A Brief History of the Czech Republic
The history of a country usually relates to long-past events. With the Czech Republic the most significant historical developments are recent news. When we started these birds and music tours based on the Prague Spring festival we knew the country as Czechoslovakia - a country about the size of Britain with a third of its population. But Czechoslovakia was only created as an independent republic in 1918 after the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian empire at the end of World War I. It consisted originally of the Bohemian crownlands (Bohemia, Moravia, and part of Silesia) and Slovakia (the area of Hungary inhabited by Slavonic peoples). To this was added as a trust part of Ruthenia (which as a country has the unique distinction of being independent for a single day in 1938). Despite the problems of uniting such a mixed group of people Czechoslovakia made great political and economic progress and was the only East European state to retain a parliamentary democracy throughout the interwar period.
It had until 1938, when as an act of appeasement Neville Chamberlain, British Prime Minister, allowed Hitler to annex the Czech Sudatenland. In March 1939 German troops marched into Czechoslovakia. After the war Czech Ruthenia was transferred to the Ukraine and Czechoslovakia was incorporated into the Eastern Bloc countries.
Twenty years later, Alexander Dubcek, a Slovak, was the new Party Secretary, who seemed to carry through social and economic reforms with great speed. This 'Prague Spring' of Socialist Democratic Revolution promised the return of freedom of assembly, speech and movement, and the imposition of restrictions on the secret police, all within the goal of creating 'socialism with a human face'. Russia uttered grave warnings. Warsaw Pact manoeuvre brought in troops and tanks. Dubcek refused to believe that they meant any harm. On 21 August 1968 Soviet tanks and allied forces moved in to restore order. Over 70 deaths and some 266 injuries were inflicted by this invasion and once more Czechoslovakia was under the Russian heel with the Czech Socialist Republic created under a new federal constitution.
Another twenty years later, influenced by events elsewhere in Eastern Europe, a series of student-led pro-democracy rallies were held in Prague's Wenceslas Square (from 17 November 1989). An opposition movement (Civic Forum) was formed under the leadership of playwright and Charter 77 activist Vaclav Havel. By the end of November the Politburo was purged, the national assembly voted to amend the constitution to strip the Communist Party of its leading role in government, and opposition parties were legalised. A month later the rehabilitated Dubcek was sworn in as chair of the federal asssembly and Havel became president of Czechoslovakia. The name Czech and Slovak Federative Republic was adopted in 1990. Soviet troops finally withdrew in 1991. The Civic Forum split into CDP and CM.
A general election was held in June 1992 and Vaclav Klaus, leader of the Czech-based CDP, became prime minister. It was agreed that two separate Czech and Slovak states would be created from January 1993. All this came about peacefully without bloodshed - indeed without rancour. Haval was elected president and the new republic was admitted into the United Nations, the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe, and the Council of Europe.
As to the more ancient history of Bohemia, Roman records reveal a Celtic tribe, the Boii, settled there in the late sixth century B.C. Other Celts settled on the fringes of Slovakia and in Moravia. They were all driven out by Germanic invaders about 100 B.C. For many centuries there was no dominant group until the 6th century A.D. The Slavs appeared and began to dig themselves in. One tribe was called Czechs after its leader 'Czech', who led them into Bohemia.
In the ninth century Christianity began to reach these pagan lands. They became part of the Holy Roman Empire as the result of Charlemagne establishing a protectorate over the Celtic. Germanic, and Slav tribes settled in this area. Two priests with knowledge of Slavonic tongues, Constantine (later Cyrill of the Cyrillic alphabet) and Methodius were sent by Emperor Michael of Byzantium. Methodius later became Bishop of the Czechs and then Archbishop of Pannonia, the ancient name of the plain covering a wide region of Slovakia and Hungary. In 921 A.D. Bohemia came under the rule of a Premyslide prince whose name is preserved in the English carol 'Good King Wenceslas'. He was indeed 'good' and, like his mother Ludmilla, became a saint. Wenceslas did his best to accommodate German rulers and greedy neighbours.
