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CZECH MUSIC
Theatre Institute
1
The publication was produced in cooperation with the Music Information Centre
as 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 Bryson
Cover © 2004 by Ditta Jiříčková
Book design © 2004 by Ondřej Sládek
© 2005 by Theatre Institute, Celetná 17, 110 00 Prague 1, Czech Republic
First 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
3
CALENDAR
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 Bohemian
kings 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
4
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-called
Compacts (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
5
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 Prussians
invade 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)
6
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 European
continent 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
7
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
8
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); Gustav
Husák 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)
9
Historically Important Music Centers
10
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 first
Prague Archbishop ARNOŠT OF PARDUBICE
(+1364) ordered the compilation of a severalvolume 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 wellknown 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 Medieval notation
of the 14th century and were successively Gradual of Arnošt of Pardubice, 1363
11
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
The Velislav’s Bible – Women playing musical instruments, mid-14th.cent.
12
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 one
state, a move that was to be reflected in the liturgical music of the next historical epoch.
13
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 Lutheran
Reformation – 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 Renaissance notation – collection of masses
the latter part of the 16th century even Czech and German by Ch. Luython, published in Prague, 1609
14
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,
The Szamotuly Hymnbook, 1561
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).
15
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
Kryštof Harant of Požice, 1608
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
16
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 of
the 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 figural
church 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), Adam Michna of Otradovice – Czech Marian Music,
who collected and published a copious set of more than Prague 1647
17
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 and
instrumental 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 the
musical 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 (16561746), 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 (16791745). 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 first
known 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
18
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 first
used 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 arrived
at 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 and
a cultural era: the era of “Enlightened Absolutism” in politics and the era of Classicism in music. It is not a fit
that 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 field
of 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
20
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 was
a 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 who
nonetheless 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 their
property, 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 under
noble 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 the
Italian 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 that
lavished a great deal of money on cultural prestige and had a many-sided cultural life. The first musicians
from 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.
21
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 who
were 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 the
function 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 in
the countryside, however, the situation was saved by a “schoolmaster’s music” often now akin to the semifolk. 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
22
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 František Ignác
Tůma, 1782
musical expression.
FRANTIŠEK XAVER BRIXI (1732-1771) was among the most striking and prolific composers
to 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 music
and 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 the
František Benda
development 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
23
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 influenced
his 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
Jan Ladislav Dusík
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 outstanding
music 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 music
for 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
24
(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 NICCOLÒ 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 (18011881), 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 FRIEDRICH
KITTL (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),
25
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.
Jan Václav Hugo
Voříšek, c.1820
Václav Jan Tomášek
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 culture
based on a new bourgeois society and reflecting the gradual transformation of the multinational Habsburg
monarchy 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 1881
was 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,
26
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.
The National Theatre in Prague
27
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 Bedřich Smetana, drawing by M. Švabinský, 1904
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 first
performed 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].
score: Vltava, 1st edition
28
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 director
of 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 Antonín Dvořák, c. 1879
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 the
Song “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 Major
and 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),
score: Symphony no. 9 in E minor “From the
Rusalka
(1901) and Armida.
New World.“
29
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].
K. Bendl, A. Dvořák, J. B. Foerster, J. Kàan z Albestů, K. Kovařovic, Z. Fibich (from the left), 1885
30
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 (18331913) 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 KÀAN z ALBESTŮ (HENRI DE KÀAN-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 NORMANNERUDA (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
Terezie Stolzová
(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.
31
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 Leoš Janáček, c. 1880
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)
32
and The Sonata 1. X. 1905 (1905), the symphonic ballad
Šumařovo dítě [The Fiddler’s Child] (1913) and the threemovement 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
A Diary of One Who Disappeared, authograph
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.
33
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 the
end 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 most
striking 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), first
became a composer under the influence of his teacher and father-in-law
Antonín 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.
34
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 teacher
of 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 expressions
of 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).
Bohuslav Martinů
35
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
36
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 directed
by 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)
Hans Krása
and GIDEON KLEIN (1919-1945).
37
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 film
music 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 film
Bajaja in 1950, Sen noci svatojánské Miloslav Kabeláč
[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).
