechy, komíny, holubi a tak… a taky železniční mosty [Rain, a window, roofs, chimneys, pigeons and so on… and railway-bridges, too], 1992, Rent a Ricercar, 1993-95, Euphorium, 1996 ad.) The work of composers who have started their careers since 1989 is very diverse in style. Among composers close to the Agon Ensemble what is evident is the influence of American Minimalism and an attempt to link up the techniques of contemporary classical music with the expressive immediacy of rock and jazz. The most prominent of these composers is definitely MICHAL NEJTEK (1977), author of the successful chamber opera Dementia Praecox (2001) and many chamber pieces (e.g. Sestup na hlubinu ticha [Descent to the depth of silence] (1999). In recent years he has obtained several important commissions from abroad – he wrote Distress Sonata for orchestra and video-projection (2001-02) for the Warsaw Autumn Festival, and Osten do těla [Thorn into the flesh] for trombone, cello and percussion (2002) for the Donaueschinger Musiktage. A similar stylistic orientation can be observed in the music of MARKO IVANOVIĆ (*1976) and ROMAN PALLAS (*1978). VÍT ZOUHAR (*1966) combines the techniques of Minimalism with stylistic mimicry of Classicist music (Blízká setkání zběsilostí srdce [Close Encounters of the Heart's Frenzies], 1993) and Baroque rhetorical figuresand cadences (the opera Coronide, 2000). In the same way TOMÁŠ HANZLÍK (*1972) embodies the results of his own researches in the Baroque in Minimalist Neo-Baroque style (for example in the opera Yta innocens, (2003). Some composers have an affinity to the traditions of the New Music, for example MARTIN MAREK (*1956), who has returned to composing after a twelve-year career as a cellist (e.g. with Cosciette di Roncole alla Luigi Galvani, 1999), and Marek Kopelent’s pupils SYLVA SMEJKALOVÁ (*1974) and ROMAN Z. NOVÁK (*1967). KRYŠTOF MAŘATKA (1972) lives and works in France. His compositions are chiselled in their acoustic detail, and demand brilliant instrumental technique, In his piano quartet Exaltum (1998), for example, Mařatka exploits play on the strings of the piano and micro-interval focussing of the intonation, and in his piece for solo cello Voja Cello (1999) inspired by Roma culture he retunes the cello strings to get closer

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to the modal world of gypsy music. ONDŘEJ ADÁMEK (*1979) and MIROSLAV SRNKA (*1975) also have strong French connections. MICHAL RATAJ (*1975) specialises in electro-acoustic music, and focuses on music for radio, known as radiophonics. Among the youngest generation we find several notable women composers. Young women composersin Brno have got together in the group Hudbaby [Musicrones], that includes KATEŘINA RŮŽIČKOVÁ (*1975) and MARKÉTA DVOŘÁKOVÁ (*1977), who not only composes (e.g. Žirafí opera [Giraffe Opera], 2002), but also engages in multimedia and free improvisation. In Prague PETRA GAVLASOVÁ (*1976) is a composer whose career is developing promisingly.

THE HISTORY OF CZECH OPERA

Opera in the Bohemian Lands up to the Beginning of the 19th Century

Opera reached the Bohemian Lands from Italy quite early, in the period when the genre was just crystallising at the beginning of the 17th century. Celebrations held by the royal court for important state events, coronations, weddings and land diets provided the main opportunities for the presentation of pieces composed and staged in the new style. The actors would be artists and musicians in the service of the court, professional theatrical companies touring from their native Italy in Transalpine Europe, and members of the local aristocracy. The productions presented in Prague in the 17th and 18th centuries are considered major events in European musical and theatrical history. At a time when the Imperial Court was visiting Prague for a lengthy stay associated with the forthcoming coronation of Ferdinand II as King of Bohemia, a performance of Phasma Dionysiacum Pragense was staged at Prague Castle as part of the Shrovetide cycle of court festivities on the 5th of February 1617. This is the earliest known fully documented musical-dramatic production not only in the capital city of the Kingdom of Bohemia, but at the Habsburg Court in general. Ten years later, on the 25th of November 1627, a performance of the opera La transformatione di Calisto with stage design

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František Antonín Špork

by the celebrated Italian architect Giovanni Pieroni was presented in the Vladislav Hall of Prague Castle on the orders of Eleonora Gonzago, second wife of Ferdinand II., for the royal coronation of Ferdinand III. For this occasion the new musical dramatic style was also presented in Prague by the Comedia dell’arte company, The Comici Fedeli Giovanni Battista Andreini, which had influential patrons in the Bohemian Lands(for example Cardinal Arnošt Vojtěch Harrach). Two operas by the imperial composer and kapellmeister Antonio Draghi were performed in Prague in 1680, when the court was staying there in fear of a plague epidemic (the three-act scherzo dramatico per musica La patienza di Socrate con due mogli and the one-act festa teatrale I vaticinj di Tiresia tebano were produced with stage design by Lodovico Burnacini). The Prague production of court composer Johann Joseph Fux‘s Costanza e Fortezza, presented for the coronation of the Emperor Charles VI. as King of Bohemia in 1723, was considered by the newsletters of the period to be a quite extraordinary event. Under the direction of the theatre architect Giuseppe Galli-Bibiena a special open-air theatre was built for the occasion for 4000 viewers with costly decor and advanced special effects. It involved more than 300 performers, including the best European singers and musicians, and undoubtedly contributed to the process by which Italian opera took root in the Bohemian Lands. Also at the time of the coronation, Tomaso Ristori’s comedia dell’arte company appeared in the Manhart House in the Old Town, presenting a play with music by Giovanni Alberto Ristori - Das grosse steinerne Gastmahl, it was the beginning of what was later to become a Prague tradition of operas with a Don Juan theme. The nobility resident in the Bohemian Lands had already been interested in theatre in the 17th century. We have records of Italian musicians and a dance master employed from the beginning of the century in the Kroměříž episcopal seat of Cardinal Franz Dietrichstein, while in 1686 the opera patron Johann Christian Eggenberg had a special theatre built at Český Krumlov (preserved to this day in its renovated form of the 1780s), and on behalf of Josef Adam Schwarzenberg, in 1698 Heřman Jakub Černín of Chudenice 1698 planned to build an opera house in Prague. Regular opera productions, however, were a feature that started only from the 1720s, first in noble residences and later in town theatres as well. The interest of the Prague public in opera as early as the beginning of the 18th century can be documented in the activities of the Music Academy, founded by the Prague burghers in 1713 and supported by Count Ludwig Joseph Hartig. These included performances of arrangements of parts of operas (e.g. by J. B. Lully and G. H. Stölzel). From the beginning of the 1720s Jan Adam Questenberg built up an opera in his seat in Jaroměřice nad Rokytnou, using musically gifted servants and other inhabitants of the village as performers. Here in 1730 he staged the first known opera by a Czech composer (sung in Italian):this was L’ origine di Jaromeriz in Moravia by his kapellmeister František Václav Míča, and later it was performed in Czech as well. Opera was also cultivated by Cardinal Wolfgang Hannibal Schrattenbach in Kroměříž and in Vyškov, František Antonín Rottal in Holešov, the Bishop of Breslau Philipp Schaffgotsch at the Chateau of Jánský Vrch by Javorník in Silesia, who employed Karel Ditters von Dittersdorf as capelmeister and composer, and at the end of the 18th century Prince Franz Joseph Maximilian Lobkowitz in Roudnice nad Labem and in Jezeří. Thanks to regular opera productions by professional companies with repertoires fed by Italian theatre and accessible to broader sections of the urban population, a large opera public gradually developed from the 1720s. The Prague impressarios gradually expanded their operations to other centres (Dresden, Leipzig, Braunschweig, Hamburg) and the metropolis of the Bohemian Kingdom this came to function as an

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important crossroads of repertoire, its composers and performers. The first Prague opera entrepreneur was Giovanni Federico Sartorio (1702-1705) in the Lesser Town,followed in 1724 by the Peruzzis father and son, who engaged the Venetian tenor Antonio Denzio and also obtained the patronage of Count František Antonín Špork, who allowed them to appear regularly at his country seat in Kuks and in Prague, where he had his own theatre in the garden of his palace in the New Town modified for the opera. Denzio soon took over direction of the company, worked here uninterruptedly from1724 to 34 and on behalf of the company exploited his personal contacts with Antonio Vivaldi, whose operas he presented. Other opera impressarios in the Bohemian Lands included, for example Angelo Mingotti, who started in 1732 in Brno (from the autumn of 1733 he was playing in the New Town Theatre on the Cabbage Market) , his brother Pietro Mingotti, Filippo Neri del Fantasia, Santo Lapis, who in 1739 launched his newly established Prague City Theatre v Kotcích, Giovanni Battista Locatelli (Christoph Willibald Gluck worked in Prague as his kapellmeister and presented his operas Ezio and Issipile here), Gaetano Molinari and Giuseppe Bustelli, who presented operas by Mysliveček, staged two Italian operas by the local composer Johann Anton Koželuh and was the last opera impresario at the Theatre “v Kotcích” up to 1781. In the new theatre built by František Antonín Nostitz, which opened in 1783 The Estates Theatre (it was sold to the Bohemian Estates in 1798), the first impresario was Pasquale Bondini (1784-88, also in theThun Theatre in the Lesser Town) followed by Domenico Guardasoni, after whose death the Italian opera company was dissolved (1807). The works of Mozart were milestones in the operatic history of Prague, and found a well-educated public to receive them. The first to be staged here were the singspiel Die Entführung aus dem Serail [Abduct from Serail] (1783 the German company of Karl Wahr) and opera Le nozze di Figaro [Figaro´s Wedding] (1786 Bondini’s opera company). Bondini and Guardasoni presented the world premieres of Don Giovanni (1787) and Titus (1791), both written for Prague. Soon other works were presented both in the original and translations, and taken beyond the frontiers of the Bohemian Lands by touring companies (e.g. Václav Mihule‘ company). The first in Czech translation was Kouzelná flétna [The Magic Flute] at the Theatre “u Hybernů” in the New town in 1794. Mozart’s operas and the musical repertoire of the Viennese suburban theatres became the core of the Czech language repertoire at the Patriotic Theatre [Vlastenecké divadlo], which from 1786 put on Czech performances in Prague as part of a Czech-German programme. From the 1780s the German theatre companies that shared their stages in the Bohemian Lands with Italian singers (e.g. Johann Joseph Brunian and Karl Wahr in Prague, Johann Heinrich Böhm, Roman Waitzhofer and Joseph Rothe in Brno, and Karl Hain in Opava and Olomouc), presented Italian comic operas in translation, original singspiel works and serious operas with German texts. The production of Gluck’s opera Orpheus und Euridice by the principal Roman Waitzhofer in Brno in 1779 is considered to be the first everperformance of the work in German. The close relationship between the linguistically heterogeneous earlier opera theatre and the domestic environment is illustrated by the fortunes of a drama about a watchman in love which was presented as a pantomime with song in Czech in 1767 in Brno by the German company of Johann Matthias Menninger, when a kindred title had already been sung in Czech by Italian singers under the impressario Molinari in 1763 as the intermezzo Zamilovaný Ponocnej [Watchman in Love], believed to have been written by the Prague composer and capelmeister Jan Tuček. The Estates Theatre (Stavovské Divadlo, earlier the Nostitz Theatre) was the main Prague opera

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The New Town Theatre

The New German Theatre

house. The second was Novoměstské divadlo [The New Town Theatre], 1858-1885 practically right up to the opening of the National Theatre (1883) to which the Prague German community responded by building Neues Deutsches Theater [The New German Theatre] 1888, from 1948 to 1992 The Smetana Theatre, today The Prague State Opera. To this day these three buildings form the axis of Prague opera life. From the end of the 18th century theatre/opera houses were built in a number of smaller towns mostly on the initiative of the German population (Cheb, Olomouc, Opava and elsewhere) and helped to create a great European network of German theatres. Czech opera was later both to draw on this tradition and also to develop in national, political and artistic opposition to it. Practically throughout the 18th century composers of Czech origin had mainly made careers abroad (Jan Dismas Zelenka, Josef Mysliveček, the creator of the stage melodrama Jiří Antonín Benda and others). What are known as the Haná (a regional designation) and Crafts operas, written in most cases by members of religious orders in South and Central Moravia and by music teachers in country schools, represented an original form of later 18th-century Classicist singspiel influenced both by folksong and Italian opera.There is one particularly remarkable group of operas with political and historical themes (Landeborg, Píseň o císaři Josefovi II [Song about the Emperor Josef II.], Pargamotéka etc.). Singspiel was also the main genre of the first national revivalists in the 1780s (especially in the venue known as the Bouda) and remained so in theBohemian Lands up to the Napoleonic Wars (Theatre “U Hybernů” 1789-1802).