Bohemia became very strong and Prague very rich and one of the most important trading centres in Europe. The Premyslide monarchs wheeled and dealed but made an error that cost Bohemia dearly. They invited German settlers into Bohemia to colonise forest and field and to develop the country's resources. Ultimately this led to a decline in the Czech language, and weakened the Church's link with Constantinople, strengthening its links with Rome, and all its practices. In 1310 John of Luxemburg founded a German-Czech royal dynasty which lasted until 1437. His son Charles IV became Holy Roman Emperor in 1355 and during his reign the See of Prague (established since 975) was elevated to an archbishopric and a university was founded there.
A great religious reformer, John Huss, was born in 1371. He was greatly influenced by John Wycliffe of Oxford who died in 1348. John Huss was a reformer of great zeal. His movement had its culmination in the 'Battle of White Mountain' (outside Prague) on 8 November 1620 - followed by the Thirty Years War.
On the throne was the Elector Frederick. He was a Lutheran, dubbed 'the Winter King', so short was his reign. He was hard pressed by the Habsburgs and the Catholic League. Following the Battle of White Mountain the pride and independence of Bohemia was smashed for three hundred years. The Habsburgs of Austria and Hungary who had ruled since 1526 continued to reign until 1918 and the events detailed in the opening paragraph.
Of necessity this is a very abbreviated history of the Czech Republic. If the appetite has been whetted 'Czechoslovakia' by John Burke (publisher B T Batsford Ltd) is excellent reading.
The Czech Republic today
Area 78,864 sq km/30,461 sq miles
Population 10.3 million
Prime Minister Dr Vladimir Spidla (from March 2003)
President Vaclav Klaus(from March 2003)
Political system Emergent democracy
Political parties Civil Democratic Party (CDP), right of centre; Civil Movement (CM), left of centre; Communist Party (CPCZ), left-wing; Czechoslovak People's Party, centrist nationalist.
Religions Roman Catholic (75%); Protestant, Hussite, Orthodox.
Pruhonice Park
The Pruhonice park has become a term in the world of horticultural and architectural landscape gardening. The foundations of the park, as it looks today, were laid over a hundred years ago. It was in 1885 that Arnost Emanuel Sylva-Tarouca married into the manor of Nostitz-Rienek. Sylva-Tarouca then decided to make use of the neighbouring landscape and to create a natural park.
The foundations of the Pruhonice Castle were laid in the 12th century: the Church of the Birth of Our Lady was consecrated in 1187; records of the village of Pruhonice date from 1270 and the mural paintings in the church go back to about 1330. This castle was renovated by architect J. Stibral between 1889-1894 and rebuilt in the romantic style of the late 19th century - the so-called Bohemian Renaissance. This architecture was under the influence of the Late Gothic and Renaissance styles and includes some genuine Czech architectural elements. At the same time, the foundations to the park were laid. More than 200 ha were gradually acquired. Today there are 250 ha of land belonging to the area.
The natural formation of the Botic-brooklet valley, the rocky headlands and the mild knolls were used as building elements and contributed to the natural beauty of the park. Thousands of plants have been incorporated. Since 1927, this entire area has been the property of the Czech state. In addition, foundations were laid for a horticultural and botanical research institute. In 1962, the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences took of the care of the park and the castle from the Research Institute of Decorative Gardening. At present, the Botanical Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences is in charge of the whole place. Not only offices and laboratories are to be found in the castle but also large collections of herbs as well as a specialised library attached to the National Museum. In 1984, in the eastern wing of the castle, a part of the collections of the Gallery of Central Bohemia was opened to the public. We have permission (and our own key) to visit the Park at any time - including dawn and dusk.
The Villa Bertramka
Background
The Villa Bertramka was the home of the composer Frantisek Xaver Dusek and his wife Josephine Duskova the celebrated concert-singer. Mozart stayed with him whenever he visited Prague and it seems that this is the place he really loved. Here he wrote the overture to Don Giovanni, Masseto‘s aria (Calling in), the beautiful aria Bella mia fiamma addio, most of La Clemenza di Tito, the priest‘s chorus Isis and Osiris and Papageno‘s songs for The Magic Flute, and a concerto for clarinet.
