Alois Hába (1893-1973): mezi tradicí a inovací
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| Item Description: | Zsfassung in engl. Sprache u.d.T.: Alois Hába (1893-1973) |
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Obsah
Předmluva
. 7
Zkratky
. 8
Prolog: pozůstalost Aloise Háby
. 9
Exteritoriální Hába
(1893-1923). 17
Čtvrttónový klavír
(1924-1928). 53
»Hábova škola«
. 79
Hábova teorie:
Νονά
nauka o harmonii
(1927). 105
Čtvrttónová opera Matka
(1927-1931). 125
Hába-skladatel v letech
1932-1937. 141
Hábovo společenské angažmá
(20.
a
30.
léta)
. 147
Boj o Novou zemi
(1935-1937). 161
Přijď království Tvé (Nezaměstnaní)
(1942). 173
Rozpaky nad Hábou(
1948-1950). 181
Hledání nové hudby
(1951-1973). 189
Hábova »Musik
der Freiheit«
pohledem německy píšící muzikologie
. 203
Summary:
Alois Hába
(1893-1973). 214
Seznam Hábových skladeb členěných systematicky podle žánrů nebo nástrojového
obsazení
. 222
Seznam Hábových skladeb podle opusových čísel
. 228
Chronologický přehled Hábových skladeb
. 231
Bibliografie
. 237
Jmenný rejstřík
. 249
2141
SUMMARY
Alois
Hába
(1893-1973)
Alois
Hába
(21st June
1893,
Vizovice
-
\šth
November
1973,
Prague) entered Czech musi¬
cal culture at a time when the "lived inheritance of folklore" had come to be recognized as
something of genuine potential value for high culture. Attempts at the authentic expression of
musical roots no longer meant a degrading provincialism, as had still to some extent been the
case when the Czech musicologist
Zdeněk Nejedlý (1
878-1962)
expressed highly critical views
of the work of
Leoš Janáček
and
Vítězslav Novák. Nejedlý
the aesthete condemned
Novák
for
"falsified quotation" of folk song, in the sense of its use in the structure of his works as a musi¬
cal symbol at a different level. He saw
Janáček
as a typical regressive composer, and claimed
to see in the opera
Jenůfa
a striking similarity with the earlier romantic aesthetic of the 1860s,
when the character of the work was deliberately determined by quotation from folk songs and
the desire to get closer to the taste of the wider public.
In fact,
Nejedlý
was much more generous in his criticism of Novak's music, seeing it as at
least a higher stage of response to folk material.
Nejedlý's
critical opinions on the treatment
of folk music have a very clear rationale, in line with the changing ideas of the time on the
function of folk culture within a national programme. At this point, in the early
1920s,
Nejedlý
distinguished between folk culture and the taste of the broader public. In his view the audience,
the wider public culture, was essentially conservative, and a progressive composer ought not to
pander to its tastes. Despite the trials that this might involve, he should resist the pressure of the
public and develop his own individual artistic identity. Art for the people should not be an art of
lower quality that made few demands on its listeners.
When another Czech musicologist, Vladimir Helfert
(1886-1945)
in his book
Česká moderní
hudba
[Czech Modern Music]
(1936)
tried to define
Hába's
place in the evolution of Czech mu¬
sic, he praised the positive significance of the composer's folklore inspirations. Helfert believed
that in
Hába,
after
Janáček,
the Czech musical scene had acquired a composer whose starting-
point was not romanticism and whose sensibility was partly defined by his origin. Some passages
in
Hába's
music have an undeniable similarity with Eastern Moravian melodic types, but
Hába
does not falsify folklore or demean himself by trying for the required "folksy" effect, i.e. the ad¬
mixture of the "folk" remains something more essential than contrived. Although regional roots
play an important role in
Hába's
music, the composer never imitates or parodies folk music. As
one of the most radical representatives of the Central European aesthetic avant-garde between
the wars,
Hába
expressed his individual style by drawing on the well-springs in the sense of his
own lived experience of folklore, but then reformulating this inspiration at the most universal
levels
-
microtonality, athematism, modality. Furthermore, at the very moments when we are
aware of the composer's "inclination to folklorism" we can also hear, like a base note, his critical
reaction to the Late Romantic idiom of
Hába's
great teachers. In a number of other commentaries
Helfert was to continue to insist on the importance of
Hába's
work for Czech music, seeing his
work and that of
Bohuslav Martinů
as the two opposed, defining poles of its future development.