Czech Operatic Theatre of the 19th Century

Prague was only slowly and reluctantly to give up Italian repertoire and the cult of the operas of W. A. Mozart. At the beginning of the 19th century, however, the management of the Estates Theatre passed from Italian to German hands, bringing a shift to German Romantic opera. One of those to contribute to Prague operatic life was C. M. von Weber (kapellmeister at the Estates Theatre 1813-16). As early as the 1830s French grand opera had an influence onPrague repertoire as well, and from the turn of the 1840s/50s the early work of G. Verdi and R. Wagner. New foreign operas were introduced into the Prague theatre by the conductor FRANTIŠEK ŠKROUP (1801-1862), who also worked as kapellmeister of the German opera at the Estates Theatre. Czech performances were sporadic and rare, and a separate Czech company was not established at the Estates Theatre until 1849 (director Johann Hoffmann).

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The Estates Theatre

Czech and German productions then coexisted at the Estates Theatre until the opening of Prozatimní divadlo [The Provisional Theatre] in 1862. By this time the Czech public was in the majority, translations were made for it mainly by J. N. Štěpánek, S. K. Macháček, J. .K. Chmelenský, and J. K. Tyl, and there were about ten opera productions a year. Czech opera theatre, even though it could only exist with the organisational support of the German management, inspired several original compositions: František Škroup attempted to write a founding work of Czech opera with the singspiel Dráteník [The Tinker] (libretto by Josef Krasoslav Chmelenský, premiere 1826), but the work was limited by a narrow revivalist perspective on opera composition and so had little influence on the development of Czech national opera. Škroup himself wrote more important operas with German text, already influenced by Neo-Romanticism (Kolumbus 1855). Significant Czech operas were to be written somewhat later, in the 1860s, when the Czech operaensemble obtained its own stage in the cramped quarters of what was known as The Provisional Theatre (opened in 1862). This was the workplace of Bedřich Smetana, who in his nine operas tried systematically to create Czech opera types defined by Czech subject matter (taken from Czech history of legend, andfrom contemporary village and small-town life), including a specifically Czech musical style of heroic opera(Dalibor, 1868), a comic conversation piece (Dvě vdovy [The Two Widows], 1874), a ceremonial opera (Libuše, 1872) and so on. His Prodaná nevěsta [The Bartered Bride] (1866, definitive version 1870) became the prototypeof national opera in a village setting. All these works are today a living part of the repertoire of Czech opera houses, and The Bartered Bride in particular has made it into international repertoire. Smetana’s vision of a national music also moulded his chamber music (especially piano music), choral and symphonic music (the cycle of symphonic poems Má vlast [My Homeland], 1882). As kapellmeister, Bedřich Smetana, Jan Nepomuk Maýr and Adolf Čech contributed to the development of professional opera performance in The Provisional Theatre. The small dimensions of the theatre restricted the possibilities for directors, and direction was therefore only to developed more ambitiously after the opening of The National Theatre (1881, reopened in 1883 after fire destroyed the first building), especiallywith the emergence of the directors Edmund Chvalovský and in the National Theatre Josef Šmaha who

adopted the new realist approach of the spoken drama of the time. For them the libretto was key, and the goal the adequate depiction of its setting and situation. Other opera composers of the period of The Provisional Theatre and first years of the NationalTheatre (Vilém Blodek, Karel Šebor, Karel Bendl, Josef R. Rozkošný, and others) developed the Smetana model of national opera embodied in The Bartered Bride but also drew inspiration from other trends (French grand opera, contemporary Italian opera). Antonín Dvořák

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The National and Provisional Theatre

(1841-1904) also initially followed the Smetana model of national opera and went beyond it only in his late highly individual works from the turn of the century (Jakobín [The Jacobin], Čert a Káča [The Devil and Kate] and above all Rusalka, 1901). By contrast Smetana’s disciple Zdeněk Fibich (1850-1900) returned to the model of Wagnerian music drama (e.g. Nevěsta messinská [The Bride of Messina], 1883), to which he added his own distinctive type of stage melodrama (the trilogy Hippodamie, 1889-1891). After 1860 Czech opera began to develop more rapidly outside the Prague centre. Companies started to play with some regularity from 1865 in Plzeň, and in Brno after the establishment of The Provisional Theatre there in 1884. German opera ensembles nonetheless continued to predominate on Bohemian territory and in many respects the Prague German Theatre under director Angelo Neumann (1885-1910) was the model for the Czech National Theatre in standard of performance.

Czech Operatic Theatre in the First Half of the 20th Century

As the new century opened the National Theatre was led by the conductor and composer Karel Kovařovic (1900-20). He engaged a number of outstanding singers (including Emil Burian, Růžena Maturová, Otakar Mařák, Emil Pollert, and Theodor Schütz), enlarged the orchestra and choir and improved their standard. He also diversified the repertoire with his interest in French music and introduced what wasthen a new feature - the cycle of operas by the same composer (Smetana). Occasionally controversial, he sometimes attracted criticism for his choice of new pieces and interventions in opera scores. His successor Otakar Ostrčil (1920-35) modernised the performance style of the company above all by stressing fidelity to the score. He removed old modifications from the scores and took care to ensuremusical discipline in performance, while also opening up repertoire to new directions and new Czech and foreign operas. This led to a number of conflicts that culminated in protests by subscribers at the first Czechperformance of Alban Berg’s opera Wozzeck (1926). Ostrčil was followed by Václav Talich (1936-44) who focused more on the quality of his new interpretations, reviving the former practice of retouching scores but doing so with a fully thought out musical rationale. He also gave more space to opera repertoire of an accessible and popular kind. Otakar Ostrčil devoted considerable attention to opera as a synthetic art, encouraging the development of more elaborate and adventurous staging concepts. Together with the director Karel Hugo Hilar and artist František Kysela, with whom he had already been working during the First World War on Smetana productions at The Town Theatre in Královské Vinohrady, Ostrčil took not the libretto but the music as starting point in stage conception and above all in direction of the acting, thus going beyond the hitherto realistic style of staging opera and prefiguring the trend in opera direction up to the mid-20th century. From the 1920s the most important representative of this trend in Czechoslovakia was Ferdinand Pujman (1889-1961), who created static productions full of aesthetic feeling and meloplastic acting. From the point of view of the further development of directing, Jindřich Honzl’s Surrealist production of Bohuslav Martinů’s Julietta (1938) was particularly significant. In the 1920s Ota Zítek established a specific productionstyle for the operas of Leoš Janáček at The National Theatre in Brno, and in the 1930s the director Rudolf Walter worked there. Thanks to its close connections with German theatrical centres, The Prague German Theatre also provided many impulses for opera productions in the German Expressionist repertoire.

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LEOŠ JANÁČEK (1854-1928), based in Brno, was the outstanding and clearly the most important Czech (Moravian) opera composer of the 20th century. It was he who departed from the Smetana model the most radically, getting beyond it in the most thoroughgoing sense, and also moving away from the predominant form of the post-Wagnerian modern movement. Initially influenced more by Dvořák than Smetana, he developed a distinctive method of operativ dramatic singing based on his own “speech melody”. A master of the dramatic abbreviation, he employed it not just in the music but in the structure of the libretto, which he usually wrote himself. Janáček’s most important work is Její pastorkyňa [Jenůfa] (Brno 1904, Prague 1916) based on the eponymous stage play by Gabriela Preissová but using his own prose libretto. In contrast to the idyllic setting of national stories favoured before, Janáček presented a realistic life situation, and approached national life in the spirit of a folklore documentarist, without 19th century idealisation (the recruiting and wedding scenes as a stylised record of Moravian folklore). Janáček found subjects for his operas in a wide spectrum of Czech and world literature and drama; he was very interested in Russia, as reflected in his operasKatya Kabanova (1921) and Z mrtvého domu [From the House of the Dead] (1928), he wrote Příběhy lišky Bystroušky [The Cunning Little Vixen] (1923) on the basis of cartoon strips and stories in a newspaper, used Karel Čapek’s original play as the basis for Věc Makropulos [The Makropulos Case] (1925), and Svatopluk Čech’s satirical stories as the basis for Výlety pana Broučka [The Excursions of Mr. Brouček] (1917). In recent decades his opera Osud [Destiny] (1905, concert version premiered 1934 and stage version in 1958 in Brno) has been arousing new interest as well. Leoš Janáček’s operas were not particularly successful at home and are not entirely well received by the public to this day. They were deservedly acclaimed abroad, however, even in the composer’s lifetime (Jenůfa was performed in 1916 in Vienna, 1924 in Berlin and so forth) and today Janáček is the most frequently performed Czech opera composer abroad (particularly The Cunning Little Vixen as well as Jenůfa). As early as 1925 the native Praguer Max Brod, translator of the composer’s libretti into German, published a biography of Janáček in Berlin. Hard to classify in terms of style or generation, as opera composer Leoš Janáček stood head and shoulders above his contemporaries and younger composers from the modernist circle, for whom opera was usually anyway not the main area of their work. These were JOSEF BOHUSLAV FOERSTER (1859-1959, e.g. opera Eva 1899 based on a story by G. Preissová), VÍTĚZSLAV NOVÁK (1870-1949, Karlštejn, Lucerna), KAREL KOVAŘOVIC (1862-1920, Psohlavci [Dogheads] 1897), OTAKAR OSTRČIL (1879-1935, Kunálovy oči [Kunal’s Eyes] 1908, Honzovo království [Honza’s Kingdom]), RUDOLF KAREL (1880-1945, Smrt kmotřička [The Godfather‘s Death] 1932), BOLESLAV VOMÁČKA (1887-1965, Vodník [The Water Goblin] 1937), OTAKAR JEREMIÁŠ (1892-1962, Bratři Karamazovi [The Brothers Karamazov] 1927) and others. Czech opera was to find its next important representative in BOHUSLAVU MARTINŮ (1890-1959). Most of his works, however, were written abroad, in France, the USA and Switzerland where he lived successively from the 1920s. In his first fantasy opera compositions of the 1920s (Voják a tanečnice [The Soldier and the Dancer], Slzy nože [Tears of a Knife], Tři přání [Three Wishes], Den nezávislosti [Independence Day]) the influence of the French avant-garde is particularly strong, and they respond to jazz and the rhythms of post-war Europe. Nonetheless, Martinů’s Czech musical roots integrated all these elements into an original musical style. For his subjects Martinů chose unusual forms, for example he combined opera with ballet (Divadlo za bránou [Theatre beyond the Gate] 1936), wrote operas for radio (Hlas lesa [The Voice of the Forest], Veselohra

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na mostě [Comedy on the Bridge], both 1935), musical comedies (Mirandolina 1954, Ženitba [The Marriage] 1952) and often dream stories (e.g. Ariadna, 1958). His major works are the four-part Hry o Marii [The Miracles of Mary] (1933-34), written on medieval texts, folk songs and literary themes by Julius Zeyer, his Surrealist opera Julietta or Dreambook (1936-37) based on a play by Georges Neveux, and Řecké pašije [The Greek Passion] (1st version 1957, 2nd version 1959) based on the novel by Nikos Kazantzakis. Turning to the broader circle of composers of the inter-war avant-garde we should note Karel Hába who wrote the quarter-tone opera Matka [Mother] (1931), Iša Krejčí (Pozdvižení v Efesu [The Rising in Ephesus] 1943), Emil František Burian (Bubu z Montparnassu [Bubu from Montparnasse] 1927, first staged by the PragueState Opera in 1999; Maryša 1938), and Erwin Schulhoff (Plameny [Flames], 1932). This generation also included the Jewish composers Hans Krása (Zásnuby ve snu [Betrothal in a Dream], 1928-30, performed at the New German Theatre in 1933, Brundibár 1938, privately performed in 1941 in Prague and in 1943 in the Terezín Ghetto) and Pavel Haas (Šarlatán [The Charlatan], 1937), who died in 1944 in Auschwitz. Apart from the National Theatre, in the years 1907-1919 opera and operetta was also staged in Prague at The Town Theatre in Královské Vinohrady headed by Otakar Ostrčil. From 1920 Mozart operas, particularly, were sung in Czech at The Prague Estates Theatre, which until then had been part of the Prague German stage, but which members of the Czech ensemble of The National Theatre confiscated illegallyin November 1920 and took over for Czech theatre. In Brno Czech opera was played in 1884-1918 in the small Theatre “Na Veveří”, but in 1919 after the establishment of the Czechoslovak Republic it took over The German Town Theatre (today The Mahen Theatre), previously home to a German company. Under the leadership of František Neumann (1919-1929) the Czech company here presented the world premieres of operas by Leoš Janáček, while under Milan Sachs (1932-39) pioneering programmes included works by Soviet composers (e.g. Dmitri Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk Region 1936, and the world premiere of Sergei Prokofiev’s ballet Romeo and Juliet 1938) and many original Czech pieces, including Czech premieres of some of Bohuslav Martinů’s works. Among important Brno conductors were the Janáček specialist Břetislav Bakala, Antonín Balatka and Zdeněk Chalabala. After the founding of the First Republic Czech opera companies were established in German regional centres where they operated in parallel with German groups and used the originally German theatres. This was the case for example in The Moravian-Silesian National Theatre in Ostrava (1919, chief Jaroslav Vogel, also toured in Opava) and in The Czech Theatre in Olomouc (1920, chief Karel Nedbal), which regularly toured a number of Czech towns including Liberec and České Budějovice, where a home ensemble only operated on an irregular basis. The Olomouc company made trips to Liberec and Slovakia, and even guest appearances in Vienna. Many Czech singers who started out with the regional Czech companies after the First World War and whose careers culminated at The Prague National Theatre contributed to the development of Czech opera: Václav Bednář, Marie Budíková-Jeremiášová, Ludmila Červinková. Jaroslav Gleich, Gabriela Horvátová, Otakar Chmel, Vladimír Jedenáctík, Miloslav Jeník, Karel Kalaš, Oldřich Kovář, Marta Krásová, Stanislav Muž, Ada Nordenová. Zdeněk Otava, Marie Podvalová, Valentin Šindler, Maria Tauberová, Vilém Zítek. Eva Hadrabová, Jarmila Novotná, Richard Kubla, Otakar Mařák, Ludmila Dvořáková and others made names for themselves on the international scene.