In the Jahrbuch der Tonkunst von Wien und Prag of 1796 we read ‘Frantisek Dusek, that great virtuoso and composer for the piano, fully deserves the title Professor of Music, for in him Prague has not only a man who has trained a large number of master musicians, but one who can rightly be called a pillar of the art of music which has hitherto held its own‘. Dusek is considered to be the founder of the oldest Czech piano school. His playing was characterised by a light touch and by a gentle and expressive performance. As a composer he worked in every field of music (over 300 of his works are extant). It is also significant that his works, most of which were written in the 1760s, bear the same melodic character as Mozart‘s. Thus, next to J C Bach and J Myslivecek, Dusek can be said to be Mozart‘s closest predecessor.
But it was not only this influence on Mozart‘s creativity which ensured the Duseks‘ important role in his life. From their first meeting in 1777 to his death in 1791 Mozart shared all his experiences with them, as though he had been a member of the family, and indeed it was the Duseks who subsequently cared for his homeless orphans. It was the Duseks who realised that The Marriage of Figaro failed in Vienna in April 1786 not on musical grounds but because of the treachery of the Italian cabal and who insisted that it should be staged at the Nostitz Theatre (now the Estates) in December of the same year — where it was so outstandingly successful that the tunes could be heard from morning till night in the alehouse and on the street, in homes and in palaces, and of course at the Nostitz Theatre where the cry of ‘Encore‘ never stopped. So great was the enthusiasm that Prague invited Mozart to visit. He came in January and was bowled over, vowing to thank the people of Prague by writing an opera dedicated to them.
Don Giovann
That opera was of course Don Giovanni. Never had Mozart looked forward so much to the performance of a new opera as he did on leaving Vienna for Prague with the unfinished score on 1st October 1787. The premiere was fixed for 14th October to celebrate the presence of the Archduchess Maria Theresa, the bride of Prince Anton of Saxony. But three times it was delayed because of a host of technical difficulties. (Mozart conducted The Marriage of Figaro on 14th for the Archduchess.) Eventually, however, on 29th October Mozart conducted the premiere — and it was a resounding success, acclaimed with unreserved warmth by the public. What importance Mozart attached to Prague‘s judgement is obvious from a conversation between Mozart and Jan Baptiste Kuchar, as they strolled together after the first rehearsal. Kuchar was one of the four outstanding Prague musicians who became Mozart‘s friends and faithful collaborators during his first visit to Prague (the others being Dusek, Josef
Strobach, the conductor of the opera orchestra, and Vaclav Praupner, a noted composer, organist, and operatic choir-master who conducted all the choir parts of Mozart‘s operas in Prague). Kuchar was a fine organist and cembalo player, who was the first to arrange piano scores of The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, Cosi fan Tutti, The Magic Flute, and Titus which were praised and enthusiastically received by Mozart.
Mozart asked Kuchar, as a close friend and an authority on music, ‘What do you think of the music of Don Giovanni? Will they like it as much as Figaro? It is quite different!‘ Kuchar replied ‘How can you doubt it? The music is beautiful, original, and masterfully conceived. Anything of Mozart's cannot fail to delight the Czechs‘. Whereupon Mozart answered ‘Your words reassure me; they come from an expert. Indeed I have spared no effort, no labour, in order to be able to offer Prague something that is excellent‘.
The overture, Masetto‘s aria no 6, the Don Giovanni-Leporello duet no 15 (the second act originally began with a recitative), Don Giovanni‘s serenade, and the entire second finale were all composed at the Bertramka and first performed there.
The Bertramka
Thus in 1787 and again in 1791 the Bertramka and its hostess offered Mozart a kindly refuge and warm hospitality at a time when his creative powers were being taxed to the full. The German historian Arthur Schurig, Mozart‘s biographer, admits that the Prague audience played an important part in Mozart‘s life and in his works subsequent to Figaro. ‘It was in fact in the capital of Bohemia that Mozart was for the first time fully understood, valued, and loved. If any town has the right to be called his city, then it is not Salzburg which Mozart hated, it is not Vienna which left him to starve and forgot him in a mass grave, but only his golden Prague‘. More specifically, Schurig also observed ‘The Bertramka can be called Mozart‘s home, rather than the houses which he inhabited in Salzburg and Vienna‘.
For the 200th Mozart anniversary celebrations in 1956, the Czechoslovak state spared neither effort nor expense to turn the Bertramka into a lasting and dignified memorial. In the course of the work a number of interesting discoveries were made. It was ascertained, for instance, that where the fireplace stood in Mozart‘s bedroom, there had originally been a window, and the room had been made considerably smaller by a wall, built probably after a fire in 1871. Everything was put back in its original state. All the objects which have any bearing on Mozart‘s stay and creative activities in Prague were assembled in five rooms.