* * *
Summary: Alois
Hába (1893-I973)
"215
Alois
Hába
was born in
Vizovice
in Moravia into the family of a folk musician. In this re¬
gion he was able to experience folksong and music in its authentic forms, and his theoretical
and biographical writings often allude to folk inspirations as a unique and major source of his
original work as a composer. In the autobiographical sketch
Můj lidský a umělecký vývoj
[My
Human and Artistic Development}, which by his own dating was written at Christmas in
1942
(printed in
1993),
and later in the text
Mein Weg zur Viertel- und Sechsteltonmusik
of
1971, he
stresses the importance of inherited musicality, gradual acquaintance with the traditions of ar¬
tificial classical music and then the further development of his own original musical language,
that of "liberated music".
If we want to explain the principle of the qualitative transformation of folklore roots in
Hába's
life, however, we need to find the point at which he started to cultivate and develop this
inherited element. In looking at
Hába's
work we may also ask how far his choice of techniques,
material and mode of treating that material was influenced by his later studies, or else whether
his use even of the methods that he subsequently adopted through studies was subject to the kind
of rules that predestine the direction taken by artists, rules that we acquire outside the field of
art as it was unconsciously even before we start to create. In this context it will suffice to con¬
sider the tradition of the "culture of the centre" which
Hába
both accepts and rebels against. His
journey from the periphery of the Eastern Moravian region, which led through teacher training
college in
Kroměříž
(1908-1912)
and a short period of work as a teacher in
Bílovice
in
Slovácko
(1912-1914),
took
Hába
first to Prague
(1914-1915),
then to Vienna
(1917-1920)
and to Berlin
(1920-1923).
In his case the progress through important centres of European culture genuinely
corresponded to the artistic "progress" of the young composer on his "journeyman travels".
Studies with
Novák
and Schreker in Prague and his Berlin meeting with
Ferruccio Busoni
were undoubtedly important moments in
Hába's
artistic growth. Apart from new experience and
knowledge, however, what he acquired above all was the hallmark and reputation of a notewor¬
thy innovator and propagator of the new avant-garde trends. In the spirit of the collective creed
of the avant-garde young generation
Hába
both joined the current of the most contemporary
modern movement and at the same time increasingly developed his specific creative identity.
Hába's
first real teacher of composition was
Vítězslav Novák
(1870-1949).
Hába
joined
Novak's master course in
1914
without having graduated from the conservatory. With his sheer
perseverance and hard work, and with the essential encouragement of the humane and tactful
Novák,
the enthusiastic
autodidact
filled in the serious gaps in his training as a composer.
Novák
insisted that his pupils acquire a perfect mastery of traditional musical forms and classic treat¬
ment of themes. He also encouraged interest in folk songs and their compositional principles.
At this period none of Novak's pupils had so close a relationship to folk culture as
Hába,
but
he needed to enrich his experience of folk music by the kind of critical examination that would
allow him to explore its musical organism more deeply and consciously.
Hába
studied with
Novák
for just under a year. In this short time he mastered the rules of compositional technique
and crowned his studies with the composition Sonata for Violin and Piano op.
1.
Successful
completion of his studies paved the way for the young
Hába
to enter Prague cultural life, but
on the day of his twenty-second birthday he had to give up this promising prospect and join the
Austro-Hungarian army. He spent the first years of the war on the Russian front, from where
he was recalled to Vienna to organise a collection of military songs for army purposes
{Musik-
historische Zentrale)
together with Felix Petyrek
( 1892-1951 )
and
Béla Bartók
(1881-1945).
His first contact with radically innovative ideas in new music can clearly be dated to January
1917.
Towards the end of January
Hába,
as a student of the Vienna Officers' School, attended
a performance of the opera Die Schneider
von Schönau
(і
916)
by the Dutch composer Jan
Brandts-Buys
(1868-1933)
and at the same time read in the Viennese press about a showcase
216В
Summary: Alois
Hába
(1893-1973)
evening of quarter-tone music by the German composer Willy
von Möllendorf (1872-1934).