38
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 over
new 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 official
line. 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 NeoClassicism, clear for example in the music of ILJA
HURNÍK (*1922), VIKTOR KALABIS (*1923),
JINDŘICH FELD (*1925), or LUBOR BÁRTA (19281972). 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.
Vladimír Sommer
39
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.
The Prague New Music Group:
Marek Kopelent, Rudolf Komorous, Vladimír Lébl, Josef Bek, Zbyněk Vostřák, Eduard Herzog, Vladimír Šrámek (from the left)
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 various
different 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).
40
One of the first to apply the principles of the twelve-tone scale and serialism
was 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 New
Music - 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 was
the 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 developed
by 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.).
41
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 beginning
of 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.
Zbyněk Vostřák - Kyvadlo času / The Pendulum of Time, autograph, 1966-67
42
Zbyněk Vostřák
JAN RYCHLÍK (1916-1964) was a very versatile figure and from the beginning his musical range included
not 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 nonEuropean 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 Forties
and 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).
Jan Kapr
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
Miloslav Ištvan
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 figures
from 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
43
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 later
20th 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 played
more 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
44
(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 IVANA
LOUDOVÁ (*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 her
music (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 principle
of thematic continuities inside a piece and strove for the maximum emotional impact Ivana Loudová
- 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).
Peter Graham
45
Graham held views similar to those of the circle of composers who came together in the mideighties 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], 198889 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
46
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 figures
and 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
47
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 composers
in 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 musicaldramatic 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 František Antonín Špork
48
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 GalliBibiena 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
49
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 from
1724 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 the
Thun 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 ever
performance 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
49
The New Town Theatre
The New German
Theatre
50
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 the
Bohemian 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 on
Prague 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).
The Estates Theatre
51
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 opera
ensemble 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, and
from 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 prototype
of 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), especially
with 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 National
Theatre (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
The National and Provisional Theatre
52
(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 was
then 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 ensure
musical 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 Czech
performance 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 mid20th 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 production
style 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 operas
Katya 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 (18701949, 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
54
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 Prague
State 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 illegally
in 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 (193239) 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 avantgarde 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 Theatre
in 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
56
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 course
they 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 reduce
the 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.
*The current list of addresses, see in the chapter Links
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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 their
directors. 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, then
in 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 neoBaroque 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 PletichováAndělová 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 numerous
associations. 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 The Czechoslovak Quartet
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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 The Czech Trio
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
The Smetana Quartet
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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 (19451967, from the beginning of the 1960s with the suffix
Czech), which made a number of foreign tours and Škampa Quartet
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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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 figures
visited 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 The Czech Philharmonic Orchestra
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 Rudolfinum
building the most important Prague and Czech orchestra, appeared before the public for the first time on
the 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 include
Václav 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,
Zdeněk Mácal
62
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 Vladimír Válek
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 recorded
music 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 musical
culture 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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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
Jiří Bělohlávek
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 permanent
employees. 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 apparent
striking 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 interpretation
particularly 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 nonprofessional 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
64
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 associated
with 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 find
works 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 Jaroslav Brych
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
65
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 as
the 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
*The list of orchestras and choirs with contacts see in the chapter Links.
Fiddlers' band from Velká nad Veličkou
66
simpler, mainly keeping to major scales. The melody is influenced by the form of instrumental performance
and 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 the
nineteenth 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 harmony
is 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 urban
and 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.
Shrovetide feasts in Velká nad Veličkou
67
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 the
mid 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 what
was 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 them
playing the melody while the other created a rhythmic
and harmonic accompaniment. In the course of the
century this ensemble stabilised in the form of first
violin, 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
Bagpipe band from Domažlice
Pipers' band from Hrčava
68
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 the
beginning 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 appear
in 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 folk
art, 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 and
professional 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 the
piper 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 on
social 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 the
Italian 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 muchloved 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 GermanAustrian provenance.
The first authentically
Czech cabaret Červená sedma
[The Seven of Hearts] opened in
1910. JIŘÍ ČERVENÝ (18871962) 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.
Karel Hašler
70
The Nineteen-twenties
In the 1920s, the first radio in continental Europe to begin
broadcasting 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 jazzdance 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
Jan Werich, Jiří Voskovec, Jaroslav Ježek
(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 influences
from 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
71
[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.