We hope to find time to explore all these rooms and also the grounds where, in between composing, Mozart played bowls. Maybe we shall rest at the stone table where Mozart is said to have frequently sat. We might even listen to the descendents of the very birds which no doubt inspired Mozart, consciously or subconsciously, when he was writing Papageno‘s songs for The Magic Flute.
The Mozart/Dusek memorial at the Bertramka provides further proof of the fact that the slogan ‘Prague never failed Mozart and never will‘ is as topical today as it was in 1928 when Leos Janacek wrote these word in the visitor‘s book at the Bertramka.
A night with Mozart: The performance itself
This is an imaginative attempt to recreate the evening of 3rd November 1787, telling how Mozart came to write the concert aria Bella mia fiamma, addio! in which he took leave of his dear friend Josephine Dusek and the city which had given him so much happiness and so much inspiration for his further work. He had been in Prague for a month and eventually, on 29th October, had conducted the world premiere of Don Giovanni at the Estates Theatre. For Mozart that evening was one of the happiest of his life. His opera of operas was acclaimed with unreserved warmth by the public.
For authenticity the performers from the State Opera recreating the characters involved speak German. So a resumé of the sequence of events may be helpful, interspersed with the music played.
We are welcomed by Lady Josephine Duskova on the steps of the villa and drink champagne with her, just as she did with Mozart and her husband on the night in question. She is now a widow but recalls vividly that significant evening twelve years before…
In the drawing room musicians are playing Josef Myslivecek's Trio in D major for two violins and contrabass. (Both Mozarts, father and son, were friends of Myslivecek who was known in Italy as ‘Il divino Boemo‘, the divine Czech. They first met in Bologna when Mozart was 14 and 32 letters still survive from the extraordinarily extensive correspondence proving the close co-operation between them). Josephine reads to Mozart the excellent review of his premiere of Don Giovanni and reminds him about the nervous atmosphere of rehearsals. On the sleeping Dusek she demonstrates how Mozart taught Zerlina ‘to get really frightened‘. Then she notices the music laying on Dusek‘s lap and hatches a plan.
Mozart is rankled by the fact that Josephine is singing an aria by Kozeluh, his greatest rival at the court of Vienna (and the only Czech musician who joined forces with Salieri and went over to the camp of Mozart‘s enemies. According to Nemecek, Kozeluh and Mozart once met at a party at which Haydn‘s string quartet was performed. After a particularly audacious passage, Kozeluh remarked to Mozart ‘I wouldn‘t have written it like that!‘. whereupon Mozart replied ‘Nor would I, but do you know why? Because neither I nor you would have thought of it!‘ The story goes that since then Kozeluh bore Mozart a grudge). Such cold music for the singer with such warmth? He promises to write for her an aria more worthy of her talents — but not for nothing. Mozart‘s hostess responds to his ambiguous allusions with equal ambiguity: ‘I can offer you beautiful… sweet… aria of Mozart.‘
Mozart‘s Marriage of Figaro, Cherubino‘s aria Voi, che sapete
Jan Krtitel Jiri Neruda - Trio in G major for viola d‘amore, violin, and contrabass
Mozart‘s Don Giovanni, Calling in.
Mozart is again agitated that someone is courting Josephine in his presence — and, what‘s more, with one of his own arias (Calling in). But he is reassured when the singer Croce introduces himself as an understudy auditioning for the role of Don Giovanni.
Mozart‘s Marriage of Figaro, Figaro‘s aria Non piu andrai
Mozart‘s Don Giovanni, Giovanni‘s aria Fin ch‘han dal vino
Mozart‘s Don Giovanni, duet of Zerlina and Giovanni La ci darem la mano
Mozart leaves with Croce to discuss Don Giovanni and Josephine challenges her husband and the musicians to try out Dusek‘s Trio in D major for piano and string instruments. Josephine does not hide her admiration for her husband‘s musicianship but at the same time she unburdens to him her concern about Mozart, who is in a hurry now to return to Vienna to secure the position of court conductor and to introduce his new opera to the Viennese public. But everyone knows that he cannot expect anything good from the intrigues of Vienna. Mozart enters into their conversation — yes, he wants to show Vienna who he really is. ‘The problem is that the key figures know it very well‘ counters Josephine and asks her husband to order coffee for Mozart in the kitchen. She learns that Mozart already has chosen the text for her aria and lures him into the drawing room where she locks him up and vows she will not release him until he writes the promised composition. Meanwhile she checks out the libretto (Titan‘s aria from the opera Niccolo Jomelli), discovering it to be Titan bemoaning the hero who is condemned to death and says farewell to his beloved Proserpina. Is the similarity between their relationship and Mozart‘s fate purely coincidental?