Immediately after the opera visit,
Hába,
keen to compose similar music, wrote to Brandts-Buys
asking for lessons in composition. Brandts-Buys was too busy to agree, but on his recommenda¬
tion
Hába
was taken on for a while as a pupil of the important Viennese musical theorist Richard
Stöhr (1874-1967),
who trained him in harmony and strict counterpoint. The encounter with
quarter-tone music was fateful for
Hába's
future orientation as a composer, despite the fact that
he only learned of the
Möllendorf
evening at second hand. What then did innovation of tone
material mean for
Hába?
It meant that he could turn to his own inherited values in the role of
the herald of new ideas. In
Hába's
case the desire for originality combined with the attempt to
preserve the riches of the culture from which he came.
Hába
first tried out his idea of "unusual
music" in February and March of
1917
in his unfinished Suite in the Quarter-tone System in
Three Parts. The piece remained incomplete in a piano part. In the same year he also composed
an orchestral Ukrainian Suite. He included neither in the numbered list of his works. In
1918
Hába
entered the Vienna
Akademie für Musik und darstellende Kunst
as a
private
student in the
class of
Franz
Schreker
(1878-1934).
Under Schreker's expert supervision he composed his
first numbered works, Sonata for Piano op.
3,
String Quartet no.
1
op.
4,
Overture for Large
Orchestra op.
5
and SL· Piano Pieces op.
6.
The last two pieces in particular are excellent
demonstrations of how perfectly
Hába
mastered the traditional craft of composition. The piano
pieces also reveal an attempt to use the up-to-date compositional techniques expounded above
all by the
Schönberg
School. With the establishment composer Schreker
-
and what is more in
Vienna, where classical values for a long time represented an aesthetic boundary that could not
be breached
-
it was almost impossible to compose using unusual techniques and in systems that
had, at best, uncertain futures. Nonetheless, in the spring of
1920
Hába
presented his teacher with
his first quarter-tone String Quartet op.
7.
Schreker greeted the work with amazement {"Was?
Vierteltonstreichquartett? Mensch, sind Sie verrückt geworden? "),
but recommended the piece
for publication by the renowned Vienna publishing house Universal Edition. The new work was
then rehearsed under
Hába's
direction by the Havemann Quartet and presented in Berlin in the
autumn of
1921.
In the autumn of
1920
Franz Schreker left for Berlin to take up the position of director of
the Berlin
Staatliche Hochschule
för Musik.
His most faithful students followed him, including
not only Alois
Hába
but also, for example, Ernst
Křenek,
Max Brand,
Karol
Rathaus
and Jascha
Horenstein. Berlin, where
Hába
lived from mid-
1920
to Easter
1922
and with intervals until
the summer of
1923,
was another decisive stage in
Hába's
life. He arrived in Berlin as a self-
confident composer already starting on his career but nonetheless still in the process of finding
his own expressive language. Although he faced financial problems in Berlin, a major centre
overflowing with important protagonists of the avant-garde in all branches of culture offered
him a golden opportunity for contact with the latest artistic movements.
Nevertheless, by something like the path he describes
Hába
certainly found another el¬
ement that was to be one factor determining his "liberated music" in the future: this factor
is athematism. The first of his works using this technique are the quarter-tone Fantasia for Solo
Violin op. 9a and Music for Solo Violin op. 9b, the quarter-tone String Quartet op.
12,
The Choral
Suite op.
13,
the quarter-tone String Quartet op.
14
and the sixth-tone String Quartet op.
15.
Their experimental quality apart, even after many years these works remain a clear confirmation
of the composer's exceptional creative powers. A striking feature of this period is his attempt to
exploit to the full the possibilities of the new tone systems.
Hába
embarked on new music with
panache and enthusiasm and if some attributes of his style were later to be singled out as typical
of his work, they originated in this period. In the years
1923-1927
he wrote the majority of his
pieces for quarter-tone piano, among them five suites and ten fantasias. The character of this
Summary: Alois
Hába
(1893-1973)
И217
period as one of maximum technical innovation is underlined by the fact that between the piano
Suite op.
10 (1923)
and his Fantasia for Cello and Quarter-tone Piano op.