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Czech Opera 1945-1989

The end of the Second World War brought fundamental changes in opera life. All the German theatres on Czech territory were dissolved, and their buildings and resources went to Czech companies that were newly established in Liberec, Ústí nad Labem, Opava and later in České Budějovice. This was the period of the emergence of the dense network of Czech opera houses (roughly ten companies) that is still in operation today. Political developments after the Second World War led to the gradual isolation of Czech opera life. After a short period of attempts to continue the pre-war tradition, development was interrupted by the imposition of Zhdanovite Socialist Realist aesthetics, which at the turn of the 1940s/50s temporarily livened up opera production with realistic descriptive elements. At this period Soviet operatic agitprop pieces were introduced into the national classic repertoire and the position of basic world repertoire was eroded. Stylistically different new operas were not presented, and the connection with the pre-war modern and avant-garde was more or less broken right up to the later 1950s, when attempts were made once again to re-attach the threads. There was a halt to the developments in stage production that had been pursued at Opera 5. května [The Opera of the 5th of May] (1945-48) under the influence of the composer Alois Hába by the directors Alfréd Radok and Václav Kašlík together with the stage designers František Tröster and especially Josef Svoboda. Opposing the static style of Ferdinand Pujman they championed a more mobile concept of opera acting, including organisation of the chorus, the dynamic interplay of various different stage techniques, non-illusionist lighting and space, and a search for new meanings in the content and themes of operas. The director Bohumil Hrdlička took a comparable path, first in Ostrava and then in the National Theatrein Prague, although after a conflict over a production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute (1957) he emigrated and worked abroad. The ground-breaking opera company, The Opera of the 5th of May was soon incorporated into the Prague National Opera, where the new ideals of production clashed with the Pujman style (Pujman himself was directed up to the end of the 1950s) and with „actor direction“, updated by Socialist Realism. Nonetheless, the pioneering spirit of The Opera of the 5th of May was to prove an inspiration to later directors: Václav Kašlík (1917-1989), of the older generation Karel Jernek and Miloš Wasserbauer (founder of the Chamber Opera at Janáček Academy of Performing Arts Brno, 1957), and of the younger especially Ladislav Štros and in the Brno Opera Václav Věžník. These directors were to do well abroad, while Czech stage design in particular earned a world-wide reputation in the 1960s and JOSEF SVOBODA (1920-2002) became an internationally sought-after stage designer (the principle of the light and kinetic stage). After the Second World War The National Theatre remained the summit of Czech opera in terms of quality and performance and many of its productions were excellent, but it increasingly lacked international context and comparison. The repertoire focused mainly on Czech music. Three strong generations of singers made careers in its, the dominating names being Karel Berman, Beno Blachut, Libuše Domanínská, Miroslav Frydlewicz, Eduard Haken, Jindřich Jindrák, Naděžda Kniplová, Richard Novák, Vilém Přibyl, Milada Šubrtová, and Ivo Žídek. These singers occasionally able to accept successful guest engagements at prestigious European opera houses (especially in Vienna and the German opera houses, often in Berlin), and sometimes longer-term engagements in theatre in the former German Democratic Republic (Rudolf Asmus, Antonie Denygrová, Jaroslav Kachel, Viktor Kočí, Miroslav Švejda). Only those who had more or less decided to live

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abroad could pursue a longer-term career elsewhere (Soňa Červená, Gabriela Beňačková, Ludmila Dvořáková, Zdeněk Kroupa, Eva Randová). Lacking external impulses domestic resources of singers and composers became meagre and performance based on one-sided interpretation of the national classics started to stagnate. In general, however, the companies were well-funded at the period which meant that they could include more difficult and less popular pieces in repertoire and had resources and space for experiment, although of coursethey were under the eye of the censor. After 1957 a new repertory orientation emerged particularly in Brno thanks to the repertory director and conductor Václav Nosek. He made efforts to present the operas of B. Martinů, and also of key works of modern opera beginning with R. Strauss and with a special emphasis on the work of L. Janáček. Czech and other works of the interwar period were also staged by opera companies in Olomouc and Plzeň, while The Prague National Theatre only caught up with this initiative in the mid-1960s. The new operas written during the period were very various in style, genre and generation, but almost nothing of lasting value was produced evidently because most of the composers approached opera composition from traditionalist positions. The form known as “chamber” opera made ever more headway. Among the most remarkable and viable examples were the opera projects of the Brno composer Josef Berg in the 1960s, which influenced A. Piňos and M. Štědroň in collaboration with Divadlo na provázku [The Theatre on a String], and the light comedies and travesties of Ilja Hurník (Dáma a lupiči [The Lady and the Robbers], 1966), while Jaroslav Krček’s Nevěstka Raab [The Harlot Raab] is notable as a composition on the principles of “concrete” (electronic) music (1971). Among the most important composers of the time we might mention J. Pauer, J. F. Fischer, I. Jirko, O. Mácha, and L. Fišer (Lancelot, 1960).

Czech Opera since 1989

The social changes following November 1989 brought two new factors into the development of opera: Czech opera was once again open to international contacts and new impulses, but it had to operate in more straitened material circumstances since the state ceased to fund the theatres (with the exception of the National Theatre) and transferred them to the management of the new town local government organs (councils). Opera companies responded by putting on a range of popular operas (Verdi, Puccini), which entirely dominated repertoire in the first half of the 1990s. Under economic pressure they also had to reducethe number of employees in all professions, to some extent overhaul the work of the permanent companies, work more with guests and so on. Despite these pressures, however, the traditional organisational-operational model of opera houses remained essentially unchanged. The existing network of opera houses has been maintained: The National Theatre in Prague, The National Theatre in Brno, The Moravian-Silesian National Theatre in Ostrava, The J.K.Tyl Theatre in Plzeň, The F. X. Šalda Theatre in Liberec, The North Bohemian Opera and Ballet Theatre in Ústí nad Labem, The South Bohemian Theatre in České Budějovice, The Moravian Theatre in Olomouc, and The Silesian Theatre in Opava. In recent years there have been additions in the form of The Prague State Opera (founded in 1992 by the separation of what had been the Smetana Theatre from The National Theatre) and independent theatre companies (Opera Furore, Opera Mozart, Orfeo Chamber Opera Brno, Prague Children’s Opera, various groups particularly of young artists, Prague commercial opera concerns etc.

57*The current list of addresses, see in the chapter Links

The composition of the companies have changed, with many outstanding singers entering them from the countries of the former Soviet Union, Slovakia, Poland, Bulgaria, Rumania and elsewhere (Valentin Prolat, Jevhen Šokalo, Anda-Louisa Bogza and others). The largest opera houses also regularly invite foreign guests to sing, and international absolutely top stars have given concerts here (José Carreras, Agnes Baltsa, Renée Fleming, José Cura and others). The appearances by outstanding soloists have corrected the Czech public’s standards of judgment of vocal quality, which had fallen somewhat in the period of isolation, but on the other hand has brought individualistic elements into production practice that earlier depended mainly on the interplay of the whole company. Among Czech singers the most outstanding, who have made international careers, are Magdalena Kožená, Eva Urbanová, Ivan Kusnjer, Štefan Margita, and Dagmar Pecková. Since the mid-1990s repertoire and interpretation has been developing in several different directions depending on the specific circumstances of the individual opera houses and the artistic ambitions of theirdirectors. The importance of the traditional Czech composers authors has declined (Smetana, Dvořák), while there has been increased interest in the work of Leoš Janáček and Bohuslav Martinů and also in previously forgotten works (in The J. K. Tyl Theatre in Plzeň under Petr Kofroň: Z. Fibich: Šárka, J. B. Foerster: Bloud [The Simpleton], O. Ostrčil: Kunálovy oči [Kunal’s Eyes]; in The Prague State Opera under Jiří Nekvasil - E. F. Burian: Bubu z Montparnassu [Bubu of Montparnasse]). The trend is to look for unknown world, and so the repertoire is expanding in many different directions, especially in the National Moravian-Silesian Theatre in Ostrava, The State Opera in Prague and The National Theatres in Prague and Brno (C. Debussy, N. Rimsky-Korsakov, A. P. Borodin, D. F. E. Auber, K. Weis, R. Strauss, A. Boito, E. D´Albert, G. Meyerbeer, J. P. Rameau, F. Busoni, H. A. Marschner and others.). Veristic operas never played or forgotten in this country have been staged (A. Ponchielli: La Gioconda, U. Giordano: Andrea Chénier, Cilea: Adriana Lecouvreur), as well as works by the “Theresienstadt composers” (P. Haas, H. Krása, V. Ullmann) and many 20th century works (B. Bartók, E. W. Korngold, F. Poulenc, A. Schönberg, D. Milhaud, P. M. Davies, D. Shostakovich). The public has been introduced to a wider circle of Minimalist opera (M. Nymen: The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, NT Prague 1997, Man and Boy: Dada, 2004; P. Glass: The Fall of the House of Usher, Prague State Opera 1999; John Adams: The Death of Klinghoffer, NT Prague 2003; P. Glass: Beauty and the Beast, NT Prague 2003). One conspicuous line of repertory consists of original premieres of new foreign and Czech operas, and this has been the systematic policy of Daniel Dvořák and Jiří Nekvasil, starting with Opera Furore through Opera Mozart, The State Opera and now The National Theatre that they currently lead. New work has also been inspired by the State Opera composing competition and by the free cycle of one-off productions of new operas particularly by young composers called Banging on the Iiron Curtain (first at the State Opera, thenin The Estates Theatre). In other theatres original premieres are very rare. Among the most individual recent Czech works are operas by Jan Klusák (Zpráva pro Akademii [Report for the Academy], NT Prague 1997; Bertram and Mescalinda, NT Praha 2002) and Emil Viklický (Faidra [Phaedra], State Opera Prague 2000; Máchův deník [Mách’s Diary], NT Prague 2003), and Petr Eben’s church opera Jeremiash (NT Prague 1997), Martin Smolka and Jaroslav Dušek’s ice-hockey opera Nagano (NT Prague 2004) caused quite a stir, and T. Hanzlík’s neo-Baroque opera (Yta Innocens) is particularly interesting. There have been two world premieres of operas by the foreign composer Andreas Pflüger (Fyzikové [The Physicists], State Opera Prague 2001; Historie jednoho snu [History of a Dream], Opava 2004), while Laurent Petitgirard’s opera Joseph Merrick or the Elephant Man (State Opera Prague 2002) was especially warmly received.

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Stage design and direction has developed in penetrating and at the same time controversial ways. The National Theatre has had a number of guest directors usually based abroad: Jozef Bednárik (Gounod: Romeo et Julie, 1994; Bizet: Carmen, 1999), David Poutney (B.Martinů: Voják a tanečnice [The Soldier and the Dancer], State Opera Prague 2000; B. Smetana: Čertova stěna [The Devil’s Wall, NT Prague 2001; L. Janáček: Její pastorkyňa [Jenůfa], NT Brno 2004), David Radok (all at NT Prague – W.A.Mozart: Don Giovanni, 1991; D.Shostakovich: Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk Region, 2000; A.Berg: Wozzeck, 2001) and Robert Wilson (L. Janáček: Osud [Fate], 2002). Home directors-post-modernists have created several controversial productions (P. Lébl, J. A. Pitínský, V. Morávek). The director Jiří Nekvasil and one of the most striking of post-1989 stage designers Daniel Dvořák also partially identity with postmodernism. In the chamber environment of the Opera Furore and Opera Mozart they brought a highly distinctive approach and clip directorial technique, but on the major stages both go for the techniques of post-modern decorativism. Jiří Nekvasil has produced operas for television as well (J. Berg: Evropská turistika [European Tourism], B. Martinů: Slzy nože [Tears of a Knife], Podivuhodný let [The Wonderful Flight], all 1998, B.Martinů: Hlas lesa [Voice of the Forest] 2001). 2000 sawe the emergence of two young directors, trained for opera, and with their own approach to stage space and opera acting: Jiří Heřman (The J. K. Tyl Theatre in Plzeň – C. Saint-Saëns: Samson a Dalila [Samson and Delilah], 2002, R. Wagner: Bludný Holanďan [The Flying Dutchman], 2004) and Daniel Balatka (the same theatre – B.Smetana: Prodaná nevěsta [The Bartered Bride], 2002). Among the middle generation Michal Tarant, and Tomáš Šimerda (also on television) are active, while Luděk Golat is going his own way in collaboration with Jaroslav Malina (Moravian-Silesian National Theatre in Ostrava). The regional companies have been maintaining the earlier style of direction as conceived by the older generation of directors (especially Václav Věžník and Ladislav Štros) and their direct disciples in the middle generation (Jan Štych, Jana Pletichová-Andělová and others).

