Czech composer Pavel Haas (1899–1944) spent his last years in Theresienstadt. He was sent there after the German occupation of the Czech lands in December of 1941. In the first few months, Haas had ...great difficulty coping with his internment. Long periods of inactivity were punctuated by periods of feverish work, which served to place him among the most active of Theresienstadt composers. Evidence shows that from the second half of 1942 until the fall of 1944, Haas composed seven works, of which three are still extant. It is generally true that not only in Haas's case does the idea of place enter a work and determine its character. The hectic race against time not only determined the scope and instrumentation of his works, but place also figures prominently in the music's expressivity as well as its fragmentary and unfinished nature. Musical works composed during emotionally charged moments are filled with symbols and allusions of various forms, which express a desire to tell the story of the place. An important aspect of musical activities is also the fact that more than at any other time or place, composers were writing their pieces with specific performers in mind. These performers usually commissioned the works and in many cases were also those who protected the music from destruction.
The study comments on the book of Vladimir Helfert Czech modern music (1936). At the time of its release, the book met with a rather great interest of the wider, music loving, public. Until that time ...there was no local synthetic work concentrated on the newer and present production which largely coincided with cultural history of the new State. In this regard the book had a groundbreaking role because for the first generations of readers it could be and perhaps, against the original intention of the author, was a clear guide of the current production. In time this utility value was necessarily lost and its significance was exceeded by current guide books, music dictionaries and extensive synthetic works. There is nothing surprising on the fact that some of the ideas become obsolete over time. This applies double for the data that are being improved over time and then put into new contexts. If we focus our attention only on the informational value, we necessarily push everything else into the background. Despite some inaccuracies and misleading information Helfert's work still preserved its importance. The reason is obvious. In addition to the influx of rich material, the book opens inspirational methodological perspective on the inspected subject.
Tato studie představuje výsledky projektu „Paměť zvuku: evoluční principy interpretační tradice české hudby na příkladu děl Antonína Dvořáka a Bedřicha Smetany“ (TAČR). Cílem projektu je vytvořit ...analytické nástroje pro analýzu hudebně-interpretačního výkonu. Projekt zkoumá využití výpočetních metod, strojového učení a umělé inteligence k zachycení interpretačního vývoje klavírních děl Bedřicha Smetany a Antonína Dvořáka. V rámci projektu jsme připravili open-source software „MemoVision“. Tento nástroj kombinuje uživatelsky přívětivé rozhraní a moderní metody zpracování dat. Zaměřuje se na využití metod oboru získávání hudebních informací pro účely analýzy hudebně-interpretačního výkonu. Hlavní důraz je kladen na srovnávací analýzu – výpočet a rozbor rozdílů mezi vícero verzemi stejného hudebního díla. Uživatelé mohou nahrávat zvukové nahrávky, metadata a anotace pozic taktů v podobě „základní pravdy“ a označit každou nahrávku tzv. binárním štítkem. Poté software extrahuje informace ze všech nahrávek a uživateli poskytne užitečné podněty pro kvalitativní výzkum. Uživatelé mohou přehrávat konkrétní rozsahy taktů, vytvářet vlastní sekce podle hudebního významu nebo vizualizovat data o interpretačním výkonu a rozdíly mezi nahrávkami nebo skupinami nahrávek. Nástroj MemoVision kombinuje metodu synchronizace a statistického vyhodnocení spolu s možnostmi vizualizace, aby přispěl k porozumění dat o interpretačním výkonu. Možnosti softwaru jsou prezentovány také na několika interpretacích Smyčcového kvartetu č. 13 G dur, op. 106 Antonína Dvořáka a Smyčcového kvartetu č. 2 „Listy důvěrné“ Leoše Janáčka v sekci „Smyčcové kvartety: Dvořák–Janáček“. Následující sekce „Exkurs: České tance Bedřicha Smetany“ využívá rozsáhlou hudební databázi Smetanových českých tanců. Zastoupení nahrávek zahraničních klavíristů je sice nižší, ale tvoří dostatečně reprezentativní skupinu umožňující zachytit rozdíly mezi jednou z binárních tříd (v našem případě jsme zvolili české vs. zahraniční interprety). Cílem analýzy bylo najít takty nebo úseky, ve kterých se interpretace dvou definovaných skupin nejvíce lišily.
