Editorial

Jiří Kopecký

Musicologica Olomucensia vol. 33(1), (2021):7-8  

"… ein merkwürdiges Werk, von dem man nur wenig - und nichts Gutes erzählen kann." Die Rezeption der Kammermusikwerke von Zdeněk Fibich in Wien an der Wende des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts

"… A strange work of which little can be said, and little good." Reception of the chamber works of Zdeněk Fibich and his Czech contemporaries in Vienna at the turn of the 20th century

Vlasta Reittererová

Musicologica Olomucensia vol. 33(1), (2021):11-26 | DOI: 10.5507/mo.2021.001  

In the 1890s, Zdeněk Fibich returned to smaller forms and chamber ensembles after a period in which he devoted himself mainly to symphonic works and opera. In the 1870s he completed two string quartets and a piano quartet, and in 1894 - after a 20-year break - a chamber work of unusual instrumentation was created: the Quintet for piano, violin, clarinet, horn and cello op. 42. This paper characterizes the situation for the creation of music for chamber ensembles in the given period and tries to justify in its context what led Fibich, after works for a large instrumental apparatus, to reduce to a chamber dimension and to choose a unique cast. It summarizes...

"Dílo jeho mistra" - Otakar Ostrčil jako propagátor Zdeňka Fibicha

"His Master's Work"Otakar Ostrčil as a Promoter of Zdeněk Fibich

Markéta Kratochvílová

Musicologica Olomucensia vol. 33(1), (2021):27-40 | DOI: 10.5507/mo.2021.002  

This paper looks at the role Ostrčil played in the dissemination of Fibich's work. Their relationship began during Ostrčil's studies, when Fibich entrusted him with revisions of his scores before publication, and even letting him finish the instrumentation of several of his works. Besides, already at that time Ostrčil was arranging some of Fibich's compositions for piano. After Fibich's death and after he started his own career as a composer, conductor and artistic director, Ostrčil continued to devote his attention to the music of his teacher. He arranged and prepared his works for publication at F. A. Urbánek, and conducted his operas in the National...

Leoš Janáček, Karel Kovařovic a Její pastorkyňa

Leoš Janáček, Karel Kovařovic and Její pastorkyňa

Jiří Zahrádka

Musicologica Olomucensia vol. 33(1), (2021):41-59 | DOI: 10.5507/mo.2021.003  

This study focuses on the complicated relationship between Leoš Janáček and Karel Kovařovic, composer, conductor and head of the opera of the National Theatre in Prague. As a reviewer, Janáček was critical not only of Kovařovic's conducting, but also of his compositions. When he offered his recently completed opera Její pastorkyňa to the Prague National Theatre in 1903, the management of the theatre and with it Kovařovic refused the work. Although Janáček tried to submit it several more times, Kovařovic insisted on his decision. The reason could be not only a mutual animosity, but also a misunderstanding of Janáček's new approach to opera and...

Nejedlého láska k Fibichovi jako příčina odmítnutí Dvořáka

Zdeněk Nejedlý's Adoration of Fibich as Motive for His Attacks on Dvořák

David R. Beveridge

Musicologica Olomucensia vol. 33(1), (2021):60-73 | DOI: 10.5507/mo.2021.004  

During recent decades historians and musicologists have devoted major attention to the harsh judgments of Zdeněk Nejedlý regarding Antonín Dvořák, devoting even one whole book to this topic. They have engaged in speculations about the causes of these judgments in the aesthetic, social, and political context of the time. It seems, however, that one of these causes, evidently the original cause and perhaps the main cause, has not yet been identified as such. To recognize it we must be aware that although Nejedlý's best-known condemnations of Dvořák come from the time of the "Battles over Dvořák" that broke out in 1912, his positions in this matter were...

Na horúcej pôde: premiéra Fibichovej Šárky v Mestskom divadle v Prešporku v roku 1905

On Hot Ground: The Première of Fibich's Opera Šárka by the Municipal Theatre in Pressburg in 1905

Jana Laslavíková

Musicologica Olomucensia vol. 33(1), (2021):74-83 | DOI: 10.5507/mo.2021.005  

In 1905, the opera ensemble of the National Theatre from Brno, led by František Lacina, guest performed in the Municipal Theatre in Pressburg. The programme included Fibich's opera Šárka, which aroused much attention among the German-speaking audience in Pressburg. Šárka was labelled as the most exciting new opera, and its excellent staging was to serve as an example for the artistic activities of the Hungarian theatre directors and their ensembles trying to gain a permanent foothold in Pressburg at that time. This paper discusses the reception of Fibich's opera in the context of the social and political situation in Pressburg at the...