THE HISTORY OF CZECH CHAMBER ENSEMBLES

Instrumental music developed strongly in the Bohemian Lands during the 18th and 19th centuries both in terms of increasing numbers of concerts and the intense cultivation of chamber music-making in burgher society. In the more liberal political conditions after 1860 chamber music flourished even more vigorously on the basis of numerousassociations. From 1876 the Prague Kammermusikverein [Society for Chamber Music] organised chamber music concerts, and from 1894 so did its counterpart The Czech Society for Chamber Music. Over just a few generations the high standard of instrumental teaching at The Prague Conservatory (established 1811) bore fruit in the form of hundreds of professionally trained talents. In 1892 students from the conservatory formed the first Czech professional chamber ensemble – The Czech Quartet (1892-1933), and it became the model for many other chamber groups established at the turn of the 19th/20th

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The Czechoslovak Quartet

century and later. The nationally competitive atmosphere (between Germans and Czechs) gave rise to several different piano trios appearing under the name Czech Trio, and in 1924 the entirely unique ensemble, The Czech Nonet, was formed. The Czech Quartet, which from 1914 was formed of Karel Hoffmann – 1st Violin, Josef Suk – 2nd Violin, Jiři Herold – Viola, and Ladislav Zelenka – ‘Cello) gave concerts practically all over Europe and in the USA, where it became famous not just for its interpretation of the Czech composers B. Smetana, A. Dvořák, and J. Suk, but also for its masterly performances of the major works of the world classical-romantic repertoire. The second celebrated Czech string quartet was The Ševčík Quartet (1902-30). In the inter-war period the traditions of the Czech Quartet were maintained and developed particularly by The Ondříček Quartet (1921-56), The Prague Quartet (1922-66, up to 1929 known as The Zika Quartet), The Moravian Quartet (1923-59) and The Czechoslovak Quartet (originally The Pešek Quartet, 1928, still appearing up to the mid-1960s). Of the other chamber ensembles we should at least mention The Prague Wind Quintet (1928-1956), The Moravian Wind Quintet (founded in Brno in 1927) and The Smetana (later The Czech) Trio (1934). All these groups did much to propagate contemporary Czech music at home and abroad. The year 1932 saw the formation of a group specialising in playing on old musical instruments, Pro arte antiqua, which also made a major name for itself abroad as well. After the Second World War the amateur cultivation of chamber music receded into the background especially in the smaller towns, but the expansion of the musical education system and concert life meant that new chamber groups continued to be founded in large numbers, with particular stress on development of the tradition of professional quartet play. The best Czech quartets of the period included The Smetana Quartet (1945), The Janáček Quartet (1947), The Vlach Quartet (1950-75), The Talich Quartet (1964), The Suk Quartet (1968), The Panocha Quartet (1969) and The City of Brno Quartet (1969). The 1960s saw another wave of new ensembles, often with very young members, that confirmed the

high standards of our system of musical education - The Kubín, Kocian, Doležal and Pražák Quartets (1972), The Kroft and Sedláček Quartets (1974), and The Havlák Quartet (1976, later renamed The Martinů Quartet). During the 1980s and 1990s they were joined by other outstanding ensembles like The Stamitz (1985) and Škampa (1989) Quartets, The Apollon Quartet (1993), The Penguin Quartet (1994), The Kaprálová Quartet (1995), Bennewitz Quartet (1998) and others. Alongside these, from 1945 there had already existed a specialised string quartet that systematically included avant-garde composers of the inter-war period and brand new work in its programmes. Originally called

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The Smetana Quartet

The Czech Trio

The Hába Quartet, it was renamed The Novák Quartet, and in the 1960s became a regular guest at world festivals of contemporary music (Donaueschingen, Darmstadt, Cologne, Warsaw). It made a huge contribution to overcoming what was then the isolation of Czech serious music from the rest of the world. In 1951 the violinist Josef Suk (grandson of the composer Josef Suk) founded a piano trio, which was for years to be the top European ensemble of its kind (The Suk Trio). Among wind ensembles we should mention at least The Wind Quintet of the Czech Philharmonics (1945-1967, from the beginning of the 1960s with the suffixCzech), which made a number of foreign tours and released numerous gramophone recordings. The Czech Wind Quintet (1957) directly built on the traditions of the famous wind ensemble of inter-war Czechoslovakia (see above), as did its later name The Prague Wind Quintet (1968), which soon earned a place among the most prestigious Czech chamber ensembles. In the mid-1990s a new and outstanding representative of the Czech wind school – The Afflatus Quintet was formed. Ensembles with a non-traditional profile were also founded,such as The Prague Guitar Quartet (1984), The Bohemia Saxophone Quartet (1990), The Czech Clarinet Quartet (1995) and The Czech Guitar Quartet (2000). Apart from the Pro arte antiqua, other groups emerged with an interest in reconstruction and performance of early music. They included Milan Munclinger’s Ars rediviva (formed 1951), e.g. Miloslav Klement’s Symposium musicum (1953) or Lukáš Matoušek’s vocal-instrumental Ars cameralis (1963). A new wave of interest this time focusing on the authentic interpretation of early music provided the stimulus for the founding of such internationally acclaimed groups as Musica antiqua Praha (1982), Collegium Marianum (1990), Musica florea (1992) and Ritornello (1993). From the end of the 1950s several specialised ensembles for performance of contemporary and New Music have been formed in the Czech Lands: Chamber Harmony (an 11-member wind group founded by Libor Pešek in 1959), Musica viva Pragensis (1961-1969), the chamber association Musica nova (Brno, 1961-1964), Due Boemi di Praga (1963), Sonatori di Praga (1964), and Group A (Brno, 1963-69). In the 1980s this line was continued by The Agon Ensemble (1983-85, later The Agon Orchestra), which was founded as an alternative free association of young performers, composers and musicologists in Prague, and the ensemble Art Inkognito (1986-90, 1994 restarted under the changed name Incognita), which has devoted itself to presenting contemporary Czech music, especially by composers from what is known as the “Brno School”. Since 1990 these groups have been joined by several new ensembles committed to new music – the percussion ensemble DAMA DAMA (1990, Brno), and the Prague groups Mondschein Ensemble (founded 1995, appearing since 2001 under the name MoEns), Tuning Metronomes (2001-04), Convergence (2002) and others.

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Škampa Quartet

THE HISTORY OF CZECH ORCHESTRAS AND CHOIRS

Orchestras

The oldest still existing orchestras in the Czech Lands are the spa orchestras (Teplice from 1831, Karlovy Vary from 1835). At the time when its orchestra was founded, Teplice was known as “the salon of Europe” and many leading cultural figuresvisited the resort (including J. W. Goethe, L. van Beethoven, R. Wagner, F. Chopin, F. Liszt, R. Schumann, and B. Smetana). At the end of the century The Teplice Orchestra was already presenting symphonic cycles on a regular basis. Some of its concerts were conducted by E. d´Albert, for example, or R. Strauss. The Karlovy Vary Orchestra performed Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony in the Post Court in 1894, a year after it was formed. The heyday of this orchestra was during the period when it was directed by R. Manzer (1911-41), and worked with R. Strauss and P. Casals, for example. In Prague, B. Smetana, founder of Czech national music, and the orchestra of The Provisional Theatre introduced public philharmonic concerts from 1869. The Czech Philharmonic Orchestra in the Rudolfinumbuilding the most important Prague and Czech orchestra, appeared before the public for the first time onthe 4th of January 1896 with a gala concert conducted by A. Dvořák. In 1901-1903 Ludvík Čelanský became chief conductor of this new independent orchestra. Leading figures who have directed the orchestra includeVáclav Talich, Rafael Kubelík, after the 2nd World War Karel Ančerl, after his departure for Canada (1969)

Václav Neumann, from 1990 Jiří Bělohlávek, later Gerd Albrecht, Vladimir Ashkenazy and currently Zdeněk Mácal. Since the beginning of the orchestra´s existence its reputation has been furthered by internationally esteemed guest conductors including E. Grieg, S. Rachmaninoff, A. Nikisch, G. Mahler, A. Zemlinsky, Ch. Munch, L. Bernstein a. o. The history of the Brno symphony orchestra goes right back to the plans of young composer L. Janáček, and later his pupil Břetislav Bakala, whose Brno Radio Orchestra in 1956 created the basis for what today is The Brno Philharmonic Orchestra (Petr Altrichter is a current chief conductor, Caspar Richter is a honour conductor). The second important Prague orchestra,

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Zdeněk Mácal

The Czech Philharmonic Orchestra

founded after The Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, is The Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra (SOČR) founded in 1926: Its main function was and remains to record Czech (and contemporary) music. This has always made the orchestra a body with interesting and adventurous programmes and important guest musicians. S. Prokofjev, O. Respighi, A. Honegger, A. Khachaturian and K. Penderecki have all presented their music with the Radio Symphony Orchestra. Vladimír Válek, who has also been conducting The Czech Philharmonic Orchestra since 1996, assumed the post of chief conductor of Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra in 1985 and, under his guidance, the orchestra has become one of the most prominent in Europe. The Prague Symphony Orchestra was formed in the autumn of 1934. Its founder conductor Rudolf Pekárek defined his goals with the words Film-Opera-Koncert (i.e. FOK). In the 1930s the orchestra recordedmusic for the majority of Czech films. Its standards were built up particularly by the conductor Václav Smetáček, who headed it for 30 years from 1942. After Smetáček´s departure there were especially conductors Jiří Bělohlávek, Petr Altrichter, Martin Turnovský and Gaetano Delogu who led this orchestra. In the 2001 Serge Baudo, who has worked with Czech orchestras for many years, was appointed its chief conductor. Socialist Czechoslovakia had a policy of developing and maintaining the network of so-called “state orchestras” in such a way that every region would have at least one professional philharmonic. This cultural network, financed by the state, operated for the whole period of the socialist regime up to 1989. The biggest regional orchestras are The Brno Philharmonic Orchestra,The Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra Ostrava (since 1954, by the transformation of a radio orchestra) and The Bohuslav Martinů Philharmonic in Zlín (founded in 1946 as the Symphony Orchestra of the Baťa State Concern, the current chief conductor is Jakub Hrůša). The orchestras all had relatively balanced professional quality and a good core repertoire, although it tended to be very traditional. There was no significant difference in standards between the professional musicalculture of the centre (or centres, i.e. Prague, Brno and Ostrava) and the provinces. Regional orchestras with a particularly striking profile in this period were The Czech Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra Pardubice led by conductor Libor Pešek in 1970-77 (currently by Leoš Svárovský and main guest conductor Douglas Bostock from Great Britain), The Brno State Philharmonic (now The Brno Philharmonic Orchestra), directed at various times by Břetislav Bakala, Otakar Trhlík, Jiří Bělohlávek, František Jílek, Petr Vronský, Aldo Ceccato and since 2002 by Petr Altrichter or The Ostrava Janáček Philharmonic (current chief-conductor Petr Vronský). After 1990 there was major reform in cultural administration. The orchestras (apart from the radio orchestras and Czech Philharmonic Orchestra and Orchestra in České Budějovice) were taken under municipal authorities, a move that has aroused fears for their continued survival. A number of new private orchestras have been formed. The most important include The Prague Philharmonia (since 1994) set up by the former head of The Brno State Philharmonic and then The Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, Jiří Bělohlávek.

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Vladimír Válek

Orchestras with a core of permanent employees and regular concerts are still partially subsidised by the state through a special programme of support but most of the costs are borne by the promoters, municipalities, with consideration now being given to the idea of support from the newly established regional authorities as part of multi-source funding. In comparison with the situation abroad, the orchestras are able to cover a relatively substantial proportion of their costs from their own earnings (20% or in exceptional cases 30%), and concert attendance is still high, partly because ticket prices remain comparable with cinema tickets, except in the case of the Prague orchestras. A number of new or transformed agency orchestras have been formed (e.g. The Czech National Symphony Orchestra Ltd., chief conductor – Paul Freeman from USA, The Czech Symphony Orchestra Ltd. former FISYO - Film and Symphonic Orchestra based 55 years ago), which essentially work on commission

(specifically recordings, foreign tours, festivals) under a permanent name but mostly without permanentemployees. Most of them are recruited from the players in stable orchestras or members of chamber groups. It can also create a misleading impression for the unwary, for example in figures that show an apparentstriking rise in the number of professional symphony and chamber orchestras in the Czech Republic since 1990 (up to around 45). In comparison with the EU, the situation here is also exceptional in that even top bodies such as The Czech Philharmonic Orchestra or The Prague Symphony Orchestra are made up of employees of a single nationality. Sir Ch. Mackerras regards this as an influential factor for the characteristic interpretationparticularly of national music. Thanks to the state grant system the number of festivals have risen, however, and festivals are the traditional terrain for greater adventurousness in programmes. Here it becomes clear that if presentation of new music is properly thought out and promoted with verve by high-profile musicians, there are no a priori problematic pieces. This is demonstrated, for example, by the growing interest in contemporary music in The Ostrava Janáček Philharmonic thanks to the composer Petr Kotík, who lives in the USA but has started International Composing Courses in New Music here (the orchestra rehearses and plays the compositions at the end of the courses).

