Page 207 - Weiss, Jernej, ur. 2018. Nova glasba v “novi” Evropi med obema svetovnima vojnama ?? New Music in the “New” Europe Between the Two World Wars. Koper/Ljubljana: Založba Univerze na Primorskem in Festival Ljubljana. Studia musicologica Labacensia, 2
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alois hába and slovene students of composition ...
matica in Ljubljana, Hába was increasingly establishing himself as one of
the leading representatives of the Czech interwar avant-garde. He was the
head of the Czech section of the International Society for Contemporary
Music (ISCM) with a wide network of influential composer friends. He was
also the head of the music society Přítomnost (The Present), which had tak-
en the place of Novák’s earlier Spolek pro moderní hudbu (Society for Mod-
ern Music), and an active writer who, with an enthusiasm that matched that
of Osterc, wrote about the need for new musical perspectives in Prague pe-
riodicals such as Tempo and Klíč (Clew).
In the field of music education, too, Hába successfully presented a
thoroughly grounded new view of old, historical facts in the textbook men-
tioned earlier, Neue Harmonielehre. This was almost literally compiled
from the findings of a range of theorists. Hába believed, and admitted with
total frankness, that his most important contribution lay in the “synthe-
sis and expansion of their findings.”12 He was, then, as capable and fruit-
ful a theorist as he was a composer – something we could not claim for Os-
terc. In as early as 1936 Vladimír Helfert was able to talk, with justification,
about a “Hába School”13 in his essay Česká moderní hudba (Czech Mod-
ern Music), although it should be emphasised that as a teacher Hába al-
lowed his students considerable creative freedom, and did not impose his
own views of compositional technique on them. The concept of a “Hába
School” may be taken on the one hand to mean a set of guiding princi-
ples of compositional technique supported by theoretical considerations,
and on the other, aesthetic and ideological perspectives supported by more
or less specific compositional solutions. Both were available to Hába’s stu-
dents – among whom, interestingly, he considered Osterc one of the most
important, alongside Dragutin Čolić and Vojislav Vučković – even before
the department for quarter-tone composition at the Prague conservatory
officially opened in 1934. Hába’s ideas about composition received particu-
lar international attention on 17 May 1931 following the Munich premiere
of his quarter-tone opera Matka (The Mother), conducted by Hermann
Scherchen.14 Just three weeks later the Society for Modern Music organised
a concert of quarter-tone music in Prague, at which the pianist Karel Reiner
12 Alois Hába, Neue Harmonielehre des Diatonischen, Chromatischen, Viertel-, Drit-
tel-, Sechstel und Zwölftel-Tonsystems (Leipzig: F. Kistner & C.F.W. Siegel, 1927), 12.
13 Vladimír Helfert, Česká moderní hudba: Studie o české hudební tvořivosti (Olomouc:
Index, 1936), 155–158.
14 Vlasta Reittererová and Lubomír Spurný, “»Musik am Rande«. Einige Bemerkungen
zur Typologie der Musik von Alois Hába,” Muzikološki zbornik 47, no. 1 (2011): 161.
205
matica in Ljubljana, Hába was increasingly establishing himself as one of
the leading representatives of the Czech interwar avant-garde. He was the
head of the Czech section of the International Society for Contemporary
Music (ISCM) with a wide network of influential composer friends. He was
also the head of the music society Přítomnost (The Present), which had tak-
en the place of Novák’s earlier Spolek pro moderní hudbu (Society for Mod-
ern Music), and an active writer who, with an enthusiasm that matched that
of Osterc, wrote about the need for new musical perspectives in Prague pe-
riodicals such as Tempo and Klíč (Clew).
In the field of music education, too, Hába successfully presented a
thoroughly grounded new view of old, historical facts in the textbook men-
tioned earlier, Neue Harmonielehre. This was almost literally compiled
from the findings of a range of theorists. Hába believed, and admitted with
total frankness, that his most important contribution lay in the “synthe-
sis and expansion of their findings.”12 He was, then, as capable and fruit-
ful a theorist as he was a composer – something we could not claim for Os-
terc. In as early as 1936 Vladimír Helfert was able to talk, with justification,
about a “Hába School”13 in his essay Česká moderní hudba (Czech Mod-
ern Music), although it should be emphasised that as a teacher Hába al-
lowed his students considerable creative freedom, and did not impose his
own views of compositional technique on them. The concept of a “Hába
School” may be taken on the one hand to mean a set of guiding princi-
ples of compositional technique supported by theoretical considerations,
and on the other, aesthetic and ideological perspectives supported by more
or less specific compositional solutions. Both were available to Hába’s stu-
dents – among whom, interestingly, he considered Osterc one of the most
important, alongside Dragutin Čolić and Vojislav Vučković – even before
the department for quarter-tone composition at the Prague conservatory
officially opened in 1934. Hába’s ideas about composition received particu-
lar international attention on 17 May 1931 following the Munich premiere
of his quarter-tone opera Matka (The Mother), conducted by Hermann
Scherchen.14 Just three weeks later the Society for Modern Music organised
a concert of quarter-tone music in Prague, at which the pianist Karel Reiner
12 Alois Hába, Neue Harmonielehre des Diatonischen, Chromatischen, Viertel-, Drit-
tel-, Sechstel und Zwölftel-Tonsystems (Leipzig: F. Kistner & C.F.W. Siegel, 1927), 12.
13 Vladimír Helfert, Česká moderní hudba: Studie o české hudební tvořivosti (Olomouc:
Index, 1936), 155–158.
14 Vlasta Reittererová and Lubomír Spurný, “»Musik am Rande«. Einige Bemerkungen
zur Typologie der Musik von Alois Hába,” Muzikološki zbornik 47, no. 1 (2011): 161.
205