33
with one exception
Hába
wrote no pieces in semitones.
Hába
also contributed to the invention of new instruments.
For example he designed a three-manual keyboard for quarter-tone harmonium and piano, and
in
1925
the firm August
Förster
built a quarter-tone piano at his request.
* * *
In
Hába's
case we can clearly identify the motives that led the young composer to consider
athematism or microtonality to be important compositional techniques. Berlin offered
Hába
a
wide range of opportunities to pick up new ideas that would then form part of the theoretical
background of his
Musik der Freiheit.
Among the composers who inspired him one frequent¬
ly mentioned in the literature is
Ferruccio
Busoni
(1866-1924).
In Berlin
Hába
encountered
Busoni's ideas in the second, reworked edition of his book Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music
{Entwurf einer neuen Ästhetik der Tonkunst^ 1907, 1916).
Later he occasionally attended the
celebrated discussion circles that Busoni ran in his Berlin apartment, where the young composer
was familiarly nicknamed Ali-Baba by his host. In wider musical circles Busoni had the justified
reputation as a leading supporter of
microtonal
music (and new music in general), but in fact he
was extremely hostile to quarter-tone music, seeing the third-tone and sixth-tone system as far
more natural and promising for future use. Busoni's views eventually inspired
Hába
to compose
his sixth-tone String Quartet op.
15.
Yet another influence was at work here in Berlin, and that was the boom in ethnomusicol-
ogy. The introduction of the sound recording, and invention of the phonograph, pitchmeter and
gramophone records, had been vastly increasing the potential of the new musicological disci¬
pline. The deputy director of the Berlin
Hochschule
fur
Musik Georg Schünemann (1884-1945)
arranged for
Hába
to visit the Phonogramm-
Archiv,
part of the Psychological Institute of Berlin
University, where the composer could find other fundamental rationales for his own music.
The Berlin archive contained a very large quantity of recordings of non-European music; the
infinitely reproducible songs, instrumental pieces and spoken word could scarcely have left a
composer of
Hába's
kind unmoved. Comparison of recordings of the music of distant cultures
opens up the possibility of identifying fundamental common factors despite diversity. Of course,
one of the most useful recommendations when listening to "unusual" non-European music, is
that the listener should try as hard as possible to avoid established stereotypes of perception and
conventional methods of study, but in
Hába's
case the new experience seems to have led him less
to an understanding of "objective differences" than to an attempt to derive general conclusions
and look for common constants. Perhaps it was here that an opinion to be found repeatedly in
Hába's
later writings first took shape.
(1)
The different kinds of music of distant cultures were in his view just different variants and
different evolutionary stages of one and the same thing. The different types of musical produc¬
tion share audible features that are hard to explain in terms of pure cultural convergence or the
evolutionary kinship of different cultures.
(2)
On the other hand, comparison led
Hába
to the belief that the a priori categories of Eu¬
ropean music relating to methods and techniques of musical structuring were not necessarily
eternally valid. Theoretical and historical relativization of this kind undermines the claims of
the "grand musical tradition".
There was no reason why different types of music, hitherto regarded as incommensurable,
should not be subjected to the same kind of judgement.
Hába's
apprenticeship years, which culminated in Berlin, were something he could capi¬
talise on at home, where many of his experiences acquired the attractive hallmark of complete
novelty. In
1923,
therefore,
Hába
returned to Prague for good. He started to teach at the Prague
218И
Summary: Alois
Hába
(1893-1973)
Conservatory in the same year and in
1925
managed to persuade the school authorities to allow
him to open a class in quarter-tone and sixth-tone composition. In
1934
he was made a regular
professor there.
Hába's
class attracted the pupils of other composers as well, who wanted to get
to know the latest methods of composition. In his seminars
Hába
introduced his pupils to the
methods of his own compositional work. The principles by which such music could be brought
to real life were to be demonstrated with the help of materials gathered in a newly established
phonograph archive.
Hába's
class soon developed an international reputation. Apart from Czechs
and Slovaks it was attended by Germans, Southern Slavs, Ukrainians, Bulgarians and Lithu¬
anians.