Choirs

Choral singing in the Czech Republic is traditionally of a high standard, even in largely non-professional or semi-professional choirs, several of which regularly work with professional orchestras. One of the oldest and best-known still active choirs is The Hlahol Singing Club (today comprising a mixed, girls‘ and children’s choir), founded in 1861 in Prague and currently directed by Roman Z. Novák. Another is Beseda brněnská [The Brno Association] (since 1860), which came into existence originally as a male

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Jiří Bělohlávek

choir largely thanks to Pavel Křížkovský. The choir’s directors have included the composer Leoš Janáček (in 1876-88), and then Jaroslav Kvapil (1920-46). Czechoslovak presidents Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk and Edvard Beneš were honorary members. After the founding of The Brno State Philharmonic (1956) the choir became a part of this organisation with the title The Brno Philharmonic Choir of the Brno Association up to the 1990s. The current choirmasters here are Petr Kolař, Emil Skoták, Jan Rozehnal and Stanislav Kummer. Organisationally the choir works with Masaryk University in Brno and the Janáček Academy of Performing Arts. The third important still active choir is The Žerotín Academic Choir founded in Olomouc (1880). It takes its name from the old Moravian noble line of the Žerotíns. The most important figure to be associatedwith this singing and music society was Antonín Dvořák, who became an honorary member and in 1888 in Olomouc conducted the choir in the premiere of his oratorio St. Ludmila. Since 1999 the choir has been affiliated with The Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra in Olomouc, which it originally helped to found. These three oldest choirs of high quality, against the background of hundreds of other choral societies and clubs in smaller and larger towns and the countryside, made a strong contribution to the character of cultural and social life in the Czech Lands after 1860. In 2003 The Choral Association of Moravian Teachers, which first performed in Kroměříž as an association of students and graduates of the local teacher-training institute, celebrated its 100th anniversary. The choir did a great deal to help create of the tradition of modern choral performance and can take a great deal of credit for the propagation of Czech choral music abroad from as early as the 1920s. From the beginning contemporary composers wrote pieces for it, including L. Janáček, J. B. Foerster, V. Novák, J. Suk, O. Ostrčil, B. Martinů, and currently P. Eben, M. Báchorek and others. The founder and first choirmaster was Ferdinand Vach (up to 1936), and since 1975 it has worked under the direction of Lubomír Mátl. In its repertoire we findworks from the Renaissance (Palestrina, Lasso) up to the present day. The largest professional choir in the Czech Republic is The Prague Philharmonic Choir (up to 1969 it was known as The Czech Choir). It was founded in 1935 and affiliated to The Czech Filharmonic Orchestra in 1953 (to the year 1991). In 1959 after the death of Jan Kühn, Josef Veselka and later Lubomír Mátl became director of the choir. The next stage, after 1990, was associated with the direction of Pavel Kühn, son of Jan Kühn, and since 1996 the principal choirmaster has been Jaroslav Brych. The choir has worked and continues to work with many important orchestras and conductors (Wolfgang Savalisch, Claudio Abbado and others) and its gramophone recordings with the Czech Philharmonic have won international prizes in Paris, Berlin and Tokyo. Another legendary choir is The Kühn Mixed Choir, founded in 1958 by Pavel Kühn. The choir has a very broad range of repertoire and works with leading orchestras (The Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, The Prague Symphony Orchestra, and The Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra) The recording of the complete vocal works of Bohuslav Martinů for Supraphon is one of the greatest achievements of this choir. The Brno Czech Philharmonic Choir, founded in 1990, is a successful younger professional choir, founded in 1990. It specialises in oratorio and cantata repertoire and also works with opera companies and

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Jaroslav Brych

often appears at festivals of sacred music. The composer Petr Fiala is its founder and choirmaster. Very quality choir works in The National Opera in Brno conducted by Josef Pančík). Another elite and very high quality choir is the mixed Prague Chamber Choir, which was founded as an ensemble composed of the leading Prague choral singers. Universal in repertoire, it has worked and continues to work with many world-famous orchestras with conductors such as Giuseppe Sinopoli, Herbert Blomstedt, Václav Neumann, Jiří Bělohlávek, Neville Marrimer and Tadeusz. Strugala. Its principal choirmaster is also Josef Pančík. He has made a series of recordings of works by Czech composers with the choir (A. Dvořák, L. Janáček, J. Suk, P. Eben). The amateur choir Czech Song was founded in 1954 by the important contemporary choral composer Zdeněk Lukáš, and its current choirmaster is Jiří Štrunc. In 1990 a section of the choir split off to create New Czech Song, which is also one of the top amateur choirs in the Czech Republic. Both choirs are based in the Plzeň Region. Important amateur or semi-amateur choirs come under the umbrella of The Union of Czech Choirs (which at present brings together as many as 240 choirs, including children’s choirs). Many of them draw on the local traditions of choral singing that go back to the 19th century. Successful children’s choirs include e.g. Bambini di Praga, Tthe Kühn Children’s Choir (Prague), The Cantilena Children’s Choir (Brno), Severáček [Northerner] (Liberec), Boni pueri (Hradec Králové).

FOLK MUSIC OF BOHEMIA AND MORAVIA

Folk music culture in the Czech Republic can be roughly divided into two parts that are more or less coterminous with the historical division of the Czech Lands into Bohemia and Moravia. In terms of melody, the folk music of Moravia is often defined asthe eastern or also the vocal type, while that of Bohemia is characterised as an instrumental type. This distinction is useful only for purposes of general orientation, however, since music of both types can be found in both regions and there are also regional differences on the north-south axis. Music in Bohemia is akin to the music of Austria and Germany. It also shares a number of melodies with these areas. It is rhythmically more regular and harmonically

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Fiddlers' band from Velká nad Veličkou*The list of orchestras and choirs with contacts see in the chapter Links.

simpler, mainly keeping to major scales. The melody is influenced by the form of instrumental performanceand it is often possible to identify from the character of a melody whether it was originally pipes dance melody or, for example, a bugle signal. The melodies are derived from the harmony and spread chords and scale progressions. Song texts were created to already existing melodies, with the result that there are more texts than melodies. The instrumental origin of melodies is also often evident in the frequent adjustment of the text by drawing out or repetition of the syllables. Originally most songs were in three-time, but during the 19th century two-time became more frequent in association with the rise of new kinds of dance. Almost without exception the songs have and eight-bar or four-bar phrases. In Bohemia stronger mutual influence between folk music and composed music developed as a result of the larger concentration of towns.The influences of the Baroque and Classicism can therefore be heard in Bohemian folk songs. From thenineteenth century there was increasing overlap between the folk music of the Bohemian countryside, urban folklore and popularised composed music. The folk music of Moravia and Silesia is closely related to the music of Slovakia, Poland and Hungary. The lesser degree of industrialisation and so weaker connection between rural and urban culture has meant that melodies of a more archaic type have survived here. In contrast to Bohemia, minor or modal melodies are strikingly frequent. In consequence of the fact that the melody is adapted to the text, we more often find irregularity and asymmetric structure. In slow songs, a rubato style without fixed measure is typical. An irregular rhythm can also be found in dance songs. In the melodies we find less repetition. The harmonyis determined by the melody and is characterised by many peculiar progressions, such as change from major to minor within one song. In Moravia folk music maintained its original context and place in everyday life for longer. In the first decades of the 20th century what is known as the New Hungarian style, spread mainly by Gypsy bands, has been beginning to reach Moravia. With the new style there is also an emphasis on soloist virtuosity. Dance songs make up a large part of the repertoire in both Bohemia and Moravia. In this sphere too there has been mutual influence between urbanand rural culture and also the adoption of dances from neighbouring countries. Thus in Bohemia, we not only the polka find for example the ländler from Austria or the Polish mazurka, and the csardas has penetrated into Moravia from Hungary. Besides dance songs there also songs associated with particular ceremonies, above all the wedding, work songs or children’s songs. One special example is the verbuňk, a male solo dance originally danced by recruits conscripted into the army. Vendor’s ballads (broadsheet ballads), which continued the long tradition of music written by itinerant musicians, have a special place. These songs also disseminated news, often relating important or remarkable events.

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Shrovetide feasts in Velká nad Veličkou

In general, folk music in Bohemia can be said to be more homogenous in terms of style, while in Moravia the individual regions can differ strikingly. In Bohemia the distinctive regions are in the south and west, above all Chodsko and Blata, where the traditions of bagpipes music have been preserved. On the Bohemian-Moravia border there is the distinctive area of Horácko with fiddle bands. In Moravia regions with a highly specific folk music are Slovácko in the south-east, Wallachia to the north and the Haná in Central Moravia. Silesia and Lašsko, which are under the influence of Polish folk music, are markedly different from Moravia.

Musical Instruments and Ensembles

In the earliest times the main instrument was the bagpipes, which were the principal musical accompaniment at all festive occasions (weddings, fairs...) From the end of the 16th century there are records of ensembles in which the pipes were combined with a flute (fife) or a drum. From themid 17th century stringed instruments, primarily the violin, spread into Bohemia. In the earlier 18th century the clarinet appeared in folk music. At this period substantial differences also began to emerge in instrumental ensembles in the different regions. In Bohemia, especially the south, we find whatwas known as the small peasant band, consisting of bagpipes, clarinettist and violinist. Other favourite instruments were the hurdy-gurdy harp or zither, which were widespread mainly among Germans settled in Bohemia. In East Moravia the bagpipes also known as gajdas were the most important instrument up to the 1860s. The gajda band was made up of piper and fiddler. From the mid-19th century the hudecká muzika [string band], appears, in which there is a piper. This usually consisted of several fiddlers, one of themplaying the melody while the other created a rhythmic and harmonic accompaniment. In the course of the century this ensemble stabilised in the form of firstviolin, second violin (the so-called terc), the violin or viola accompaniment known as contra, clarinet and double bass. The dulcimer band is regarded as a typical

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Bagpipe band from Domažlice

Pipers' band from Hrčava

Moravian folk formation. From the beginning of the 18th century the dulcimer was a popular instruments not only in Moravia but also in the Bohemian-Moravian Highlands and in South Bohemia. This was a small dulcimer hung round the neck by a strap, however, which appeared in groups with fiddle and bass up to thebeginning of the 19th century but subsequently disappeared from the instrumental array. A large modern dulcimer was constructed in 1866 by the Budapest instrument-maker, originally from Říčany near Prague, J. V. Schunda. In Eastern Moravia this instrument started to appear in folk music ensembles only much later, in the 1930s. It became very popular particular for its dynamic and pitch range.

Sources, Collectors and the Revival of Folk Traditions

Thanks to the fact that folksong melodies were used for sacred songs, we have indirect records of several melodies from as early as the end of the 15th century. The first known collectors of folksongs appearin the latter 18th century. The collection of the miller A. Francl-Sýkora, for example, has survived from 1768. At the turn of the 18th/19th centuries the nobleman Jan Jeník of Bratřice recorded a large number of Czech folk songs and in defiance of the prevailing trends among national revivalists who idealised folkart, he did not exclude immoral and “dissolute” songs from his records. What were known as the Gubernial collection organised by the Austrian authorities in 1819 provided the first stimulus for a more systematic andprofessional collection and classification of folk music. In the course of the 19th century a whole series of collections were made that map Bohemian and Moravian folk song. The most important collectors included Karel Jaromír Erben in Bohemia, and in Moravia František Sušil, whose efforts were carried on by František Bartoš in collaboration with the composer Leoš Janáček. At the turn of the 19th /20th century folk specialists began to employ a new invention – the phonograph. In Bohemia the first to do so was the expert in aesthetics and musicology Otakar Zich, who in 1909 recorded thepiper František Kopšík from Blatra region on wax cylinder. At the same time, František Pospíšil started to use the phonograph in Moravia, as did Leoš Janáček and others later. The Czechoslovak Ethnographic Exhibition in 1895, which presented the way of life of the different regions, awoke the wider public to an interest in folk culture. Folk culture played an important role in the formation of the identity of Bohemia and Moravia in the Austro-Hungarian era and later when the independent state was born. At the beginning of the 20th century we start to see efforts to revive and preserve folk culture even outside its original context. The 1930s saw the formation of what were known as circles devoted to folk music and dancing of specific regions (Slovácko, Wallachia, Chodsko) and to reconstructing folk customs. After the 2nd World War amateur and professional folk dance ensembles sprang up throughout the republic and the movement was supported by the state. The Czech State Song and Dance Ensemble and the Brno Radio Orchestra of Folk Instruments were founded, as were various displays and festivals, the oldest held since 1946 in Strážnice. Since 1989 the government has reduced subsides, but many ensembles and festivals still survive and flourish.

