Tomislav Volek

Tomislav Volek (born October 11, 1931 in Prague ) is a Czech musicologist who specializes in Mozart .

Life

Volek studied musicology and history at Charles University in Prague from 1950 to 1955 . He was then until 1964 assistant at the musicological chair of the Philosophical Faculty and from 1965 to 1976 research assistant at the musicological institute of the Academy of Sciences. During the communist regime he tried to present alternatives to the Czech Marxist dogmatists in reviews and articles about well-known foreign researchers (Georgiades, Besseler, Merriam, Lissa and others). Since he refused during the political " normalization " to retract his statements in the article Some remarks on music and politics from the anthropological point of view ( On Music and Politics. Mz. 1971), he lost his position in the academy at the end of 1976 and worked until 1989 freelance.

The ability to conduct systematic research, which was regained after the fall of the Wall, forced Volek, who was now 60 years old, to decide which topics to return to scientifically. The areas of iconography and anthropology had to be shelved. The Mozart problem, v. a. He remained loyal to the operas Don Giovanni and La clemenza di Tito , premiered in Prague's Nostitztheater , and under the new circumstances he organized an international conference in Prague in quick succession in the Mozart anniversary year of 1991 and was a speaker at other Mozart conferences in London and Madrid invited. He was also able to resume his pedagogical work at the Philosophical Faculty and, as an external teacher, offer an annual elective lecture plus advanced seminar The Italian Opera in the 18th Century in the Bohemian Countries . The topics of his lecture cycles up to 2001 were three times "Mozart's operas", "Selected chapters on musical classicism", "European music - a comparative study" and "Interpretation of the music of the 17th and 18th centuries". In 1998 he completed his habilitation with the thesis Chapter from the History of Italian Opera in the Bohemian Countries in the 18th Century. From 2000 to 2001 he was head of the project “The Italian Opera in Bohemia in the 18th Century” within the Academy Institute.

Since 1989 Volek has been chairman of the Mozart Congregation in the Czech Republic. At the head of their committee, he led an almost 20-year legal dispute over the return of the confiscated Villa Bertramka to the Mozart community, which only took place in December 2009.

In January 1992, the International Mozarteum Foundation in Salzburg was the first Czech to award Volek with the silver medal for services in the field of Mozart research. In 2009 he was elected an honorary member of the Mozart Society of America. In 2017 the Academy for Mozart Research honored Voleks at the Mozarteum Foundation Salzburg "longstanding and multifaceted services to Mozart research" and Tomislav Volek was elected as an honorary member of the Academy for Mozart Research.

Books

• Dějiny české hudby v obrazech = The history of Czech music in pictures: od nejstarších památek do vybudování Národního divadla . Supraphon, Prague 1977.
• Mozartův Don Giovanni: výstava k 200. výročí světové premiéry v Praze 1787–1987. Státní knihovna ČSR, Prague 1987.
• Prague operatic traditions and Mozart's Don Giovanni. In: Mozart's Don Giovanni in Prague. Theater Institute Prague 1987, pp. 21-91.
• The Mozartiana of Czech and Moravian archives. Archives Dept. of the Czech Ministery [ie Ministry] of Interior, Prague 1991.
• The importance of the Prague operatic tradition for the emergence of Don Giovanni and Titus. In: Mozart's operas for Prague. Divadelní ústav Praha, 1991, pp. 21-100.
• Milada Jonášová, Tomislav Volek (ed.): Bohemian aspects of the life and work of WA Mozart. Institute for Ethnology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, vvi and Mozart Community of the Czech Republic. Prague 2011
• Tomislav Volek: Mozart, the Italian opera of the 18th century and the musical life in the Kingdom of Bohemia. With the Don Juan study by Vladimír Helfert, edited by Milada Jonášová and Matthias J. Pernerstorfer. 2 volumes. Hollitzer Wissenschaftsverlag, Vienna 2016.

items

• Camillo Schoenbaum: Tomislav Volek. In: Stanley Sadie (Ed.): The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Second Edition, Vol. 26. London 2001, pp. 881-882.
• Tomislav Volek:  Volek, Tomislav. In: Ludwig Finscher (Hrsg.): The music in past and present . Second edition, supplement for both parts. Bärenreiter / Metzler, Kassel et al. 2008, ISBN 978-3-7618-1139-9 , Sp. 1050-1051 ( online edition , subscription required for full access).

Web links

• Literature and other media by and about Tomislav Volek in the catalog of the National Library of the Czech Republic
• Tomislav Volek - World Cat Identity
• Literature by and about Tomislav Volek in the catalog of the German National Library
• Bernd W. Seiler: “Johnson's Prague secret agent. ... Tomislav Volek and Elisabeth Johnson "
• Tomislav Volek - Villa Bertramka
• Tomislav Volek: Mozart reception in Bohemia (PDF; 1.4 MB)
• Honorary member of the Academy for Mozart Research.
• Personal web pages of Tomislav Volek