Hába
trained a number of pupils who also tried to compose in
microtonal
systems: his
brother
Karel Hába,
Rudolf
Kubín, Václav Dobiáš, Miroslav
Ponc,
Karel
Reiner and
Southern
Slavs
Osterc,
Ristić, Iliev,
and others.
The first years following
Hába's
return to Czechoslovakia were by no means easy. Probably
the most serious difficulties were associated with the reception of his
microtonal
work. While
in the Prague German Association for the Private Performance of Music he found important
support and facilities, thanks to which several of his quarter-tone pieces reached the Prague
festivals of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM;
1924, 1925),
the Czech
section of this organization showed no interest in his work (the same syndrome was behind the
fact that at the Prague ISCM festival in
1925
Bohuslav Martinů
was classified as a member of
the "foreign" French school). Quarter-tone and athematic music was felt to be a symptom of the
stalemate in avant-garde art. Not even
Hába's
introductory lecture before each concert could
change this opinion.
The prospects for the performance of the compositions of
Hába's
and his pupils were trans¬
formed in
1927.
In this period
Hába,
together with the music critic
Mirko Očadlík (1
904-1964),
took up leading positions in the
Spolek
pro
moderní hudbu
[Modern Music Club]. One crucial
factor here was the affiliation of the Club to the ISCM, in which
Hába
could now exercise a
major influence. The Club's publicity organ was the magazine
Klíč
[Key], where he published
critical articles on modern music. In
1935
he transferred his activities to the Association for Con¬
temporary Music
Přítomnost
[Present], and was elected its chairman. He also published in the
magazine
Rytmus
and helped to create its profile. He took an important part in the organization
of the ISCM international festival in Prague in
1935,
when he sat on the international jury, as he
was later to do in
1932, 1938, 1958
and
1961.
(In
1957
Hába
was made an honorary member of
the ISCM for his services, an honour previously granted to his teacher
V. Novák.)
Hába's
name
appeared on the international scene in other connections as well. Together with his assistant,
the composer and pianist
Karel
Reiner
(1910-1979)
in
1932
he accepted an invitation to the
International Congress of Arab Music in Cairo to give lectures and demonstrations of quarter-
tone music. (Others who attended this conference included
Béla Bartók,
Paul Hindemith and the
ethnomusicologist Erich
von
Hornbostel).
Hába
also took an active role in musical education. He
realized that it was not enough just to train a new generation of composers when an adequately
educated public is just as essential to musical life. In any case
Hába
believed that music cultivates
the human being and that
-
in line with Steiner's anthroposophy
-
it helps man achieve the true
spiritual experience of humanity. He was also convinced that music's educational effect will
protect music itself from degradation into "mere entertainment" or "technical game". Educa¬
tion for music and by music was the theme of a number of
Hába's
lectures. Together with Leo
Kestenberg (1
882-1962)
Hába
helped to found the Society for Music Education (Prague
1934)
and later to plan the
1st
International Music Education Congress (Prague
1936).
(The Society
for Music Education was the precursor of the International Society for Music Education, which
was formed in
1953.)
♦ * *
Summary: Alois
Hába
(1893-1973) "219
Hába
sought to embody his notion of a new "liberated music" in a genre with a sufficiently
high profile to publicise an emergent style; opera would be a demonstration of the viability of
quarter-tone and athematic music. In the period
1927-29
he composed the quarter-tone opera
Mother on his own libretto. The work was first performed in German on
17
May
1931
in Munich
with Hermann
Scherchen
conducting. (The opera was not presented in Czech until
1947
and
then
1964
in Prague).
Hába
composed this opera after several earlier opera sketches. Mother is a realistic work,
with "realist" understood in the widest sense. The story is set in the composer's native Wal-
lachia. The text of the libretto is written in Moravian dialect. The local color is then enhanced
by a number of folk scenes (funeral weeping, a lullaby, wedding song). Despite this, as is the
case with other important operas in the same vein (for example
Janáček's
Jenůfa
or in Burian's
Maryša) Hába
is not composing a "folklore opera". Although the work has clear references to
folk setting, this is supposed to enhance the raw reality of the work.