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CZECH POPULAR MUSIC

Before World War I

A definite separation of classical and popular music occurred at the turn of the 20th century. Singing onsocial occasions, semi-folk songs and choral music frequently expressed patriotic themes in the spirit of the Czech Revival. The establishment of The Prague Conservatory in 1811 laid the foundations for the professionalization of the country’s musical life. The first music-publishing activities in Prague were undertaken in 1818 by theItalian Marco Berra and the Urbánek family related to him through marriage. In 1871, František Augustin Urbánek founded a music-publishing company in Prague, in 1919 Oldřich Pazdírek in Brno. Among the most favoured Czech social dances were the duple-time polka (after 1830, initially in eastern Bohemia) and the waltz in ¾ time (from the second third of the 19th century). In the latter part of the 19th century, brass-band music, which drew on the traditions of Austro-Hungarian military bands, gained ever-greater popularity. FRANTIŠEK KMOCH (1848-1912) of Kolín was the most outstanding bandmaster and composer of brass-band music. In larger towns and cities parlour music developed simultaneously. This easily performed, pleasing type of music was played on stringed instruments and the piano in parlours of private homes. RUDOLF FRIML (1879–1970) and BOHUSLAV LEOPOLD (1888-1956) were much-loved composers of this music. Many popular songs had their origin in Czech musical comedies derived from the German singspiels and vaudevilles, the French variety shows and cabarets, and from operettas of German-Austrian provenance. The first authenticallyCzech cabaret Červená sedma [The Seven of Hearts] opened in 1910. JIŘÍ ČERVENÝ (1887-1962) and KAREL BALLING (1889-1972) were the chief composers of its songs. KAREL HAŠLER (1879-1941) wrote inimitable sentimental songs with Prague-related themes. Gradually, Prague became acquainted with the new forms of dance influenced by jazz,among them the cakewalk and boston (1902-1903), the two-step (1906) and the tango (1910). The night café Montmartre became the centre of activity of Prague’s newly emerging social life.

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Karel Hašler

The Nineteen-twenties

In the 1920s, the first radio in continental Europe to beginbroadcasting was Czech Radio (Radiojournal): in 1923 it went on the air in Prague, in 1924 in Brno and, in 1929, in Ostrava. Czechoslovakia familiarized itself with jazz through jazz-dance music. The first Czech jazz bands were the Melody Makers (1925) and Melody Boys (1929), both founded by the bandleader, singer, pianist and composer RUDOLF ANTONÍN DVORSKÝ (1899-1966). Of seminal importance for the future course of Czech popular music was the work of the creative team that performed in the late 1920s in Osvobozené divadlo [The Liberated Theatre]. The songwriters, actors and extemporaneous entertainers JIŘÍ VOSKOVEC (1905-1981) and JAN WERICH (1905-1980) and the composer JAROSLAV JEŽEK (1906-1942) wrote a number of satirical revues and plays containing many original songs, which have since become evergreens (Vest Pocket Revue, Caesar, Kat a blázen [The Executioner and the Fool] and Nebe na zemi [Heaven on Earth]). Here started her career original cabaret singer LJUBA HERMANOVÁ (1913-1996). The nineteen-twenties also saw the development of a specific style of song – the tramp song. During the weekends city people left for the country, where they eventually created a repertoire of songs (usually accompanied by a guitar), which incorporated influencesfrom both Czech folk songs and traditional popular music, as well as from American popular and dance music inspired by the romantic vein of film Westerns.

The Nineteen-thirties

In the 1930s and 1940s, tramp songs were affected by swing jazz and later also by country-and-western music. A powerful phenomenon in the Czech entertainment industry, alongside brass-band music and the operetta (composers Jára Beneš, Jaroslav Jankovec and Josef Stelibský), was the so-called “lidovka”. These were simple traditional popular songs whose melodies were often inspired by folk music and dances such as the polka, waltz and tango and whose lyrics, for the most part, expressed amorous troubles, at times with gaudy conclusions. The best-known lidovka song were composed by KAREL VACEK (1902-1980) and JAROMÍR VEJVODA (1902-1988), the author of the world-renowned polka Škoda lásky (1934), known in English as the Beer Barrel Polka and in German as Rosamunde. The musical production of The Liberated Theatre (for example, the songs Nebe na zemi and David a Goliáš [David and Goliath]) acquired the character of anti-Fascist political satire. Satire was also cultivated by the dramatist and composer EMIL FRANTIŠEK BURIAN (1904-1959), who wrote the first Czech publication on jazz (Jazz, 1928). In 1932-33, Burian operated the cabaret Červené eso

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Jan Werich, Jiří Voskovec, Jaroslav Ježek

[The Trump of Hearts] and, in 1934, he founded the avant-garde theatre D 34, where he developed the voice band technique based on rhythmic choral declamation. In the 1930s, the swing scene was expanded to include the Prague Gramoklub orchestra conducted by JAN ŠÍMA (1911-1983) and, from the late 1930s, the orchestra of KAREL VLACH (1911-1986). Established in the late 1920 and early 1930s were the first phonograph record companies Esta and Ultraphone.

The Nineteen-forties

During the country’s forced wartime isolation, notably Czech swing crystallized into a distinctive form of song production performed especially by the orchestras of R. A. Dvorský, Karel Vlach and JAROSLAV MALINA (1912-1988). The Brno-based bandmaster and singer GUSTAV BROM (1921-1995) founded his orchestra in 1940. Among the most prominent composers of that period were KAMIL BĚHOUNEK (1916-1983), ALFONS JINDRA (1908-1978), LEOPOLD KORBAŘ (1917-1990), BEDŘICH NIKODEM (1909-1970) and JAN RYCHLÍK (1916-1964). Most popular among the singers of those times were ARNOŠT KAVKA (1917-1994), RUDOLF CORTÉZ (1921-86), Sestry Allanovy [The Allan Sisters] and INKA ZEMÁNKOVÁ (1925-2000). In the late 1940s, a Communist government came to power, imposing in the sphere of popular music the Soviet model of variety-show music. Jazz music survived in certain cafés. The tour of the Australian revivalist Orchestra of Graeme Bell in 1947 had a major impact on the appearance of numerous Czech dixieland jazz bands. The music industry was concentrated in state monopolies, including Supraphon and, from the late 1960s, Panton.

The Nineteen-fifties

The state bodies governed by the Communist authorities suppressed all musical styles coming from the West, especially those linked with American culture. Conversely, the regime’s greatest support was given to the secondary cultivation of folk music and the composition of optimistic songs for the masses, such as RADIM DREJSL’s (1923-1953) Rozkvetlý den [A Blossoming Day]. There was a flourishing of instrumentalmusic productions of symphonic-type orchestras that performed lighter concert repertories, the so-called "vyšší populár" [higher-level popular music]. Typically, this music was played by such ensembles as Brněnský estrádní rozhlasový orchestr (BERO) [The Brno Variety Radio Orchestra] and composed by such composers as LADISLAV KOZDERKA (1913-1999). The music group of VÁCLAV KUČERA (1925-1983) with its female lead singer Marta Kučerová

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Emil František Burian

Inka Zemánková

(the band was also known by the name “Kučerovci”), which specialized in the folklore of Indonesia, the islands of the Pacific Ocean and Latin America, scored spontaneous popular success. Larger-size orchestras performed in local cafés without the support of the mass media. A more favourable climate for the enhancement of modern popular tunes came only during the second half of the 1950s, when such singers as RICHARD ADAM (*1930), JOSEF ZÍMA (*1932), MILAN CHLADIL (1931-1984), YVETTA SIMONOVÁ (*1928) and JUDITA ČEŘOVSKÁ (1929-2001) gained recognition.

The Nineteen-sixties

The political control of the country was relaxed somewhat in the late 1950s, which situation was favourable to the pioneering composers of the modern jazz style: in 1961, the ensemble Studio 5 split into two groups, i.e. the SHQ featuring the jazz vibraphonist, pianist, saxophonist and composer KAREL VELEBNÝ (1931-1989) and The Jazz Studio with the double-bass player and composer LUDĚK HULAN (1929-1979). The flute player, multi-instrumentalist and composer JIŘÍ STIVÍN (*1942) has become the country’s foremost exponent of the free-jazz and fusion styles. Founded in 1960 was the The Czechoslovak Radio Dance Orchestra (TOČR) and its jazz offshoot (JOČR), both of which were conducted by the saxophonist and composer KAREL KRAUTGARTNER (1922-1982). Virtually all outstanding Czech jazz musicians were one-time members of that orchestra, with various smaller progressive jazz formations splitting off from its nucleus (Jazzové studio, Cellula). The country’s political isolation notwithstanding, from the late 1950s, the rise of a new sound and musical idiom in the form of rock’n’roll stimulated an enthusiastic response (groups Sputnici [Sputniks]and Komety [Comets], singers PAVEL SEDLÁČEK, *1941 and MIKI VOLEK, *1943), which in turn fostered the emergence of a broad rock music movement. Most successful were the Prague groups Olympic (exponent of the Czech Mersey sound with its own compositions and Czech lyrics) and Matadors (a Czech version of rhythm & blues with original English lyrics). The groups based in Brno embraced the harmonic vocal sound (Synkopy 61 [Syncopation 61], Vulkán [Volcano], Atlantis), the Ostrava-based groups sought inspiration in Black soul music (Majestic and Flamingo, with the female singers MARIE ROTTROVÁ, *1941 and VĚRA ŠPINAROVÁ,*1951). In the mid-1960s, the American country-and-western music and bluegrass were a source of inspiration for such groups as the Country beat of Jiří Brabec, Greenhorns (in Czech Zelenáči, with its singer Michal

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Jiří Stivín

Vladimír Merta

Tučný) and the Rangers (also known by its Czech name, Plavci). The American folk music movement was also welcomed in Czechoslovakia, influencing, for example, the music of songwritersJAROSLAV HUTKA (*1947) and VLADIMÍR MERTA (*1946). The music of KAREL KRYL (1944-1994) reflected more the Czechmusical-theatrical tradition and the French chanson (from 1969 he lived in Germany, returning to Czechoslovakia after the fall of Communism in 1989). One of the most significant phenomena of Czech popularmusic - so-called "divadla malých forem" [theaters of minor forms] - traces its roots to the late 1950s. These theatres blended the Czech cabaret tradition and the legacy of the Liberated Theatre with modern swing and later with pop-and-rock music. The leading theatre ensemble of that sort was Semafor with its songwriters and actors JIŘÍ SUCHÝ (*1931) and JIŘÍ ŠLITR (1924-1969). A number of their songs have achieved wide appeal and most present-day Czech stars, such as the singers KAREL GOTT (*1939), WALDEMAR MATUŠKA (*1932), VÁCLAV NECKÁŘ (*1943), EVA PILAROVÁ (*1939), HANA HEGEROVÁ (*1931), HELENA VONDRÁČKOVÁ (*1947), MARTA KUBIŠOVÁ (*1942) and HANA ZAGOROVÁ (*1946) began their singing careers in Semafor or in similar ensembles (Rokoko [Rococo], Divadlo na zábradlí [The Theatre on the Balustrade], Apollo, Studio Ypsilon [Studio Upsilon], Paravan [Screen], Večerní Brno [Night Brno], etc.).

The Nineteen-seventies

After the country’s military occupation by the Warsaw Pact troops in August 1968, which put an end to the relaxed political control that had taken place in Czechoslovakia throughout the 1960s, the regime re-established an authoritarian system – a period officially referred to as “normalization”. The mass media and other institutions responsible for the management of the cultural sphere came once again under the tight control of the Communist Party bodies. Those representing minority music genres had no prospects; mainstream popular music was dominated by lackeys of the Communist regime. Many talented musicians emigrated to Western countries, with only a few of them finding a niche for themselves thereas musicians. These are pianist JAN HAMMER (*1948), who achieved critical acclaim on the American jazz scene, bassists MIROSLAV VITOUŠ (*1947) and GEORGE MRÁZ (*1944) and guitar player RUDY LINKA (*1960). IVAN KRÁL (*1948), who had played with Patti Smith and Iggy Pop, won recognition on the American rock scene. Some musicians back home refused the regime’s new dictate and were driven to perform underground, among them the groups Plastic People of the Universe and DG 307. The political trial of the members of The Plastic People of the Universe and other musicians in 1976 provoked a wave of protests also within

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Golden Kids (from the left: Vondráčková, Neckář, Kubišová)

Karel Gott

the country’s dissident community, resulting in the forming of a political opposition movement soon to become known as Charter 77. Between commercial pop music, on the one hand, and underground music, on the other, a strong current of folk-rock music come to the forefront of the Czech music scene, exemplified by such groups as Etc. with VLADIMÍR MIŠÍK (*1947), Marsyas and C&K Vocal, and jazz-rock music bands, which included Jazz Q, Energit, Impuls [Stimulus] and Pražský big band Milana Svobody [The Prague Big Band of Milan Svoboda] (MILAN SVOBODA, * 1951).