Emil František Burian
Inka Zemánková
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 instrumental
music 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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(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 (19221982). 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 songwriters
JAROSLAV HUTKA (*1947) and VLADIMÍR MERTA (*1946).
The music of KAREL KRYL (1944-1994) reflected more the Czech
musical-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 popular
music - 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.).
Karel Gott
Golden Kids (from the left: Vondráčková,
Neckář, Kubišová)
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 there
as 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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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
Michal Prokop
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 Olympic
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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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), Jesus Christ Superstar
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-hop
artists, DJs, art designers and dancers has emerged and is winning ever-larger audiences. It is exemplified by
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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 interpreting
Czech 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 the
famed 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 ensembles
operate 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 cultural
centres. 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 include
the 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 Philharmonic
Orchestra. 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 the
festival 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.cz
General music portal for classical music, jazz, pop and rock music.
http://www.musica.cz
Official web site of the Czech Music Information Center, primarily contemporary Czech music.
http://muzikontakt.muzikus.cz
Catalogue of contacts to music organisations, bodies and figures in the branch of Czech music.
http://czechmusic.org
Official web site of the program Czech Music 2004.
OPERA
http://www.operabase.com
Portal of the world of opera (companies, performances since autumn 2003, artists, opera timelines).
http://www.operissimo.com
Portal of the world of opera (about 300 opera-houses in 44 countries).
http://www.theatre.cz
Portal for Czech theatre (institutions, agencies, artists, projects, books).
Czech Opera Houses
BRNO
National Theatre in Brno
http://www.ndbrno.cz
ČESKÉ BUDĚJOVICE
South Bohemian Theatre
http://www.jihoceskedivadlo.cz
LIBEREC
F. X. Šalda Theatre
http://www.saldovo-divadlo.cz
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OLOMOUC
Moravian Theatre Olomouc
http://www.moravskedivadlo.cz
OPAVA
Silesian Theatre Opava
http://www.divadlo-opava.cz
OSTRAVA
National Moravian-Silesian Theatre – A. Dvořák Theatre
http://www.ndm.cz
PLZEŇ
J. K. Tyl Theatre
http://www.djkt-plzen.cz
PRAHA
National Theatre Prague
http://www.narodni-divadlo.cz
State Opera Prague
http://www.opera.cz
ÚSTÍ NAD LABEM
North-Bohemian Theatre
http://www.operabalet.cz
CZECH ORCHESTRAS
BRNO
Brno Philharmonic Orchestra
http://www.sfb.cz
ČESKÉ BUDĚJOVICE
South Bohemian Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra
http://www.music-cb.cz
HRADEC KRÁLOVÉ
East Bohemia Philharmonic Hradec Králové
http://www.fhk.cz
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KARLOVY VARY
Karlovy Vary Symphony Orchestra
http://www.kso.cz
MARIÁNSKÉ LÁZNĚ
West Bohemian Symphony Orchestra Mariánské Lázně
http://www.zso.cz
OLOMOUC
Moravian Philharmonic
http://www.mfo.cz
OSTRAVA
Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra Ostrava
http://www.jfo.cz
PARDUBICE
Czech Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra Pardubice
http://www.chamberphilpar.cz
PRAHA
Czech Philharmonic Orchestra
http://www.ceskafilharmonie.cz
Prague Philharmonia
http://www.praguephilharmonia.cz
Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra
http://www2.rozhlas.cz/socr/en
Prague Symphony Orchestra
http://www.fok.cz
Czech National Symphony Orchestra
http://www.cnslo.cz
Prague Conservatory Symphony Orchestra
http://www.prgcons.cz
ZLÍN
Bohuslav Martinů Philharmonic
http://www.fbmzlin.cz
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CZECH CHOIRS
http://www.choirs.cz
Portal of The Union of Czech Choirs.
BRNO
Brno Czech Philharmonic Choir
http://www.choirphilharmonic.cz
Brno Philharmonic Choir – Beseda Brněnská
http://www.volny.cz/bfs-bb
Choral Society of Moravian Teachers
http://www.psmu.cz
HRADEC KRÁLOVÉ
Boni pueri
http://www.bonipueri.cz
LIBEREC
Severáček [The Northerner]
http://www.severacek.cz
OLOMOUC
Žerotín Academic Choir
http://www.zerotin.cz
PLZEŇ
New Czech Song
http://www.volny.cz/ncp
PRAHA
Prague Philharmonic Choir
http://www.choir.cz
Prague Chamber Choir
http://www.praguechamberchoir.cz
Bambini di Praga
http://www.bambini.cz
Kűhn Children´s Choir
http://www.kuhnata.cz
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FESTIVALS
http://www.caramba.cz
Culture portal including a list of links to Czech festivals.