Hába's
style of opera might
be compared to reportage. Instead of stylized focus,
Hába
enlarges the sphere of his work to
cover the entire field of life, thus cancelling the difference between "ceremonial/festival art" and
the "art of the everyday". The tack of theatricality is sometimes interpreted as deliberate and in¬
novative, but in many respects the work perhaps aims wide of experiment. Moreover while the
use of the quarter-tone system on the one hand secures the opera
Matka
a special place in world
opera repertoire, on the other its specific requirements make it a piece for which few companies
would have the resources.
Two further stage works show that
Hába
was thorough and consistent in his aims here. In
neither is the epic pathos of building a new world stylized, but in both it is to be discovered in
daily reality.
Hába
devotes himself to progressive social issues in his (semitone) opera
Νονά
země
[New Land]
(1935-1936;
libretto written by Ferdinand Pujman based on the book by Soviet
author Feodor Gladkov). After the premiere of the opera overture, in which there was a quotation
from the Internationale, preparations for the staging of the opera in the Prague National Opera
were halted. The official reason given was the threat of workers' demonstrations. The struggle for
a better future, linked with the coming of Christ in the framework of the anthroposophical ideas
of Rudolf
Steiner,
is an idea presented and developed in the author's last opera, composed in
sixth-tone system,
Přijď království Tvé. Nezaměstnaní
[Thy Kingdom Come: The Unemployed]
(1937-1942).
This work was likewise never staged.
* * *
In the course of the
1
920s and
1
930s
Hába
earned a reputation for himself in broader cultural
consciousness as an original composer, teacher and tireless organiser. This creative growth was
interrupted by the fascist occupation, when together with many other avantgardists he was clas¬
sified and banned as an exponent of
entartete Kunst
["Degenerate Art"]. After World War II he
was appointed head of the Great Opera of the 5th of May
(1945-1948)
and also became profes¬
sor of composition at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague
(1946-1949).
Towards the end
of the
1940s,
however, a spontaneous reaction against the First Republic and to the recent war
created a new social situation.
Following the communist coup of
1948
Hába
was exposed to the attacks of the ideological
spokesmen of Socialist Realism and in
1951
his composition class was dissolved. The post-war
social elite, which decided on the character of production, no longer had any interest in work that
was full of elemental revolutionary unrest, apparently incomprehensible, resistant to rules and
guidelines.
Hába's
refusal of an offer
tojóin
the Communist party contributed to his exclusion
from social and cultural life. His own concept of socialism derived from Steiner's anthroposophy
had nothing in common with the Soviet vision of (real) socialism. Anthroposophy, a doctrine
220"
Summary: Alois
Hába
(1893-1973)
that found many supporters and passionate opponents throughout the century, was of enormous
importance for
Hába,
providing him with spiritual and moral support in times of crisis. He fol¬
lowed its principles in his readiness to interact with people of all religions and convictions, and
anthroposophy also provided inspirations for his musical theory and practice.
(Hába
had been
introduced to anthroposophy by Felix Petyrek, who in
1926
took him to the Goetheanum, the
headquarters of the Anthroposophical Society in Dornach in Switzerland. From
1927
Hába
was
an active member. He lectured regularly at the Dornach Free University for Spiritual Science,
and several of his works were premiered in the Goetheanum.)
In the years
1949
to
1953
Hába's
works were not played or published, but he himself con¬
tinued to compose, writing both semitone and quarter-tone music. He was rehabilitated in
1953,
and thereafter worked only as a composer. The last twenty years of
Hába's
life were an extraor¬
dinarily firuitftil period. Many musicians were ready to perform his earlier and new works, above
all the
Hába
Quartet under its leader
Dušan
Pandula.
Hába's
pieces were abundantly published
and the composer invited to lecture and to attend the performance of his works abroad. His name
appeared again at the ISCM international festival in Prague in
1967.
He used his influence and
contacts to help young composers who often identified with his legacy, although they took a cau¬
tious attitude to some of his aesthetic conclusions. In the final phase of his career
Hába
composed
as many as
40
new works. These were mainly chamber pieces, and then he wrote larger-scale
works, concertos.
Hába
continued to write in various different tone systems, whether traditional
(e.g. the String Quartet no.
7
"Christmas" op.
73, 1951),
quarter-tone (String Quartet no.
14
op.
94, 1963),
fifth-tone (String Quartet no.
/6
op.
98,1967)
or sixth-tone (String Quartet no.
11
op.
