Petr Eben was a Czech composer of modern and contemporary classical music, as well as an organist and choirmaster. For more than half a century, Eben produced a large number of works in various genres. His music has been widely performed and recorded since the early 1980s, and his popularity is still on the rise. Stylistically, his musical language can be considered “neo-expressionistic”; however, in some works one can hear impressionistic tendencies. He is often compared with Olivier Messiaen (the comparison is valid to some extent in that both men wrote a great deal of organ music, and examples of their organ works are often included on the same programs), but overall his style is less consistently experimental and voluptuous than Messiaen’s.
Eben composed Prague Te Deum 1989 between 1989 and 1990 as a direct response to political events. Many composers have used the text of the Latin hymn Te Deum; however, as Eben remarked about the creation of the work, “it is often only when the composer comes face to face with the specific text that he can see the pitfalls … The main dilemma about the text of the Te Deum is that from start to finish it calls for praise and celebration. But the composer cannot constantly rejoice in fortissimo for 10 minutes without stopping.” Eben saw mystery in the text, an expression of awe before God, culminating in a closing passacaglia. The work was written for mixed choir, four brass instruments, timpani, and percussion (alternatively accompanied by organ), and first performed on April 20, 1990, in Prague on the eve of a visit by Pope John Paul II. The premiere took place as part of a concert organized by the Archdiocese of Prague and the Society of Spiritual Music at the Church of Saint Nicholas in the Lesser Town of Prague, with the Prague Philharmonic Choir conducted by Lubomír Mátl.
Leoš Janáček is the most frequently performed Czech opera composer in the world, and—according to statistics in the database Operabase—is one of the 20 most frequently performed opera composers of all time. Inspired by Moravian and other Slavic music, including Eastern European folk music, Janáček created an original, modern musical style. After his death in 1928, his works were heavily promoted on the world’s opera stages by Australian conductor Charles Mackerras, who also restored some of Janáček’s compositions to their original, unrevised forms. In his homeland, Janáček inspired a new generation of Czech composers, including several of his students. Today, along with Antonín Dvořák and Bedřich Smetana, he is considered among the most important of Czech composers.
The cantata Our Father was written for a special occasion to accompany live static scenes in an eight-part cycle titled Ojcze nasz (Our Father) by Polish artist Józef Męcina-Krzesz (1860–1934). The event’s proceeds were meant to be donated to a women’s shelter. Janáček altered the sequence of scenes and introduced social aspects to the work. Under his direction, Our Father—which is scored for solo tenor, mixed choir, piano, and harmonium—was first performed at the Veveří Theatre in Brno on June 15, 1901. In 1906, Janáček revised the work for a concert performance, replacing the piano part with harps and organ. This version of Our Father was first performed at the Rudolfinum in Prague on November 18, 1906, with the Hlahol Choir, tenor František Pácal (a member of the National Theatre’s State Opera), organist Josef Klička, and conductor Adolf Piskáček.
Antonín Dvořák frequently employed rhythms and other aspects of the folk music of Moravia and his native Bohemia, following the Romantic-era nationalist example of his predecessor Bedřich Smetana. Dvořák’s style has been described as the full recreation of a national idiom, and in his use of folk influences he has been described as among the most versatile composers of his time.
The lyrics of poet Vítězslav Hálek (1835–1874) inspired a number of composers, and his verses appear several times in works by Dvořák. In Nature’s Realm, composed for unaccompanied mixed choir in 1882, is a musical setting of selected poems from Hálek’s collection of the same name, and illustrates both the poet’s and the musician’s relationship with nature. Dvořák gave the verses similar musical forms, and they were soon included in the repertoire of Czech choirs. They were performed together for the first time in Prague’s Žofín Palace on November 17, 1889, at a benefit concert for the Pension Association of Members of the Choir and Orchestra of the National Theatre.
Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů wrote six symphonies, 15 operas, 14 ballet scores, and a large body of orchestral, chamber, and vocal works. He performed as a violinist in the Czech Philharmonic, and briefly studied under Czech composer and violinist Josef Suk. After leaving Czechoslovakia for Paris in 1923, Martinů deliberately withdrew from the Romantic style in which he had been trained. During the 1920s, he experimented with modern French stylistic developments, exemplified by his orchestral works Half-time and La bagarre. He also adopted jazz idioms, particularly in his La revue de cuisine (Kitchen Revue).
The Four Songs of Mary for mixed choir were initiated by Bohuslav Martinů during his Christmas stay in 1933 in his hometown of Polička and completed in January 1934 in Paris. The texts were chosen from the collection by František Sušil (1804–1868).
Jan Novák ranks among the most distinct of postwar Czech composers. A graduate of the Brno Conservatory, he received a scholarship to study in the United States in 1947. At Tanglewood, he was exposed to the works of Martinů and became his devoted pupil. (After returning to his homeland, he tried to promote the works of his teacher, which was not easy at a time when Martinů, as a “western emigrant,” was considered undesirable at home.) From 1977 onward, Novák lived in Neu-Ulm, Germany.
Novák’s lifelong passion was Latin. In 1966, he wrote Testamentum Iosephi Eberle, based on a poem by Josef Eberle (1901–1986), for solo voices, mixed choir, and four horns. For his Latin texts, Eberle used the pseudonym Iosephus Apellus, from which the name of Novák’s composition is derived. The humorous exaggeration and textual structure refer to Le testament (The Testament) by 15th-century French poet François Villon, and also recall Orff’s Carmina Burana. The poems express ways of coming to terms with all aspects of life—joyful and painful—and also with death. The Prague Philharmonic Choir performed Testamentum with choirmaster Pavel Kühn, and released a recording in 1995. In 2014, the work was recorded live at the Prague Spring Festival with choirmaster Lukáš Vasilek and the Martinů Voices.
—Vlasta Reittererová