International Festivals in Czech Republic
BAVARIA-BOHEMIA-SAXONY
International Festival Mitte Europa
http://www.festival-mitte-europa.com
SOUTH MORAVIA-NORTH AUSTRIA
International Music Festival Concentus Moraviae
http://www.concentus-moraviae.cz
BRNO
International Music Festival Brno – Moravian Autumn
http://www.mhfb.cz
ČESKÉ BUDĚJOVICE
Emmy Destinn Music Festival České Budějovice
http://www.destinn.com
ČESKÝ KRUMLOV
International Music Festival Český Krumlov
http://www.czechmusicfestival.com
HUKVALDY
Janáček in Hukvaldy
http://www.janackovy-hukvaldy.cz
LITOMYŠL
Smetana´s Litomyšl International Opera Festival
http://www.smetanovalitomysl.cz
OLOMOUC
International Organ Festival Olomouc
http://www.mfo.cz
OSTRAVA
Janáček May International Music Festival Ostrava
http://www.janackuvmaj.cz
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PRAHA
Prague Spring International Music Festival
http:// www.festival.cz
Old Music Summer Festivities
http://www.tynska.cuni.cz
Strings of Autumn
http://www.strunypodzimu.cz
Prague Autumn
http://www.prazskypodzim.cz
St. Wenceslas Festivities
http://www.sdh.cz
TEPLICE
International Music Festival Ludwig van Beethoven
http://www.scf.sf.cz
Folklore
DOLNÍ LOMNÁ
Silesian Days – International Festival
http://www.beskydy.cz
STRAKONICE
International Bagpipe Festival
http://web.strakonice.cz/mdf
STRÁŽNICE
Strážnice International Folklore Festival
http://www.nulk.cz
Folk&Country
http://www.folkcountry.cz/festivaly
Portal of folk&country music, festivals
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Jazz
http://www.allaboutjazz.com
Portal of jazz around the world.
http://www.jazzport.cz
Portal of jazz music in Czech republic.
HRADEC KRÁLOVÉ
Jazz Goes To Town Festival
http://www.animato.cz/jazzgoestotown
KARLOVY VARY
International Jazz Festival Karlovy Vary
http://www.karlovyvary.cz
PRAHA
International Jazz Festival
http://www.jazzfestivalpraha.cz./jazz
Prague Jazz Open Festival
http://www.praguejazzopen.cz
PŘEROV
Czechoslovak Jazz Festival Přerov
http://www.bluesbar.cz
Rock, World Music, Mixed Genres
ČESKÝ BROD
Rock for People Festival
http://rockforpeople.cz
MIKULOV
Eurotrialog Festival
http://www.eurotrialog.cz
NOVÁ PAKA
Musica Paka Festival
http://www.musicapaka-open.art.cz
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OSTRAVA
Colours of Ostrava-The International Festival of World Music
http://www.zulu.cz/colours
PRAHA
Alternativa Festival Praha
http://www.alternativa-festival.cz
TRUTNOV
Trutnov Open Air Festival
http://trutnov.openair.cz
Non-professional International Festivals
http://www.nipos-mk.cz
Official portal of the organisation NIPOS-ARTAMA specialized in non-professional activities.
CHEB
FIJO Cheb – International Festival of Wind Orchestra
http://www.fijo.cz
KOLÍN
Kmoch Kolín
http://www.kmochuv-kolin.cz
OLOMOUC
Festa Musicale-Festival of Songs Olomouc, Contest Mundi Cantat
http://www.festamusicale.cz
MEDIA
Czech Radio
http://www.rozhlas.cz
Czech Television
http://www.czech-tv.cz
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LIBRARIES
http://www.knihovnahk.cz/ODDELENI/hudebni/adresar.htm
Address book of Czech Music Libraries.
National Library
http://www.nkp.cz
MUSEUMS
National Museum
http://www.nm.cz
Czech Music Museum
http://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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