Jan Novák (composer)

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Jan Novák (born April 8, 1921 in Nová Říše , Moravia ; † November 17, 1984 in Neu-Ulm ) was a Czech composer.

Life

After graduating from high school in Brno , Novák studied composition with Vilém Petrželka , piano with František Schäfer and conducting with B. Liška at the Brno Conservatory from 1940, interrupted during the Second World War by two and a half years of forced labor in Nazi Germany. He completed his studies in 1946 and then studied for one semester each at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague with Pavel Bořkovec and at the Janáček Academy in Brno, again with V. Petrželka. With the help of a scholarship from the Ježek Foundation, he was able to study in the USA in 1947/48, first at the Berkshire Music Center in Tanglewood with Aaron Copland and then in New York with Bohuslav Martinů . In 1948 he returned to his homeland despite the communist takeover of power in Czechoslovakia; Novák settled in Brno and in 1949 married the pianist Eliška (Elissa) Hanousková, with whom he formed a piano duo; With her he performed his own works (including the concert for two pianos and orchestra at the “Warsaw Autumn” festival in 1956). Novák worked as a freelance composer in Brno, apart from a brief activity as a répétiteur at the Brno State Opera in the early 1950s. During the Brno years he also worked with Brno theaters and various film directors (including Karel Kachyňa , Jiří Trnka ). In 1963 he and other musicians and music theorists (Josef Berg, Miloslav Ištvan, Alois Piňos, Zdeněk Pololáník) founded the Tvůrčí skupina A ("Creative Group A") in Brno , which was then also called Parasiti Apollinis and deviated from the official doctrine of socialist realism dealt with contemporary compositional technique.

Due to his liberal stance, Novák came into conflict with the communist regime (temporary exclusion from the Czechoslovak Composers' Association in 1961; withdrawal of state contracts). After the crackdown on the Prague Spring in the summer of 1968, he did not return to Czechoslovakia from a trip abroad. After a stopover in Aarhus (Denmark) , he and his family settled in Rovereto (Italy) in 1970 , where he worked for three years as a piano teacher at the city's music school. In Rovereto, Novák also maintained contact with lovers of Latin, which has been one of the focal points of his compositional work since the late 1950s. In addition, Novák also wrote in Latin himself. He founded the “Voces Latinae” choir, which was particularly dedicated to profane Latin choral literature, and organized the “Feriae Latinae” music festival in Rovereto in 1972. Novák left Rovereto with his family in 1977 and lived as a freelance composer in Neu-Ulm until his death. Most recently he held a teaching position at the Stuttgart University of Music.

In Czechoslovakia, Novák was only rehabilitated after the 1989 coup. In 1990 important works ( Aesopia , Dulcitius ) were premiered there. In 1996, Novák was posthumously awarded the country's Medal of Merit by President Václav Havel , and in 2005 he was made honorary citizen of the city of Brno.

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Jan Novák's varied oeuvre includes instrumental compositions for orchestra and chamber music ensembles, vocal works, an opera, stage music and compositions for films and radio plays.

Novák's work can essentially be assigned to neoclassicism. In a middle phase he experimented with elements of jazz, dodecaphony, serial technology, aleatoric. Novák's neoclassical orientation was a synthesis with his increasing preoccupation with the Latin language. He mainly used Latin texts for various vocal compositions, while at the beginning of his career he had also set Czech texts to music. In his settings of Latin texts, Novák orientated himself on the laws of ancient metrics, as it had not been customary in this form since the Renaissance. Novák endeavored to reproduce the meter of Latin verses from long and short syllables, which are basically in a ratio of 2: 1 to each other, exactly when setting, but without creating monotony. That is why Novák varied the rhythmic specifications with different tone durations; However, lengths and shortening are not interchanged. Different time divisions allow the accentuation to be shifted. Occasionally melismatic singing can also be found. Novák's precise orientation to the Latin meter (which does not apply to rhythmic Latin poetry of the Middle Ages and only partly to neo-Latin poetry) is singular and strongly influenced his musical language.

In addition to his compositional work, Novák wrote Latin texts, especially poems (poetry volumes: Ludicra [1965], Suaviloquia [1966]; other individual poems), dialogues and the theoretical compositional text Musica Poetica Latina .

Selected works

Concert and stage

  • Concerto for oboe and orchestra (1952)
  • Baletti a 9 for nonet (1955)
  • Concerto for two pianos and orchestra (1955)
  • Concertino for wind quintet (1957)
  • Capriccio for violoncello and orchestra (1958)
  • Dulces cantilenae for soprano and violoncello (1961)
  • Passer Catulli for bass and nonet (1962)
  • Ioci vernales for bass, octet and tape (1964)
  • Dido . Cantata for mezzo-soprano, speaker, male choir and orchestra (1967)
  • Exercitia mythologica for four- to eight-part mixed choir (1968)
  • Ignis pro Ioanne Palach for choir and orchestra (1969)
  • Apicius modulatus for voice and guitar (1971)
  • Odarum concentus for string orchestra (1973)
  • Schola cantans for voice and piano (1973)
  • Dulcitius (Opera, 1974)
  • Concentus Biiugis for piano four hands and orchestra (1976)
  • Due preludi e fughe for flute (1979)
  • Ludi concertantes (1981)
  • Sonata da chiesa I and II for flute and organ (1981)
  • Sonata super hoson zes for violin or flute and piano (1981)
  • Aesopia for four-part mixed choir and two pianos or small orchestra (1981)
  • Vernalis temporis symphonia for solos, choir and orchestra (1982)
  • Symphonia bipartita (1983)
  • Sonata tribus for flute, violin and piano (1982)
  • Marsyas for piccolo and piano (1983)
  • Cantica Latina for voice and piano (published 1985)

Filmography

literature

  • Jindra Bártová, Jiří Fukač: Jan Novák In: Contemporary Composers , ed. by Hanns-Werner Heister and Walter-Wolfgang Sparrer, Munich 1992ff. (Loose-leaf collection)
  • Alena Němcová: Prohibiti of Czech music: Jan Novák , in: Music news from Prague , 1991, nos. 5-6, 2-5
  • Alena Němcová: Novák, Jan In: The New Grove Dictionary , Vol. 18, 2nd Edition 2001, 208–210
  • Frank Raberg : Biographical Lexicon for Ulm and Neu-Ulm 1802-2009 . Süddeutsche Verlagsgesellschaft im Jan Thorbecke Verlag, Ostfildern 2010, ISBN 978-3-7995-8040-3 , p. 294 .
  • Wilfried Stroh : Jan Novák, a Latin from Moravia , in: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 152, 1991, 91–92
  • Wilfried Stroh: Jan Novák: Modern composer of ancient texts , in: Atti dell'Accademia Roveretana degli Agiati , a. 249 (1999) ser. VII, Vol. IX, 33-61; reprinted in an updated version in: Dino, Zeus and Asterix. Contemporary witness archeology in advertising, art and everyday life today , ed. by Inken Jensen and Alfried Wieczorek, Mannheim 2002, 249–263
  • Ottone Tonetti: Jan Novák . In: The music in history and present , 16, Suppl. 1979, 1415-1416
  • Evžen Zámečník: Návrat Jana Nováka , in the program booklet for the performance of Jan Novák's “Dulcitius” and “Aesopia”, Janáček Theater Brno, October 6, 1990, pp. [4] - [6]

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Novák, Jan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Czech composer
DATE OF BIRTH April 8, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Nová Říše , Moravia
DATE OF DEATH 17th November 1984
Place of death New Ulm