The aria is finished surprisingly quickly. But it will only be hers is she sight-reads it without making any mistakes. Josephine, a little afraid, gives a perfect performance.
Mozart‘s Bella mia fiamma addio!
Negotiating all the musical snares prepared for her by Mozart was very difficult. But how much more difficult was their farewell…
But today we shall not be sad. Everywhere here sounds the music of Mozart and with it we shall feel always happy… in brief, dear friends, feel here as happy as Mozart did at the time.
The Czech musical tradition and how we'll be sampling it this year
Bohemia‘s musical tradition is both religious and secular. Gregorian Chant, of the Roman Church, quickly spread throughout the country, and St Vitus‘s Cathedral in Prague (founded by Good King Wenceslas) has always been a great centre of religious musical culture. The religious and nationalist movement initiated by John Huss (1373-1415) had a considerable influence on church music. The Hussites in Bohemia favoured congregational singing (like the Lutherans and Calvinists), and brought into religious use secular airs adapted to new words.
In the reign of Rudolph II at Prague, in the late 16th and early 17th century, foreign musicians were welcomed to the court, because Rudolph was not only King but also Holy Roman Emperor. There grew up the practice which established domestic bands of musicians in the castles and town houses. Prague had a Collegium Musicum from 1616.
The most significant historical testimony to the musicianship of the Czech nation is to be found in Charles Burney‘s notes on ‘The Present State of Music in Germany‘. On his travels through Europe in 1772 the British musician and writer visited Bohemia which had long attracted him. He wrote that he had often heard that the Czechs were the most musically talented nation in Germany, indeed perhaps in all of Europe. J C Bach, who was at that time in London, had assured him that if the Czechs had as favourable conditions as the Italians they would surely outclass them.
Burney travelled the length and breadth of Bohemia and observed with great interest how music was taught to the ordinary people. In Caslav at the house of the famous organist and teacher Jan Dusik he noticed in one of the rooms a number of boys and girls from 6 to 11 years old reading, writing, and making music on the violin, oboe, double bass, and other instruments. There were four pianos in this room and a boy was seated at each of them. So as far back as the eighteenth century Burney drew the attention of the world to this school, modestly hidden away, and to the secret roots of Czech musicianship which penetrated all the villages and towns where Czech music teachers nurtured the musical traditions of which they were the guardians. ‘All the children of the peasants and tradespeople in every town and village in Bohemia are taught music at common reading schools‘ he wrote, noting in particular that ‘Bohemians are remarkably expert in the use of wind instruments‘.
For this reason we start our own musical voyage of discovery in the Czech Republic with a private concert by a group of young musicians inspired in exactly the same way by their present-day music teachers who carry on this splendid tradition. The award-winning Pipers of Trebon seem to get younger every year (in 1999 one seemed hardly larger than his instrument) but their playing is enchanting. Appropriately their programme will take us from Czech and European gothic, renaissance and baroque music — the very roots of Czech musical culture — to South Bohemian folk song and eventually 20th-century pop-evergreens and jazz standards. In this way we shall sense for ourselves that, now as in the 18th-century, ‘the village teachers have always been the cultivators of the musical youth of Bohemia‘.
