Alois Hába

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Alois Hába

Alois Hába (born June 21, 1893 in Vizovice , Moravia , † November 18, 1973 in Prague ) was a Czech composer and music theorist. He achieved world fame through his micro- interval compositions , in which quarter-tone, but also sixth and twelfth-tone tunings were used.

Life

He was a student of Vítězslav Novák and Franz Schreker and belonged to the European avant-garde in the early 1920s . He studied in Prague , Vienna and Berlin . In Berlin, Georg Schünemann encouraged him to study music from the Middle East. Hába became a teacher at the Prague Conservatory , where he founded a department for the study of microtonal music with the help of his sponsor Josef Suk . He followed the development of modern music, especially Schönberg and Webern , with great interest. Among other things, he took part in the famous New Tonkunst music festival in Donaueschingen .

In his music, inspired among other things by the practice of traditional Moravian music, he expanded the tone scale by quarter , fifth, sixth and twelfth tones, for which special instruments were made. This was of course not necessary for his string quartets , which is why they were most likely to find their way onto today's concert stages.

As a professor at the Prague Conservatory and the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague , he brought in a number of well-known students, including Gideon Klein , Karel Risinger, Jeronimas Kačinskas, Hans Winterberg and Zikmund Schul . After the February putsch in 1948 , the teaching of quarter- and sixth-tone composition was abolished as an independent subject and completely removed from the curriculum in 1951.

From 1946 to 1968 there was a string quartet that bore his name, to which he dedicated the last 12 of his 16 string quartets. The violinist Dušan Pandula fled to Germany in 1968. In 1984 his student Peter Zelienka founded a new Hába Quartet in Frankfurt am Main.

In 1957 he was elected an honorary member of the International Society for Contemporary Music ISCM .

Since 1961 he was a corresponding member of the Academy of Arts of the German Democratic Republic (music section).

literature

  • Horst-Peter Hesse , Wolfgang Thies (ed.): Thoughts on Alois Hába . Müller-Speiser, Anif / Salzburg 1996, ISBN 3-85145-044-2 , ( Word and Music - Salzburg Academic Contributions 35).
  • Jiří Vysloužil: Alois Hába 1893–1993. Sbornik k životu a dílu skladatele . Nakladatelství LIPA, Vizovice 1993, ISBN 80-285-030-1 .
  • Jiří Vysloužil: Alois Hába and the music of the Middle East. In: Franz Födermayr , Ladislav Burlas (ed.): Ethnological, historical and systematic musicology. Oskár Elschek on his 65th birthday. Institute of Musicology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences. ASCO art & science, Bratislava 1998, pp. 417-421
  • Jiří Vysloužil: Alois Hába seen and rated from today's perspective . In: Respicio. Hudebně-historické studie a statě. Sborník prací k sedmdesátinám Oldřicha Pulkerta . Resonus, Prague 2000, pp. 69-73.
  • Lubomír Spurný: Alois Hába (21st June 1893 - 18th November 1973), between tradition and innovation. In: Czech Music , 3, 2005, pp. 1–8
  • Lubomír Spurný, Jiří Vysloužil: Alois Hába: A Catalog of the Music and Writings . Koniasch Latin Press, Prague 2010, ISBN 978-80-86791-78-4 .
  • Vlasta Reittererová, Lubomír Spurný: Alois Hába (1893-1973): mezi tradicí a inovací . Koniasch Latin Press, Prague 2014, ISBN 978-80-87773-08-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Airy elegance and impetuous energy in: FAZ from June 10, 2011, page 42
  2. ^ ISCM Honorary Members
personal data
SURNAME Hába, Alois
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hába, Aloys
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Czech composer
DATE OF BIRTH June 21, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Vizovice
DATE OF DEATH November 18, 1973
Place of death Prague