Kontakty mezi Flandry a českou hudební scénou ve druhé polovině 19. století

The Contacts between Flanders and the Czech Music Scene in the Second Half of the 19th Century

Jan Dewilde

Musicologica Olomucensia vol. 33(1), (2021):84-94 | DOI: 10.5507/mo.2021.006  

In nineteenth-century Belgium the port city of Antwerp was the epicentre of the Flemish musical national movement that took a stand against the francophone dominance in the Belgian music scene and advocated a return to the roots of Flemish music. This movement of music nationalism was initiated and given a theoretical base by composer and conductor Peter Benoit (1834-1901), the founder and first director of the Royal Flemish Conservatory in Antwerp. The Flemish musical movement sympathised with Czech musical nationalism because of the common struggle for a recognition of their language and for emancipation. Benoit would incorporate 'Bohemian' music...

Nebetyčné věže: tektonika ve Fibichově opeře Bouře

Cloud-Capped Towers: Tectonics in Fibich's Opera Bouře

Judith Fiehler

Musicologica Olomucensia vol. 33(1), (2021):95-113 | DOI: 10.5507/mo.2021.007  

The genre of opera has often provided a fertile context for the development of tectonics: inner structures designed to give coherence to a specific composition and to convey its content. The simplest applications of such structures in opera have consisted of clearly-defined, repetitive motivic references to characters and dramatic events. During the second half of the nineteenth century, these structures became increasingly more subtle, more comprehensive, and more responsive to compositional impulse and emotion. As musical subtexts, they intensified the theatrical immediacy of the work through evocation of mood, enhancement of text, gestures, and...

Zdeněk Fibich und seine Shakespeare-Oper Bouře

Zdeněk Fibich and His Opera Bouře on the Theme of W. Shakespeare

Helmut Loos

Musicologica Olomucensia vol. 33(1), (2021):114-123 | DOI: 10.5507/mo.2021.008  

Shakespeare is one of the European writers most frequently set to music. In the 18th century, he became the prototype of a genius, who rose to the position of a model of a creative artist and a free man due to the violation of all the rules of Aristotelian poetics. In Leipzig, the city of the Enlightenment, Goethe was already confronted with such a refined image of man, and this tradition determined the atmosphere of the city until Zdeněk Fibich studied there. The operas he composed generally receive little attention. In choice of theme, they are only exceptionally - as in the case of the opera Šárka - connected with a Czech national myth; in...

"Zbraní pravdy, zbraní míru zvítězí věk ducha bohatýrů." K dobovým kontextům libreta Fibichova Blaníku

"The Age of Heroes' Minds Wins by Weapons of Truth and Peace." On the Contemporary Contexts of the Libretto for Fibich's Opera Blaník

Michal Fránek

Musicologica Olomucensia vol. 33(1), (2021):124-137 | DOI: 10.5507/mo.2021.009  

In the 1870s Eliška Krásnohorská wrote the libretto for the opera Blaník for Zdeněk Fibich. The author based her work on the legends about Mount Blaník, where an army is hiding but will come to the aid of the Czech nation when it is at its worst. These legends were updated in 19th-century Czech culture to meet contemporary national demands - Czech patriots transform themselves into the role of "Blaník knights", the saviours of the nation. Krásnohorská situated the opera's plot in 1623, when the Catholic party won. In her libretto, she made a strong appeal for national unity and a common love for the homeland. The critics of the time mostly praised...

Fibichův Blaník konkuruje Smetanově Libuši

Fibich's Blaník Competes with Smetana's Libuše

Jiří Kopecký

Musicologica Olomucensia vol. 33(1), (2021):138-151 | DOI: 10.5507/mo.2021.010  

After his first opera Bukovín Zdeněk Fibich approached his next operatic composition with the greatest respect. Bukovín achieved only a "fair" success (it was premiered under Adolf Čech's baton in April 1874), and Fibich wished to overcome this result with a new libretto by Eliška Krásnohorská, which Fibich began to set in the autumn of 1874. Fibich worked quickly in this period, but he did not finish the instrumentation until 1877, and the première took place in 1881. Nevertheless, external circumstances which inhibited Fibich in working more quickly finally proved to be a positive stimulus. Fibich could revise the Czech declamation...

Metodika strukturální analýzy koncertního melodramu. Aplikace na Fibichova Vodníka a další jeho významné melodramy

A Methodology of the Structural Analysis of Concert Melodrama. Its Application to Fibich's Vodník and His Other Important Melodramas

Jiří Bezděk

Musicologica Olomucensia vol. 33(1), (2021):152-189 | DOI: 10.5507/mo.2021.011  

A new methodology for the analysis of the concert melodrama in the Romantic period divided work through the identification of boundaries between music and text, also where in the concert melodrama only musical or purely poetic sections were found. In connection with previous knowledge, new unique types of connection and context were defined. Because important structural aspects of the new methodology were introduced in Fibich's melodramas Štědrý den, Vodník and Hakon, a representative sample of analysis demonstrates the effort of the composer to support not only the meaning of the text and to give it its contextual climate but...