In 18th-century Prague the choirmasters and organists took the pick of the country singers and sensitive violinists for the monasteries and the church choirs where ‘instrumental music was cultivated with such love and delight that all who heard it were amazed at the masterly achievements of the ordinary Czechs‘. The successor of Bohuslav Cernohorsky, the Czech composer known in Italy as the Padre Boemo (1684-1742), was Josef Seger (1716-1782), an organist known throughout Europe. Josef Myslivecek, Jan Krtitel Kuchar, abbe Josef Jelinek, and Jan Antonin Kozeluh (who all became friends of Mozart, though the latter defected to Salieri — see the write-up on the Bertramka) were among his pupils. Another outstanding organist and composer was Frantisek Vaclav Habermann (1706-1783), whose mass was played in England, where Handel himself copied it. (Handel liked the themes so much that he made use of some of them in his oratorio Jephthah.) Habermann was the first teacher of Josef Myslivecek and Frantisek Xaver Dusek (again see the article on the Bertramka for their influence on Mozart). Mozart also esteemed highly the works of Frantisek Xaver Brixi (1732-1771), the modest but great organist and composer and conductor of the choir of St Vitus‘s Cathedral in Prague. (His father Simon Brixi, the choirmaster, 1693-1735, was the brother of Dorothy Benda, mother of the famous Benda.) During Mozart‘s stay in Prague he asked Kozeluh, choirmaster at the cathedral, to show him the music archives. It was cold down there so he kept his three-cornered hat on. But when he was perusing Brixi‘s Graduale, a G-minor fugue written for the Fourth Sunday after Easter, he took off his hat, made a sweeping bow and cried out ‘You have to take your hat off to a man like Brixi‘.
At this time, social oppression and counter-reformation persecution caused many Czech musicians to leave their country for Germany, Italy, Russia, and France. Thus Bohemia became known as the conservatoire of Europe. One of the most famous of these musical emigrants was Jan Vaclav Stamic (1717-1757) who founded the famous Mannheim school which had such an influence on Bach, Mozart, and indeed virtually every musician in the late 18th-century.
From Mannheim Mozart wrote to his father about the impression which Jiri Benda‘s melodramas had made on him. At the first hearing they moved him like nothing else he had heard during his travels through Germany, Italy, France, England, Holland, and Belgium. Seldom did Mozart use such extravagant words as he used in speaking of Benda‘s melodramas Medea and Ariadne on Nexos. It is clear from his notes that here he came into contact with something about which he had dreamed but which he did not think could be realised. Jiri Benda, musician and thinker, director of the Duke‘s music in Gotha, Thuringia, by origin a Czech, in a flash provided a convincing answer to his burning question. Mozart became so fond of Benda that he spoke of him as his darling and took his works with him on his travels. On 3rd December 1778, a few days after his first feeling of delight at Benda‘s melodramas he wrote from Mannheim to Salzburg ‘Oh, if we only had clarinets! You wouldn‘t believe how incredibly beautiful such a symphony is with flutes, oboes, and clarinets‘. And he looked forward to introducing them into Salzburg immediately on his return. ‘Rich indeed was the contribution of the Mannheim school and the pioneer work of Benda‘.
Many other musicians and composers from Bohemia influenced Mozart throughout his life. The Prague Czechs are discussed in the Bertramka notes. The Viennese Czechs included Vaclav Pichl (1741-1805), Archduke Ferdinand‘s own composer about whom Nissen (who married Mozart‘s widow) wrote that most of Mozart‘s earlier instrumental works bear the stamp of Pichl‘s taste and manner of playing; the brothers Pavel (1756-1825) and Antonin (1761-1820) Vranicky (note the connection between the former‘s Oberon and Mozart‘s Magic Flute); the oboe and viola da gamba virtuoso Josef Fiala (1748-1816); Vanhal; abbé J Jelinek, V Jirovec; F X Vositka; Antonin Rossler-Rosetti (1750-1792); J Rejcha (1745 -1795); J Janic; F Hejna; and Frantisek Adam Mica (1746-1811), of whose works Mozart performed a number at the court of Vienna. When a new symphony by Mica was anonymously performed in Vienna at President Keese‘s, Mozart — who was present — immediately declared that he knew the bird by his feathers and in proof of his recognition he embraced Mica before the entire company. In turn, just as Mozart was influenced by so many Czech composers, Mozart‘s works continued to meet with great response and to have a tremendous influence in the Czech lands. The Mozart tradition became an inseparable and living part of the Czech culture. The entire Czech ‘awakening‘ period of the 19th-century is permeated by the great beauty and deep humanity of the master‘s legacy. To Bedrich Smetana Mozart was a great example and to Antonin Dvorak he was ‘the sun‘, the giver of untold warmth.