The Nineteen-eighties

In the early 1980s, Czech popular music was invigorated by the vivacious “new wave” in rock music, represented by Pražský výběr [Prague Elite] its musicians MICHAEL KOCÁB (*1954) and MICHAL PAVLÍČEK (*1956), Abraxas and Hudba Praha [Prague Music]. Some groups drew on punk music (F.P.B., Už jsme doma [We Are at Home], Plexis) or New Romanticism (Precedens [Precedent], Oceán [Ocean]), while other ones were inspired by reggae (JANA KRATOCHVÍLOVÁ, *1953, Babalet, Yo Yo Band). In the mid-1980s, the previously irreconcilable rock and pop styles were being fused both in style and expression. The music of new young groups, such as Žentour [Horse Gear] and Ocean, as well as the new creations of the older generation of rock musicians including MICHAL PROKOP (*1946) with his group Framus 5 and the group Olympic with PETR JANDA (*1942) were opening up to broader strata of listeners, while some talented interpreters of mainstream music were seeking innovative and more interesting musical arrangements as, for example, JIŘÍ KORN (*1949). Among the jazz musicians to have achieved wide acclaim are the pianists KAREL RŮŽIČKA (*1940), EMIL VIKLICKÝ (*1948), Milan Svoboda and their younger colleagues Zdeněk Zdeněk and Martin Kumžák. New interpreters of folk songs enjoyed popular success during the 1980s: DAGMAR ANDRTOVÁ-VOŇKOVÁ (*1948), JAREK NOHAVICA (*1953), KAREL PLÍHAL (*1958), ZUZANA NAVAROVÁ (1959–2004) with her group Nerez [The Stainless Steal], and other folk-, tramp- and country-music singers and groups, among them Spirituál kvintet [The Spiritual Quintet] and Brontosauři [Brontosauruses] with the brothers Jan and František Nedvěd, and Wabi Daněk. During that decade, too, the singer and violinist IVA BITTOVÁ (*1958) began developing her singular creative talents and stylistically wholly authentic musical expression. A different type of audience became enthusiastic about the emerging heavy metal music led by such groups as Arakain, Root and Törr. Throughout the 1980s, numerous future stars of Czech pop music began, often inconspicuously, their rise to stardom: the female singers BÁRA BASIKOVÁ (*1963) and LUCIE BÍLÁ (*1966), male singers

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Michal Prokop

Olympic

Dan Bárta, JANEK LEDECKÝ (*1962) and Petr Muk, and groups Lucie, Kabát [The Coat] and Laura a její tygři [Laura and Her Tigers]. Many folk and rock musicians participated, alongside their musical engagements and other social activities, in the processes that resulted in the fall of Communism in 1989. Some of them became active thereafter as politicians (Michael Kocáb, Michal Prokop, Vladimír Mišík and Svatopluk Karásek).

The Nineteen-nineties and the Present

The reestablishment of democratic conditions led to an overhauling of all spheres of social and cultural life. There appeared and disappeared many local music-related publishing companies and private print media, as well as magazines (Rock&Pop, Folk&Country, Ultramix, Xmag) and festivals (the Open Air Music Festival held in Turnov, Rock for People in Český Brod, Jazz Goes to Town in Hradec Králové, Colours of Ostrava in Ostrava). Numerous ensembles from abroad could now perform freely in the country (Frank Zappa, Rolling Stones). In recent years, large cities in the Czech Republic have delighted in musicals. Apart from the adaptations of world-famous performances (Les Misérables, 1992, Jesus Christ Superstar, 1994), new original pieces have been produced. Coming from the workshop of ZDENĚK MERTA (*1951) was his musical Bastard (1993) and penned by KAREL SVOBODA (*1938), the most prolific Czech hit-maker of the 1960s–1990s, was Dracula (1995). DANIEL LANDA (*1968), the protagonist of the former skinhead group Orlík [Eaglet], authored the musical Krysař [The Ratcatcher] (1996) and singer Janek Ledecký wrote the musical Hamlet (1999). Musicals in particular have contributed to the unshakable position of the Queen of Czech Pop Music, singer Lucie Bílá, whose repertory during the 1990s was built by the tandem composer ONDŘEJ SOUKUP (* 1951) and lyricist GABRIELA OSVALDOVÁ (*1953). Czech jazz has been drawing on the tradition of the superb bass school (Luděk Hulan, Miroslav Vitouš, George Mráz, František Uhlíř, František Kořínek) with such new projects as those of ROBERT BALZAR (*1962) and JAROMÍR HONZÁK (*1959). DAVID DORŮŽKA (*1980) is one of the most accomplished guitarists of the youngest generation of musicians. Widely appreciated among the rock groups of the 1990s are such bands as Lucie, Buty, Yo Yo Band, Tichá dohoda [Tacit Agreement], Support Lesbiens, Tata boys and J.A.R. Electronic dance music has experienced a dramatic development. The production of the groups Ecstasy of St. Theresa with JAN P. MUCHOW (* 1971), Liquid Harmony, Blow and Skyline, and the work of such DJs as Tráva [Grass], Bidlo [Pole], Loutka [Marionette], Ladida, Blue and others have been highly influential. Simultaneously, a new generation of rap and hip-hopartists, DJs, art designers and dancers has emerged and is winning ever-larger audiences. It is exemplified by

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Jesus Christ Superstar

the groups Indy&Wich, Bow Wave and Super Crooo. Today, one of the most promising areas of music is the Czech world music scene. In the Czech Republic, there are numerous ensembles inspired by exotic music and cultures, with musicians from those regions frequently performing in the groups: Relaxation and Yamuna – India and Japan, Tshikuna and Hypnotix – Africa, Natalika and Ahmed má hlad [Ahmed is Hungry] – the Balkans, Al-Yaman – Yemen and Arabia, ZUZANA NAVAROVÁ (1959-2004) with the group KOA - Latin American or gypsy music, Věra Bílá with the group Kale and Ida Kelarová with the group Romano Rat - gypsy music, Mišpacha - Jewish music. There is also an increasing number of fine, highly-specialized groups which have been interpretingCzech and Moravian folk music in modern ways. Various ensembles have been deriving their creations from the pioneering deeds of PETR ULRYCH (*1944) with his groups Volcano (1960s), Atlantis and Javory [Maples] (1970s), and from the openness to a variety of influences and forms of collaboration as practiced by thefamed cymbalo band Hradišťan and its first violinist JIŘÍ PAVLICA (*1953). The singer RADŮZA (*1974) has a distinctive style of her own. Some groups are based on folk-rock music (Fleret, Benedikta, Koňaboj), while other ensembles combine domestic folk music with elements of Celtic tunes, folk songs and country music (Čechomor, Teagrass, Do cuku, Tomáš Kočko a Orchestr [Tomáš Kočko and Orchestra], Marcipán [Marzipan]), or with elements of jazz (cimbalist and singer Zuzana Lapčíková with The Emil Viklický Trio, and the group Muziga).

NON-PROFESSIONAL MUSICAL ACTIVITIES

Non-professional activities in music, in other words "amateur music-making", or as it has sometimes been called since the 1970s “arts activity for interest”, have been continually developing and expanding in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia for more than two hundred years, as numerous records show. Although the law (i.e. copyright and related regulations) makes no distinction between amateur and professional art, the two categories differ in organisation and motivation. The amateur category is of course very various in itself. There is a relatively small group of top amateur ensembles that are comparable with professional groups in repertory and standard of performance. It is also common practice for professional performers and conductors to make guest appearances with amateur ensembles. The question of whether a group is or is not paid for concerts is not very important. The key factor is that people should strongly identify with a particular amateur field of activity. Amateur ensemblesoperate at schools (basic arts-orientated schools, conservatories), cultural centres of one kind or another (although they are not run by the centres), and churches (choirs), or they have the status of civic associations in their own right. The individual players or singers are not employed by the ensembles or parent institutions, as is the case with professional ensembles. Most of the ensembles are in fact civic associations. They can apply for grants from local authorities (the community or region), and from the state (each year the Ministry of Culture offers grants to support non-professional arts activities including music). A state-funded organisation, The National Information and Advisory Centre for Culture (ARTAMA Section), provides professional assistance (selected festivals and other events, studios and workshops, literature on methods and so on).

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Adult Choirs

This area consists of mixed choirs and vocal groups, women’s choirs, girls choirs and men’s choirs and covers an age group of 15-75. On the basis of numbers of public performances, there appear to be around 200 choirs giving concert recitals with a total of two thousand members. The largest numbers are in the South Moravian and Moravian-Silesian Regions. Many choirs sing as church choirs, but in this case their activities are mostly limited to a particular parish or church. The main event in amateur choral activity is the annual Jihlava festival of Choral Music with its biennial composing competition. Other important events in this context include The Černohorský Days in Nymburk, which is focused on sacred music, The Spring Festival (which starts with award of the Zdeněk Lukáš Prize and is held each year in a different place in the CR), The Festival of Advent and Christmas Music in Prague (opens with the award of the Petr Eben Prize), The Kampanila Festival in Mikulov, The Bohuslav Martinů Festival in Pardubice, and The IFAS Pardubice University Choir Competition. The civic association Union of Czech Choirs, is the nation-wide umbrella organisation for choral activity.

Wind Orchestras

This area consists of small wind orchestras (165), middle-sized wind orchestras (25), large wind youth orchestras (45) and large wind orchestras for adults (29) with a total of around seven thousand players in all age categories. Once again the largest number of ensembles is in the South Moravian and Moravian-Silesian Region. The wind orchestras are organised in associations, and are affiliated with schools, local authorities and culturalcentres. The prestigious events in this area are The International Competition for Large Wind Orchestras in Ostrava and The International Competition for Small Wind Orchestras held in Hodonín under the name Zlatá křídlovka [The Golden Bugle]. Both are organised on a biennial basis on alternate years. Some festivals (Kmoch’s Kolín, The Děčín International Music Festival, FIJO Cheb, FEDO Štětí – currently a majorette competition, FEDO Zlín and others) are international. The Union of Wind Orchestras of the CR acts as the national umbrella organisation.

Chamber and Symphonic Music

The field of instrumental music, defined primarily in terms of repertoire, consists of ensembles (duos,trios, quartets, quintets, sextets and up to decets), of which there are 89 with a total of 450 performers, chamber orchestras with from 15 to 35 members – mainly playing stringed instruments (95 ensembles with around two thousand instrumentalists – and classic symphony orchestras (a total of 18 ensembles with around a thousand instrumentalists). In terms of geographical distribution, the most ensembles are based in Prague, the Central Bohemian and the South Moravian Regions. Youth ensembles and orchestras and their training come under the competence of the organisation Musical Youth of the CR (a member of Jeunesse musicale at UNESCO). The main events in the area are The National Festival of Chamber and Symphonic Music (which takes place every year in the form of four to five concerts in different places in the CR) and The Camerata nova in Náchod, Vysočina Music Festival, and Meeting of Chamber Orchestras in Olomouc. The Association of Non-Professional Chamber and Symphonic Ensembles is a state-wide civic association in this field.

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Children’s Choirs

The category covers a wide spectrum from school choirs providing an active complement to music education in schools to long-standing and highly dedicated concert choirs that give excellent performances thanks to the quality of training and professional leadership. The annual National Festival of Children’s School Choirs (held in different towns) is preceded by regional selective competitions for the festival. On the basis of monitoring the concert activities of selected choirs, there are estimated to be between about 450 and 500 choirs involving more than 20,000 children. The children are between 6 and 15 years of age (preparatory choirs) and in concert-type choirs the maximum age is 18 years. Most of the choirs are from Basic Schools with Arts Orientation and basic schools with extra music teaching, and a small proportion are from children’s homes. Apart from the nation-wide competition mentioned above, important events in the field includethe state Competition of concert choirs in Nový Jičín (biennial), The Olomouc Song Festival with its Iuventus mundi cantat competition, The Bohuslav Martinů Festival in Pardubice, The Gymnasia cantant competition, The International Festival of Children’s Choirs in Pardubice, The State-wide Competition of Choirs from Basic Schools with Extra Music Education, The Liberec Small Singers, and most recently The International Festival of Children’s Choirs for the anniversary of the birth of František Lýsek in Brno. Given their connection to schools, children’s choirs are relatively uniformly distributed across the whole territory of the Czech Republic.

