Czech Music articles from January 2004

Czech Music archives from January 2004

Editorial.
January 1, 2004... Dear Readers, and friends of Czech music. The magazine Czech Music enters the new year in a new format. We have decided that a quarterly with a larger number of pages will be better suited to our goal, which is to present articles and...

Zdenek Macal: the hardest thing is to make the right decision at the right time.
January 1, 2004... Zdenek Macal (b. 1936)--today a citizen of the United States--studied at the Brno Conservatoire and the Janacek Academy of Music in his native Brno. He first began to make a name for himself when he won two important music competitions: the...

Czech orchestras.
January 1, 2004... 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...

Miroslav Pudlak--balancing on the edge of kitsch.
January 1, 2004... Miroslav Pudlak studied composition at Prague Conservatory and musicology in Charles University, Prague and Universite Paris VIII. He was a founder and artistic director of contemporary music ensemble Agon (1985-1990). From 1995-1996 Pudlak has...

The case for speech melodies, reopened.
January 1, 2004... Janacek and language Leos Janacek was a musician, trained in the practice of his era, and entrenched in the traditions of his time and locale. Like most of us, he exhibited both conservative and radical tendencies, and these found form in...

Respect for tradition and creative visions.
January 1, 2004... We are used to seeing Leos Janacek as a composer who had a highly distinctive and positive attitude to folk culture. Sometimes, however, the influence of folk lore on composers at the turn of the 19th/20th centuries has been exaggerated and we...

Gesamtkunstwerk on ice.
January 1, 2004... "I've got some quite big opera plans as well"--That was how Martin Smolka ended an interview with us two years ago (Czech Music 12/2001), but nobody could have dreamed just what sort of plans they were. It was not until about six months ago...

Bedrich Smetana: 2th March 1824-12th May 1884.(Profiles)
January 1, 2004... The founder of Czech national music--that is what almost any Czech who has finished elementary school thinks when he hears the name Smetana. Many will be able to identify him as the composer of The Bartered Bride and Libuse, and probably My...

Smetana's Dalibor: as tragic opera.(Profiles)
January 1, 2004... As part of the second day of celebrations surrounding the laying of the foundation stone for the Czech National Theatre on the 16th of May 1868 Bedrich Smetana's third opera, Dalibor, was premiered at the New Town Theatre, a branch stage of the...

"The Pope of Prague music in the early 19th century": Vaclav Jan Tomasek (1774-1850).(Profiles)
January 1, 2004... The important role of Vaclav Jan Tomasek in the development of Czech and by extension European music as well remained relatively undervalued for many years after his death. It was only in the field of music education that his achievements were...