Music film is a genre that largely follows its own rules. These rules are determined mainly by the conception of musical content and also by the degree of interaction between music and image. The ...presented study summarizes the results of analyzes of music films by Vladimír Sís created on instrumental and vocal-instrumental compositions by Dvořák, Gershwin, and Martinů. The used method of two-phase analysis is based on the musical and film analysis of selected works and their mutual comparison with emphasis on functional changes of the originally autonomous musical pieces and their content-forming potential. It also seeks to capture a common analytical basis for different types of music films, creating a universal method for basic research. The results of the analysis point to both the typical features of the music and its specific use in Sís's films, including the director's intended popularization and didactic intentions.
The second half of the 19th century is the time when in the art music created by the composers who represent conditionally small nations the efforts to prove their national identity were manifested ...stronger than ever previously. How was this process perceived by the music critics representing other, larger nations, and was the reception influenced only by purely musical factors, or also by the historically established relations between national communities? The paper is searching at least partial answer to this question researching the assessments of the Czech and Latvian music in the Riga German music critic in the late 19th and early 20th century.
This article reconstructs the short career of Riccardo Selvi as a translator of Czech poetry. Thanks to archival documents and reviews published in Czech newspapers regarding his work, we have been ...able to reconstruct his rather singular literary path. In addition to his translation of Máj (‘May’) by K.H. Mácha — his most famous exploit —, we examine his translation of the libretto for Antonín Dvořák’s Rusalka in the context of the controversy that ensued in the newspaper Lidové noviny. Selvi’s efforts help to shed light on the essential role played by Czechoslovakian institutions, in terms of their financial support, and on various strategies of poetic translation outside the academic world during the 1930s.
Dvořák's last opera Armida to the libretto of Jaroslav Vrchlický (on the motives of Jerusalem Delivered by Torquato Tasso) has remained practically forgotten to this day. The negative public and ...critical reception of the 1904 premiere meant that Armida had only a brief initial run before being pulled from the National Theatre's repertoire. The myth-veiled work was abandoned until the arrival of a new political regime and a new artistic generation, which endeavoured to enter Dvořák's opera into the repertoire of Czech theatres. The most prominent of these efforts was Ostrčil's production of Armida at the National Theatre in 1928, but even that failed to secure a decisive victory for Armida. The critics questioned the quality of the libretto and the overall dramatic structure of the opera. They also discussed the style, the choice of exotic theme, and the stage design, which went against the essence of Wagnerian drama and "grand opera".
This article focuses on selected details of the deep relationship between Antonín Dvořák and Leoš Janáček, which began during Janáček's studies at the Prague Organ School in 1874–1875. The paper ...discusses Janáček's detailed analyses of Antonín Dvořák's four symphonic poems based on the ballads by Karel Jaromír Erben, which demonstrate the creative parallels between the two composers, as well as Brno performances of the symphonic poems during Dvořák's lifetime and reflection in the contemporary press. The article also shows that Janáček, in analysing the symphonic poems, made use of his work on the theory of speech melody, and that he became the first theorist of Dvořák's work.
After 1911, tendencies appeared in the Czech music culture to eliminate Antonín Dvořák. They were initiated by Zdeněk Nejedlý. As Nejedlý was not able to support his opinions by musical analysis, he ...created his own hierarchy of values based on ideological character of a musical composition. Vladimír Helfer, a Nejedlý's follower, adopted this opinion and became the protagonist of "Dvořák Affair". He made a contribution with a theory on low Czech musicianship of the Counter-Reformation period - so-called "dark ages" - and labelled Dvořák as a representative of this musicianship. After war Vladimír Helfert moved from Prague to Brno and the new environment changed him completely. He totally reassessed his opinion of Dvořák and the ideological character of music and in 1935 published opinions opposite to those he held twenty years ago, including a lamentation "what an evil has this ideological bias already done".
This volume shows Charles Ives in the context of his world in a
number of revealing ways. Five new essays examine Ives's
relationships to European music and to American music, politics,
business, and ...landscape. J. Peter Burkholder shows Ives as a
composer well versed in four distinctive musical traditions who
blended them in his mature music. Leon Botstein explores the
paradox of how, in the works of Ives and Mahler, musical modernism
emerges from profoundly antimodern sensibilities. David Michael
Hertz reveals unsuspected parallels between one of Ives's most
famous pieces, the Concord Piano Sonata, and the piano sonatas of
Liszt and Scriabin. Michael Broyles sheds new light on Ives's
political orientation and on his career in the insurance business,
and Mark Tucker shows the importance for Ives of his vacations in
the Adirondacks and the representation of that landscape in his
music. The remainder of the book presents documents that illuminate
Ives's personal life. A selection of some sixty letters to and from
Ives and his family, edited and annotated by Tom C. Owens, is the
first substantial collection of Ives correspondence to be
published. Two sections of reviews and longer profiles published
during his lifetime highlight the important stages in the reception
of Ives's music, from his early works through the premieres of his
most important compositions to his elevation as an almost mythic
figure with a reputation among some critics as America's greatest
composer.
This volume shows Charles Ives in the context of his world in a number of revealing ways. Five new essays examine Ives's relationships to European music and to American music, politics, business, and ...landscape. J. Peter Burkholder shows Ives as a composer well versed in four distinctive musical traditions who blended them in his mature music. Leon Botstein explores the paradox of how, in the works of Ives and Mahler, musical modernism emerges from profoundly antimodern sensibilities. David Michael Hertz reveals unsuspected parallels between one of Ives's most famous pieces, the Concord Piano Sonata, and the piano sonatas of Liszt and Scriabin. Michael Broyles sheds new light on Ives's political orientation and on his career in the insurance business, and Mark Tucker shows the importance for Ives of his vacations in the Adirondacks and the representation of that landscape in his music. The remainder of the book presents documents that illuminate Ives's personal life. A selection of some sixty letters to and from Ives and his family, edited and annotated by Tom C. Owens, is the first substantial collection of Ives correspondence to be published. Two sections of reviews and longer profiles published during his lifetime highlight the important stages in the reception of Ives's music, from his early works through the premieres of his most important compositions to his elevation as an almost mythic figure with a reputation among some critics as America's greatest composer.
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