For this reason, on our first evening in Prague, we shall visit the Villa Bertramka, the home of the composer Frantisek Xaver Dusek and his wife Josephine Duskova and the place Mozart stayed whenever he visited Prague (see separate notes). In this intimate environment we shall be treated to A Night with Mozart, an imaginative attempt to recreate the evening of 3 November 1787 (see separate notes). Two nights later we shall attend a performance of Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte in the gold-and-red-plush opulence of the Smetana Opera House (the State Opera).
In 1811 the Conservatory of Prague was founded. Its earliest director was Frederick Dionys Weber (1766-1842). But it is with Smetana (1824-84) and Dvorak (1841-1904) that the Bohemia of 19th-century Europe really shone out. A host of fine musicians were contemporary with or followed these two: Zdenek Fibich (1850-1900), Leos Janacek (1854-1928), Gustav Mahler (1860-1911; yes he was born in Bohemia, although he received his musical education in Vienna), Vietezun Novak (1870-1949), Joseph Suk (1874-1935), Bohuslav Martinu (1890-1959). Prague was an operative centre of long standing. In 1860, when a new constitution decreed that the Czech language be made compulsory in all of the schools, Smetana produced a series of eight works in the Czech language, which form the basis of the Czech opera My Fatherland. Dvorak produced a series of nine operas. Janáček followed with Jenufa, Fate, The excursions of Mr Brouček, Katua Kabanova, The Cunning Little Vixen, The Makropulos Affair, and From the house of the dead. Mr Brouček (Mr Beetle) was premiered in the National Theatre in Prague in 1920 – Janáček’s only opera to be heard first outside Brno. It is particularly appropriate and exciting, therefore, that we shall be seeing a performance in this very theatre.
(As it happens, none of these Czech operas are being staged during our visit this year. But the 19th century operatic traditions are well represented by Bizet’s Carmen at the National, Meyerbeer’s Robert the Devil at the State, and Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffman in Brno).
In this 19th-century search for national identity, Czech composers were strongly influenced by their natural environment. Smetana‘s cycle of symphonic poems Ma Vlast/My country with movements devoted to ‘Bohemia‘s woods and fields‘ and ‘Vltava‘ tracing the course of the Moldau from its bubbling origin in the Sumava mountains to the mighty river which sweeps through Prague is typical. (We shall hear it on the coach as we make the same journey.) Equally significant is Dvorak‘s suite for two pianos Ze Sumavy/From Sumava op 68, six movements inspired by his walks in the Sumava mountains (Spinning, By the Black Lake, The night of Philip and Jacob, Waiting for deer, Quiet, Storm). To bring this to life for us the celebrated pianists Vera and Vlastimil Lejsek (who made the CD of this work) will be coming especially from Brno to Cesky Krumlov. We are honoured that this famous husband-and-wife team — who have been playing together for forty years, having had many compositions dedicated to them and close contacts with Milhaud, Britten, and Shostakovich — make this journey for us every year. Vlastimil Lejsek is an esteemed composer himself (one year he delighted us with the world premier of his latest composition) and may also be persuaded to play his Legends from Moravia, which is very much in this same tradition.
By the time we reach Brno we shall be steeped in this Czech musical tradition. A finishing touch will be a visit to Janacek’s home to learn more of his highly original style, influenced by Moravian folk music. We know the curator well and she usually opens up specially for us. ‘Each folk song‘ said Janacek ‘contains an entire man; his body, his soul, his surroundings, everything, everything. He who grows up among folk songs grows into a complete man.‘
It is appropriate, therefore, that our musical tour of the Czech Republic concludes with a feast of Moravian folk music — both at the Ride of the Kings festival at Vlcnov and with a private performance in the wine cellars on our final evening, in many ways bringing us full circle from our first private recital by the Pipers of Trebon. And just as he who grows up among folk songs grows into a complete man, let‘s hope that those who grow along with this carefully-balanced wealth of Czech music during our twelve days together (with live performances augmented by appropriate tapes on the coach, from the 17th-century compositions of Biber and Pezel, the 18th-century Zelenka and Linek, and the 19th-century Smetana and Dvorak, to the 20th-century works of Suk, Janacek, Svejkovsky, and Lejsek) will consider it a complete tour.
Bryan Bland, March 2004
Updated: August 2006