This study presents a current approach to music performance analysis. The analysis of sound recordings is still a relatively new discipline of musicology although the approximate 120 years history of ...the musical data recording offers a wide range of possibilities. Musical recordings are preferable to live production in terms of the description of time resources in music for they allow more detailed and repeated measurement of time periods. The effort of musicology research is to find objective parameters and data from typically sound and time complicated musical recording or production in real time, which can be clearly and distinctly documented, analyzed and compared. The acquisition of this data in musicology research has always been the domain of a music theorist in the role of a listener of a live production or a recording, registering noticeable quantitative parameters of the music stream. Current attempts to use algorithmic tools in this field focus typically on tempo and dynamics. Nowadays, the practice of recording analysis is aided occasionally by various software tools for determining specific categories, such as beat extraction and spectral analysis. We are inspired by some foreign works. In the plethora of current production we were intrigued mostly by the work by José Antonio Bowen, Nicholas Cook and the activity of authors concentrated around the Center for History and Analysis of Recorded Music (CHARM). While this topic is often discussed in the anglo-american musicology on a local scale this topic is rather marginal. A rare exception is the work of Milan Kuna and Miloš Bláha Time and Music. About the dramaturgy of the resources in the musical and interpretative performances (1982).
The article is a critical interpretation of selected microtonal compositions of the Czech composer Alois Hába. The author focused his attention on the chamber and choral compositions opp. 7, 10, 27, ...31, 43, 72. In the general perspective of music history, Alois Hába is usually characterised as one of the leading protagonists of the Central European inter-war avant-garde that moved between Vienna, Berlin and Prague. In the specific context of Czech music he likewise has the reputation of an exemplary innovator but is considered to have been strongly rooted in tradition as well. Hába is known primarily as a tireless propagator of microtonal and athematic music, for which his own term was "liberated music". In this music he added more subtle quarter-, fifth- and sixth-tone intervals to the semitone system and abandoned up traditional treatment of motifs. 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.
Razprava se posveča vlogi Vítězslava Nováka v okviru češke glasbe okoli 1900. Vítězslav Novák (1870–1949) sodi med tiste skladatelje, pri katerih se v številnih ozirih kažejo značilna nasprotja, ki ...jih je mogoče opisati s funkcijami centralno-obrobno, globalno-lokalno, heterogeno-homogeno. Nakazane kategorije pa niso kakšne naravno dane konstane. Prav tako ne predstavljajo kategorij, ki bi si jih Novák sam „predpisal“, temveč izhajajo iz diskurza o Nováku vsaj v češkem okolju.
Razprava se posveča vlogi Vítězslava Nováka v okviru češke glasbe okoli 1900. Vítězslav Novák (1870–1949) sodi med tiste skladatelje, pri katerih se v številnih ozirih kažejo značilna nasprotja, ki ...jih je mogoče opisati s funkcijami centralno-obrobno, globalno-lokalno, heterogeno-homogeno. Nakazane kategorije pa niso kakšne naravno dane konstane. Prav tako ne predstavljajo kategorij, ki bi si jih Novák sam „predpisal“, temveč izhajajo iz diskurza o Nováku vsaj v češkem okolju.
Discussion is devoted to the role of Vítězslav Novák in the frame of Czech music around 1900. Vítězslav Novák (1870-1949) is one of the composers where the characteristic contrasts can be found in ...many respects that can be described with functions central-marginal, global-local, heterogeneous-homogeneous. But indicated categories are no naturally given constants. They also do not represent categories that had been prescribed by Novák himself but that spring from the discourse on Novák at least in Czech environment.
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