FESTIVALS IN CZECH REPUBLIC

In the Czech Republic there are as many as 135 major classical music festivals and 180 festivals in other genres. The oldest is the international Prague Spring Music Festival, founded on the initiative of the conductor Rafael Kubelík in 1946, the year of the fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of the Czech PhilharmonicOrchestra. In its very first year the festival already enjoyed the patronage of the President of the republic,Edvard Beneš. From the beginning the festival attracted top stars. Guest performers and conductors included Karel Ančerl, Leonard Bernstein, Sir Adrian Boult, Rudolf Firkušný, Jaroslav Krombholc, Rafael Kubelík, Moura Lympany, Yevgeny Mravinsky, Charles Munch, Ginette Neveu, Jarmila Novotná, Lev Oborin, David Oistrakh, Jan Panenka and others. Since 1952 the three-week festival has always opened with Bedřich Smetana’s cycle of symphonic poems Má vlast [My Homeland] on the anniversary of the death of the composer, the 12th of May, and in most years it used to end (up to 2003) with Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. The Prague Spring is one of the few major international festivals to pay particular attention to young performers. A Prague Spring competition was established only a year after the festival itself, and it takes place annually but for various different instruments in different years. Since 1957 the festival has been a founder member of The World Federation of International Music Competitions based in Geneva. From the outset, then, it has been a high-profile and wide-ranging display of world musical culture. The oldest opera festival in the Czech Republic is the Smetana’s Litomyšl International Opera Festival founded by the Smetana expert and Litomyšl native Zdeněk Nejedlý in 1949. From the beginning the precincts of the Chateau of Litomyšl with its natural amphitheatre have been the setting for the festival. Initially

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it was monothematic in the sense that only the music of Bedřich Smetana was played and the permanent guest company was The Prague National Theatre. Later, however, other opera companies - from Brno, Ostrava and Bratislava, were invited to the festival. 1966-73 The Smetana’s Litomyšl Festival lapsed and it was only to be revived in the next jubilee year of 1974. From the 1970s not only the music of Smetana but works by others, particularly Czech and Slovak composers found a place at the event (Dvořák, Janáček, Martinů, Fibich, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev and others.) It took until the end of the 1980s, however, for thefestival to open to the music of Mozart, Verdi and other world-class classics of opera. Since 1992 Smetana’s Litomyšl has taken place in late June and early July each year over two or three successive long weekends. The programme is also now more open to other genres. 1966 saw the founding of The International Music Festival, later to be called Moravian Autumn, in Brno. It takes place annually at the end of September and beginning of October. Thematically it has always been orientated both to the legacy of important composers (especially L. Janáček and B. Martinů) or the music of a certain epoch or music of particular types, genres or geographical regions. Since 1987 it has regularly been accompanied by the thematic Exposition of New Music (May), which includes an international performance competition and international music colloquium. In the mid.1970s the International Music Festival, Janáček May was founded in Ostrava. It focuses not only on the music of Leoš Janáček but also on other 20th century composers, especially from the region itself. It includes the international musicological conferences known as Janáčekiana. Other more recently founded festivals include The Prague Autumn International Music Festival founded by a private company in 1990. It is geared mainly to the presentation of orchestras from abroad that are commissioned to perform pieces by Czech composers, and to the presentation of solo stars. The Český Krumlov International Music Festival is universal in terms of style. It takes place in the summer months in the precincts of the second largest Czech monument complex after Prague Castle - the Chateau of Český Krumlov in South Bohemia. By contrast, The International Music Festival Concentus Moraviae held in South Moravia (from 1995), and exported to 67 European cities as the festival Czech Dreams in 2004, has a very distinctive programme profile. There also exist a number of other established thematically focussed festivals in classical music, among them The Summer Festival of Early Music held in Prague by the Collegium Marianum ensemble (from 1999), and Festival Baroque in Olomouc (since 1999), which is held at the end of August and in September and is particularly valuable for its Baroque and Neo-Baroque stage productions. In the field of new music there are a number of smaller-scale projects. The most prominent are The Exposition of New Music in Brno, and the annual November Prague Marathon of Contemporary Music, organised by The Society for New Music, The Days of Contemporary Music festival, held by The Association of Musical Artists and Scientists, The Arts Association Tuesdays cycles, The Rien à voir cycles by The Society for Electro-Acoustic Music (this society organise also at the beginning of November the prestigious international competition Musica nova), and in December Třídení (oscillation between meaning of Three-Day Festival and Sorting) organised by The Atelier 90 group. There are quite a few festivals orientated to sacred music, e.g. The Organ Festival in Olomouc, founded in 1969, and the younger International Music Festival Forfest in Kroměříž, focused on contemporary art and music with as spiritual dimension and founded in the early 1990s. It includes a regular academic colloquium.

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Other international festivals with a spiritual focus include for example the St. Wenceslas Festival in Prague, while a St. Wenceslas Music Festival has been newly established in North Moravia. Regional and Euro-regional festivals represent a new element. One of the best known is the International Music Festival Mitte Europa, founded in 1991, which covers the regions of Bohemia, Bavaria and Saxony. The Association of Music Festivals in the CR, officially founded in 1996 and a member of the European Association of Festivals, presently brings together 12 international festivals held in the CR. In addition to those already mentioned, i.e. Prague Spring, Smetana’s Litomyšl, Moravian Autumn, Janáček May, Český Krumlov Festival, Concentus Moraviae, Organ Festival in Olomouc, and Mitte Europa Festival, they are the Prague Strings of Autumn, the South Bohemian, Emmy Destinn Festival, Janáček’s Hukvaldy and Ludwig van Beethoven Festival in Teplice. The oldest folk festival in the CR is the Strážnice International Folklore Festival organised since 1946 by The National Folk Culture Institute. Other important festivals in this field include events put on by The Folklore Association of the CR – the biennial European Meeting of Folklore Ensembles, The Brno International Folk Festival, Frýdek-Místek, and the Prague International Children’s Folk Festival of Songs and Dances. In the field of jazz the oldest events continuing to these days are The International Jazz Festival in Prague founded in 1978, The International Jazz Festival in Karlovy Vary, Jazz Goes To Town Festival in Hradec Králové and The Czechoslovak Jazz Festival in Přerov (since 1983). Since 1989 The Agharta Prague Jazz Festival, Alternativa and Boskovice (Unijazz) have joined the ranks of important jazz festivals, and The Colours of Ostrava festival has made a name for itself in alternative, ethno and world music.

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LINKS (CHOICE)

GENERAL PORTALS

http://www.hudebniportal.czGeneral music portal for classical music, jazz, pop and rock music.

http://www.musica.czOfficial web site of the Czech Music Information Center, primarily contemporary Czech music.

http://muzikontakt.muzikus.czCatalogue of contacts to music organisations, bodies and figures in the branch of Czech music.

http://czechmusic.orgOfficial web site of the program Czech Music 2004.

OPERA

http://www.operabase.comPortal of the world of opera (companies, performances since autumn 2003, artists, opera timelines).

http://www.operissimo.comPortal of the world of opera (about 300 opera-houses in 44 countries).

http://www.theatre.czPortal for Czech theatre (institutions, agencies, artists, projects, books).

Czech Opera Houses

BRNONational Theatre in Brnohttp://www.ndbrno.cz

ČESKÉ BUDĚJOVICESouth Bohemian Theatrehttp://www.jihoceskedivadlo.cz

LIBERECF. X. Šalda Theatrehttp://www.saldovo-divadlo.cz

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OLOMOUCMoravian Theatre Olomouchttp://www.moravskedivadlo.cz

OPAVASilesian Theatre Opavahttp://www.divadlo-opava.cz

OSTRAVANational Moravian-Silesian Theatre – A. Dvořák Theatrehttp://www.ndm.cz

PLZEŇJ. K. Tyl Theatrehttp://www.djkt-plzen.cz

PRAHANational Theatre Praguehttp://www.narodni-divadlo.cz

State Opera Praguehttp://www.opera.cz

ÚSTÍ NAD LABEMNorth-Bohemian Theatrehttp://www.operabalet.cz

CZECH ORCHESTRAS

BRNOBrno Philharmonic Orchestrahttp://www.sfb.cz

ČESKÉ BUDĚJOVICESouth Bohemian Chamber Philharmonic Orchestrahttp://www.music-cb.cz

HRADEC KRÁLOVÉEast Bohemia Philharmonic Hradec Královéhttp://www.fhk.cz

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KARLOVY VARYKarlovy Vary Symphony Orchestrahttp://www.kso.cz

MARIÁNSKÉ LÁZNĚWest Bohemian Symphony Orchestra Mariánské Lázněhttp://www.zso.cz

OLOMOUCMoravian Philharmonichttp://www.mfo.cz

OSTRAVAJanáček Philharmonic Orchestra Ostravahttp://www.jfo.cz

PARDUBICECzech Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra Pardubicehttp://www.chamberphilpar.cz

PRAHACzech Philharmonic Orchestrahttp://www.ceskafilharmonie.cz

Prague Philharmoniahttp://www.praguephilharmonia.cz

Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra http://www2.rozhlas.cz/socr/en

Prague Symphony Orchestrahttp://www.fok.cz

Czech National Symphony Orchestrahttp://www.cnslo.cz

Prague Conservatory Symphony Orchestrahttp://www.prgcons.cz

ZLÍNBohuslav Martinů Philharmonichttp://www.fbmzlin.cz

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CZECH CHOIRS

http://www.choirs.czPortal of The Union of Czech Choirs.

BRNOBrno Czech Philharmonic Choirhttp://www.choirphilharmonic.cz

Brno Philharmonic Choir – Beseda Brněnskáhttp://www.volny.cz/bfs-bb

Choral Society of Moravian Teachershttp://www.psmu.cz

HRADEC KRÁLOVÉBoni puerihttp://www.bonipueri.cz

LIBERECSeveráček [The Northerner]http://www.severacek.cz

OLOMOUCŽerotín Academic Choirhttp://www.zerotin.cz

PLZEŇNew Czech Songhttp://www.volny.cz/ncp

PRAHAPrague Philharmonic Choirhttp://www.choir.cz

Prague Chamber Choirhttp://www.praguechamberchoir.cz

Bambini di Pragahttp://www.bambini.cz

Kűhn Children´s Choirhttp://www.kuhnata.cz

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FESTIVALS

http://www.caramba.czCulture portal including a list of links to Czech festivals.

International Festivals in Czech Republic

BAVARIA-BOHEMIA-SAXONY International Festival Mitte Europahttp://www.festival-mitte-europa.com

SOUTH MORAVIA-NORTH AUSTRIAInternational Music Festival Concentus Moraviae http://www.concentus-moraviae.cz

BRNOInternational Music Festival Brno – Moravian Autumnhttp://www.mhfb.cz

ČESKÉ BUDĚJOVICEEmmy Destinn Music Festival České Budějovicehttp://www.destinn.com

ČESKÝ KRUMLOVInternational Music Festival Český Krumlovhttp://www.czechmusicfestival.com

HUKVALDYJanáček in Hukvaldy http://www.janackovy-hukvaldy.cz

LITOMYŠLSmetana´s Litomyšl International Opera Festival http://www.smetanovalitomysl.cz

OLOMOUCInternational Organ Festival Olomouchttp://www.mfo.cz

OSTRAVAJanáček May International Music Festival Ostravahttp://www.janackuvmaj.cz

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PRAHAPrague Spring International Music Festivalhttp:// www.festival.cz

Old Music Summer Festivities http://www.tynska.cuni.cz

Strings of Autumn http://www.strunypodzimu.cz

Prague Autumnhttp://www.prazskypodzim.cz

St. Wenceslas Festivitieshttp://www.sdh.cz

TEPLICEInternational Music Festival Ludwig van Beethovenhttp://www.scf.sf.cz

Folklore

DOLNÍ LOMNÁSilesian Days – International Festivalhttp://www.beskydy.cz

STRAKONICEInternational Bagpipe Festivalhttp://web.strakonice.cz/mdf

STRÁŽNICEStrážnice International Folklore Festivalhttp://www.nulk.cz

Folk&Country

http://www.folkcountry.cz/festivalyPortal of folk&country music, festivals

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Jazz

http://www.allaboutjazz.comPortal of jazz around the world.

http://www.jazzport.czPortal of jazz music in Czech republic.

HRADEC KRÁLOVÉJazz Goes To Town Festivalhttp://www.animato.cz/jazzgoestotown

KARLOVY VARYInternational Jazz Festival Karlovy Varyhttp://www.karlovyvary.cz

PRAHAInternational Jazz Festivalhttp://www.jazzfestivalpraha.cz./jazz

Prague Jazz Open Festivalhttp://www.praguejazzopen.cz

PŘEROVCzechoslovak Jazz Festival Přerovhttp://www.bluesbar.cz

Rock, World Music, Mixed Genres

ČESKÝ BRODRock for People Festivalhttp://rockforpeople.cz

MIKULOVEurotrialog Festivalhttp://www.eurotrialog.cz

NOVÁ PAKAMusica Paka Festivalhttp://www.musicapaka-open.art.cz

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OSTRAVAColours of Ostrava-The International Festival of World Musichttp://www.zulu.cz/colours

PRAHAAlternativa Festival Prahahttp://www.alternativa-festival.cz

TRUTNOVTrutnov Open Air Festivalhttp://trutnov.openair.cz

Non-professional International Festivals

http://www.nipos-mk.czOfficial portal of the organisation NIPOS-ARTAMA specialized in non-professional activities.

CHEBFIJO Cheb – International Festival of Wind Orchestrahttp://www.fijo.cz

KOLÍNKmoch Kolínhttp://www.kmochuv-kolin.cz

OLOMOUCFesta Musicale-Festival of Songs Olomouc, Contest Mundi Cantathttp://www.festamusicale.cz

MEDIA

Czech Radiohttp://www.rozhlas.cz

Czech Televisionhttp://www.czech-tv.cz

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LIBRARIES

http://www.knihovnahk.cz/ODDELENI/hudebni/adresar.htmAddress book of Czech Music Libraries.

National Libraryhttp://www.nkp.cz

MUSEUMS

National Museumhttp://www.nm.cz

Czech Music Museumhttp://www.nm/mch

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Illustrations and photographs: National Library of Czech Republic, National Museum-Czech Music Museum,

Langhans Gallery, B. Martinů Institute, Music Information Centre, Theatre Institute.

The authors are responsible for the opinions expressed in this publication.

CZECH MUSIC

Published by Theatre Institute, Celetná 17, 110 00 Prague 1, Czech Republic

as its 534th publication.

Book reviewer: Jitka Ludvová (Theatre Institute)

Translated by Anna Bryson

Cover by Ditta Jiříčková

Book design, typsetting and layout by Ondřej Sládek

Printed by Unipress s.r.o., Turnov

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