Jindrich Field

Jindřich Feld (born February 19, 1925 in Prague , † July 8, 2007 in Prague) was a Czech composer .

biography

Both parents were violinists and Feld learned to play the violin and viola from his father at an early age . He studied composition at the Prague Conservatory and the Prague Music Academy , as well as musicology, aesthetics and philosophy at the Charles University in Prague . He completed his studies in 1952 with a doctorate. As a freelance composer, he gained international recognition at the end of the 1950s, which was followed by commissions from home and abroad. The Flute Concerto, which was premiered by Jean-Pierre Rampal (also a recording, 1956) made Feld famous abroad.

In 1968 and 1969 he was a visiting professor of composition at the University of Adelaide . From 1972 to 1986 he was a professor of composition at the Prague Conservatory and had many guest teaching engagements at universities and colleges in Europe, the USA and Japan. Since the democratic revolution in 1989, Feld has held a leading position in the Association of Czech Musicians and Musicologists. Since 1992 he has been the head of the music department of the Czech radio station Český rozhlas .

Feld's work is divided into three periods.

His early work from the 1950s is entirely committed to the European, especially the Czech, musical tradition and is characterized by tonal harmony, formal clarity and rhythmic liveliness. Important works from this period are the Concerto for Orchestra (1952, also a final thesis at the Conservatory), Flute Concerto (1954), Cello Concerto (1958) and Feld's only work for the stage, the children's opera "The Postman's Fairy Tale" (1956, based on Karel Čapek ).

His second creative period spans the 1960s. During this time, Feld increasingly tried to incorporate modern composition techniques such as twelve-tone technique , serialism and aleatoric into his individual compositional style. Feld's work also thrives on his awareness of proportions, his art of instrumentation and his rhythmic finesse. The Fourth String Quartet (1965), for which Feld received the Czech State Prize in 1968, the First Symphony (1967) and the dramatic fantasy “Days in August” (1968/69), which Felds Protest against the suppression of the Prague Spring represented by Soviet troops.

Since the 1970s' his work has been less shaped by trying and searching, and shows a stable composer who combines his creative expressiveness with his compositional skills in a variety of ways. These include the concertos for piano (1973), violin (1977), saxophone (1980) and harp (1982), the fifth string quartet (1979), the saxophone quartet (1981), the second symphony (1983), as well as Feld's largest and most important work, the oratorio "Cosmae Chronica Boemorum" ("Cosmas Bohemian Chronicle", 1988).

Web links

• Jindřich Feld , biography and catalog raisonné at the Czech Music Information Center (English / Czech)