87, 1957).
Even at this late stage
Hába
never gave up an experimental and open-minded ap¬
proach, and he repeatedly tried to get to respond to revived impulses of twelve-tone music and
Webernian serialism.
* * *
After surveying his career, we may tentatively suggest some conclusions about
Hába's
place
in the context of Czech and Central-European music. First and foremost it is clear that he was a
composer who became involved in the Central European musical avant-garde very much "from
the outside", from a Moravian region with a predominantly folk tradition. The strong individu¬
ality and originality that he began to show during his stay in Vienna became a respected reality
in Berlin. In terms of the expressive canon of nineteenth-century music the position of "other,
outsider" had been negative, a pure liability, a status overlapping with that of "dilettante" in the
sense of exclusion from professional advancement.
Now the situation had turned around
-
at least in Berlin if less in Vienna
-
and the position
could be one of special privilege. (Vienna is generally regarded as a place with great respect for
tradition and conservative views). To be different was now to have an exceptional status. Sud¬
denly the attribute of otherness became an undeniable advantage. In a sense the change reflected
the new democratic era, since it was a status that could be claimed by anyone, regardless of social
background. Novelty and difference were transformed into attributes that could bring partici¬
pants in the common "project of the new" closer together while at the same time representing
another scale by which they could define their distinct identities and differentiate themselves.
Hába
was sensitive to the various individual developmental trends but did not identify him¬
self wholly with any one of them. Despite his sympathy and affinity for the new theories, and his
repeated stress on the value of the influence of
Novák,
Busoni and
Schönberg,
Hába
sought to
create a style all his own. For
Hába
art is undoubtedly a field of creative freedom, where a work
is born as the result of the active activity of a unique, irreducible individual. Nonetheless,
Hába
shared with the rest of the Central European avant-garde the striving for explicit definition of the
Summary: Alois
Hába
(1893-1973) "221
principle of redundancy. It is clearly a striving to render musical language more precise, to rid it
of the last trace of the decorative and the rhetorical.
Hába's
project was also characterized by a
distinctively sharp struggle against traditional ways of treating material that forced the composer
to surrender his own individuality.
Another feature of
Hába's
type as a composer was that fact that he shared only marginally
in the future development of European new music; from the point of view of the "culture of
the centre" as a historical rather than just geographical concept he ultimately remained at the
periphery. The character of his work excludes him from the community of "established compos¬
ers" and makes him once again an "outsider".
There are a number of different reasons why this should be so.
Hába's
"liberated music" is
known only through a few theoretical works that came out mainly in German, a few recordings
and relatively inaccessible scores. This has naturally limited an understanding of the whole
Hába
phenomenon. Usually
Hába
is characterized as a tireless propagator of
microtonal
and athematic
music. These mere assertions, however, do not of themselves have any precise content and in
fact problematize any proper conception of
Hába's
music; for example, pieces composed with
microtones in fact represent less than a third of
Hába's
output as a composer.
Of course, it remains an open question whether the change in the conditions for the reception
of
Hába's
music will make for major change in the way he is viewed. While in the
1
920s
Hába
in
his works took significant steps beyond the canon of traditional music by using unconventional
sound material, in the period after the Second World War the leaders of the modern movement
of the time rejected him for alleged traditionalism (and in some cases for technical inadequacy).
Here the criterion of musical value was above all the developmental novelty (innovativeness) of
Hába's
music between the wars, perfectly corresponding to the "spirit of the time". His retreat
from his well-known positions was then interpreted as inability to express that "spirit of the
time" in an appropriate way.
Hába
therefore came to occupy only a marginal position among the
"classics" of modern music who made major contributions to the "artistic values" of European
music and helped to create the main stylistic trends. The rationale of assertions of this kind is
based on the historical conception of the rise of the modern.
If we focus our attention on important moments of development (athematism, microtonality),
we necessarily push everything else about this music into the background. Such music becomes
a mere signpost to future development. Thus just like technical discoveries
Hába's
music neces¬
sarily becomes obsolete for future generations. Not even the ideas of "liberated music" could
escape this process of ageing and
Hába's
name was reduced to a mere encyclopaedia heading,
becoming a synonym for
microtonal
and athematic music.