Hippodamie: Tvůrčí čin Karla Hugo Hilara a Otakara Ostrčila

Hippodamia: A True Act of Creativity by Karel Hugo Hilar and Otakar Ostrčil

Jana Cindlerová

Musicologica Olomucensia vol. 33(1), (2021):190-211 | DOI: 10.5507/mo.2021.012  

The theme of this study is a scenic interpretation of the unique musical-dramatic trilogy Hippodamia (1888-1891) that was introduced to the repertoire of the Prague National Theatre in the 1920s. It was presented by Karel Hugo Hilar, the head of the drama ensemble. He himself also directed the first part of the trilogy, The Courtship of Pelops (premiered in 1923): the artist with expressionist roots, now slowly turning to civilism, predetermined the basic poetic framework, i. e. a genre-style solution, of both the other parts (The Reconciliation of Tantalus and The Death of Hippodamia, both directed by Vojta Novák and premiered...

Herečtí interpreti Fibichových melodramů a jejich deklamační styl

Actors in Fibich's Melodramas and Their Declamatory Style

Věra Šustíková

Musicologica Olomucensia vol. 33(1), (2021):212-230 | DOI: 10.5507/mo.2021.013  

The first contribution to the state of the acting style and declamation at the time of Zdeněk Fibich's melodramatic work is made on the basis of contemporary observations and judgments of theatre criticism as well as fragments in the published memoirs of the artists themselves. The oldest sound recording of an excerpt from Hippodamia (a scene on the walls from the first act of The Courtship of Pelops) dates back to 1911. A comparison with more recent recordings clearly shows how quickly this layer of melodrama interpretation is evolving. declamation; interpretation; style of acting; field of acting; melodrama; voice; word

Kapitola z historie recepce Fibichovy Hippodamie a Sukových scénických hudeb: srovnávání jejich melodramatického stylu

A Chapter from the Reception History of Fibich's Hippodamia and Suk's Incidental Music: A Comparison of Their Styles in Melodrama

Jan Charypar

Musicologica Olomucensia vol. 33(1), (2021):231-249 | DOI: 10.5507/mo.2021.014  

After the premières of Julius Zeyer's plays with Josef Suk's incidental music (Radúz and Mahulena and Under the Apple Tree), some Czech critics contrasted Suk's manner of using melodrama in a stage work to that in Fibich's Hippodamia. This comparison resulted from different opinions about melodrama in general. According to some critics, Fibich's intention to accompany a whole drama with music resulted in the music being superfluous and disruptive in many passages, whereas Suk sensed precisely which passages of the text needed musical accompaniment and which did not. On the contrary, Fibich's supporters stated that Suk's melodramatic...

Missa brevis F dur op. 21 Zdeňka Fibicha v kontextu české liturgické tvorby 70. a 80. let 19. století

Zdeněk Fibich's Missa brevis in F Major op. 21 in the Context of Czech Liturgical Compositions of the 1870s-1880s

Eva Vičarová

Musicologica Olomucensia vol. 33(1), (2021):250-270 | DOI: 10.5507/mo.2021.015  

The Missa brevis in F Major op. 21 Hud 279 (1885) was composed by Fibich during his two-year compositional crisis. The composition was frequently performed in Bohemian and Moravian churches and remained part of their repertory up until the 1940s. The composition manifests the influence of compositional techniques of Renaissance vocal polyphony, basso continuo, the harmonization technique of the Protestant chorale, as well as elements of contemporary figural music. Apart from an analysis of the composition's style and evaluation of Fibich's relationship to liturgical music, this paper also presents the reception of the composition and reflections...

Úvahy nad odkazem v symfonických básních Zdeňka Fibicha

Considerations of Inheritance in Zdeněk Fibich's Symphonic Poems

Patrick F. Devine

Musicologica Olomucensia vol. 33(1), (2021):271-283 | DOI: 10.5507/mo.2021.016  

Dictionary entries on the symphonic poem place the Czech Lands ahead of Russia, France, Germany and other countries. This sequence highlights the important pioneering attempts of a number of composers in Bohemia and Moravia who contributed vitally to the evolution of a form which was barely out of its infancy. Although the Czech symphony had witnessed no significant representative work for some fifty years since Jan Václav Voříšek's Symphony in D of 1821 - both Bedřich Smetana and Antonín Dvořák had continued in the central European symphonic tradition without any appreciable breakthrough or impact - Smetana's three "Swedish" symphonic poems of 1858-1861...

Několik poznámek režiséra k Shakespearově Bouři podle Fibicha a Vrchlického a k inscenaci této opery v Národním divadle moravskoslezském (premiéry 1. a 3. 12. 2016 v Divadle Antonína Dvořáka v Ostravě)

Jiří Nekvasil

Musicologica Olomucensia vol. 33(1), (2021):287-292