(Translated by Anna Bryson, revised by Paul Christiansen) |
| any_adam_object | 1 |
| author | Reittererová, Vlasta 1947- Spurný, Lubomír 1965- |
| author_GND | (DE-588)1031522344 (DE-588)102570570X |
| author_facet | Reittererová, Vlasta 1947- Spurný, Lubomír 1965- |
| author_role | aut aut |
| author_sort | Reittererová, Vlasta 1947- |
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| building | Verbundindex |
| bvnumber | BV041734809 |
| ctrlnum | (OCoLC)876953964 (DE-599)BVBBV041734809 |
| edition | 1. vyd. |
| format | Book |
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| id | DE-604.BV041734809 |
| illustrated | Illustrated |
| indexdate | 2024-07-20T06:09:56Z |
| institution | BVB |
| isbn | 9788087773086 |
| language | Czech |
| oai_aleph_id | oai:aleph.bib-bvb.de:BVB01-027181525 |
| oclc_num | 876953964 |
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| owner_facet | DE-12 DE-Re6 DE-BY-UBR |
| physical | 355 S. Ill., Notenbeisp. |
| publishDate | 2014 |
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| publisher | KLP |
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| spelling | Reittererová, Vlasta 1947- Verfasser (DE-588)1031522344 aut Alois Hába (1893-1973) mezi tradicí a inovací Vlasta Reittererová, Lubomír Spurný 1. vyd. Praha KLP 2014 355 S. Ill., Notenbeisp. txt rdacontent n rdamedia nc rdacarrier Zsfassung in engl. Sprache u.d.T.: Alois Hába (1893-1973) Hába, Alois 1893-1973 (DE-588)118699792 gnd rswk-swf Hába, Alois 1893-1973 (DE-588)118699792 p DE-604 Spurný, Lubomír 1965- Verfasser (DE-588)102570570X aut Digitalisierung BSB Muenchen 19 - ADAM Catalogue Enrichment application/pdf http://bvbr.bib-bvb.de:8991/F?func=service&doc_library=BVB01&local_base=BVB01&doc_number=027181525&sequence=000003&line_number=0001&func_code=DB_RECORDS&service_type=MEDIA Abstract Digitalisierung BSB Muenchen 19 - ADAM Catalogue Enrichment application/pdf http://bvbr.bib-bvb.de:8991/F?func=service&doc_library=BVB01&local_base=BVB01&doc_number=027181525&sequence=000004&line_number=0002&func_code=DB_RECORDS&service_type=MEDIA Inhaltsverzeichnis |
| spellingShingle | Reittererová, Vlasta 1947- Spurný, Lubomír 1965- Alois Hába (1893-1973) mezi tradicí a inovací Hába, Alois 1893-1973 (DE-588)118699792 gnd |
| subject_GND | (DE-588)118699792 |
| title | Alois Hába (1893-1973) mezi tradicí a inovací |
| title_auth | Alois Hába (1893-1973) mezi tradicí a inovací |
| title_exact_search | Alois Hába (1893-1973) mezi tradicí a inovací |
| title_full | Alois Hába (1893-1973) mezi tradicí a inovací Vlasta Reittererová, Lubomír Spurný |
| title_fullStr | Alois Hába (1893-1973) mezi tradicí a inovací Vlasta Reittererová, Lubomír Spurný |
| title_full_unstemmed | Alois Hába (1893-1973) mezi tradicí a inovací Vlasta Reittererová, Lubomír Spurný |
| title_short | Alois Hába (1893-1973) |
| title_sort | alois haba 1893 1973 mezi tradici a inovaci |
| title_sub | mezi tradicí a inovací |
| topic | Hába, Alois 1893-1973 (DE-588)118699792 gnd |
| topic_facet | Hába, Alois 1893-1973 |
| url | http://bvbr.bib-bvb.de:8991/F?func=service&doc_library=BVB01&local_base=BVB01&doc_number=027181525&sequence=000003&line_number=0001&func_code=DB_RECORDS&service_type=MEDIA http://bvbr.bib-bvb.de:8991/F?func=service&doc_library=BVB01&local_base=BVB01&doc_number=027181525&sequence=000004&line_number=0002&func_code=DB_RECORDS&service_type=MEDIA |
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