Nabokov, Nicolas [Nikolay]

Neumann, František

(b Přerov, Moravia, 16 June 1874; d Brno, 25 Feb 1929). Czech conductor and composer. After an apprenticeship as a meat-smoker and sausage-maker in his father’s firm he went to the Leipzig Conservatory, where he studied with Reinecke and Jadassohn and as a répétiteur with Felix Mottl. After completing his studies in 1897 he conducted in Austria, Germany and the border territories of Bohemia. In 1919 Janáček recommended him as director of opera at the National Theatre, Brno. Neumann was an organizer of great energy and raised the standards of the Brno opera company – in status second to that of Prague – to a remarkable degree. As well as the standard repertory he introduced the works of Richard Strauss, Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky and Krenek and, perhaps most important, organized several Janáček world premières (Kát’a Kabanová, 1921; The Cunning Little Vixen, 1924; The Makropulos Affair, 1926). At the Brno Conservatory he taught the conductors Chalabala and Bakala. In 1925 he became managing director of the Brno National Theatre.

Of Neumann’s eight operas (three of them lost) the most successful was the three-act Liebelei (1910), based on Arthur Schnitzler’s play. It was performed in various theatres in German- and Czech-speaking countries and was first sung in Czech as Milkování in Brno in 1911. Der Herbststurm was based on a play by the Yugoslav Ivo Vojnović, and after its première in Berlin (1919) was first performed in Czech as Ekvinokce (‘The Equinox’; 1920, Brno). Beatrice Caracci, to a libretto by the composer based on a novel by Ludwig Hunn, is set in 16th-century Venice. Neumann followed the style of late 19th-century German drama, setting realistic subjects to dramatically effective and rhythmically lively music.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

V. Helfert: František Neumann (Prostějov, 1936)

J. Vratislavský: Neumannova éra v brněnské opeře [The Neumann era in the Brno Opera] (Brno, 1971)

JAN TROJAN

Neumann, Frederick

(b Bielitz, Silesia [now Bielsko-Biała, Poland], 15 Dec 1907; d Richmond, VA, 21 March 1994). American musicologist of German origin. He studied politics and economics in Germany and received the PhD in 1934. He worked as a research analyst in Prague until 1937, when he emigrated to America. After the war he took courses in music and music education at Columbia University, receiving the MA in 1947 and the PhD in 1952. He was also an accomplished violinist; his teachers included František Ondříček, Otakar Ševčík, Henri Marteau, Carl Flesch, Max Rostal and Adolf Busch. From 1939 to 1942 he taught at the Cornish School of Music and Arts in Seattle and from 1948 to 1951 was professor of violin at the University of Miami. In 1955 he was appointed professor of music at the University of Richmond; he was also leader of the Richmond SO from 1957 to 1964. In 1976–7 he was visiting professor of music at Yale University. Neumann undertook research on violin technique and performing practice in general, with particular emphasis on the Baroque period. His views on Baroque and post-Baroque ornamentation, formulated through close study of the theorists, caused considerable debate.

WRITINGS

‘Misconceptions about the French Trill in the 17th and 18th Centuries’, MQ, l (1964), 188–206

‘The French inégales, Quantz, and Bach’, JAMS, xviii (1965), 313–58

‘A New Look at Bach's Ornamentation’, ML, xlvi (1965), 4–15, 126–33

‘La note pointée et la soi-disant “manière française”’, RdM, li (1965), 66–92; Eng. trans. in EMc, v (1977), 310–24

with I. Galamian: Contemporary Violin Technique (New York, 1966–)

‘External Evidence and Uneven Notes’, MQ, lii (1966), 448–64

‘The Use of Baroque Treatises on Musical Performance’, ML, xlviii (1967), 315–24

‘Notes on “Melodic” and “Harmonic” Ornaments’, MR, xxix (1968), 249–56

Violin Left Hand Technique: a Survey of Related Literature (Urbana, IL, 1969)

‘Couperin and the Downbeat Doctrine for Appoggiaturas’, AcM, xli (1969), 71–85

‘Ornament and Structure’, MQ, lvi (1970), 153–61

‘Facts and Fiction about Overdotting’, MQ, lxiii (1977), 155–85

Ornamentation in Baroque and Post-Baroque Music, with Special Emphasis on J.S. Bach (Princeton, NJ, 1978, 3/1983)

‘Once More, the “French Overture Style”’, EMc, vii (1979), 39–45

‘The Overdotting Syndrome: Anatomy of a Delusion’, MQ, lxvii (1981), 305–47

‘Bach: Progressive or Conservative and the Authorship of the Goldberg Aria’, MQ, lxxi (1985), 281–94

Ornamentation and Improvisation in Mozart (Princeton, NJ, 1986)

‘Conflicting Binary and Ternary Rhythms: from the Theory of Mensural Notation to the Music of J.S. Bach’, Music Forum, vi (1987), 93–127

New Essays on Performance Practice (Ann Arbor, 1989/R)

PAULA MORGAN

Neumann, Václav

(b Prague, 29 Oct 1920; d Vienna, 2 Sept 1995). Czech conductor. He studied the violin with Josef Micka and conducting with Pavel Dědeček and Metod Doležil at the Prague Conservatory (1940–45); there he was first violinist and later viola player of the quartet which, as the Smetana Quartet, gave concerts from 1945. He made his conducting début in 1948 with the Czech PO, and after two years with the orchestra became chief conductor of the Karlovy Vary State PO (1951–4). As conductor of the Brno region SO (SOKB) (1954–6) he met Walter Felsenstein, director of the Berlin Komische Oper, who invited him to Berlin to conduct Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen (30 May 1956). Neumann achieved a quite extraordinary success, and the famous production had a total of 215 performances in Berlin, Wiesbaden and Paris. Neumann worked with the Komische Oper for eight years (1956–64), as chief conductor for two seasons. At the same time he was conductor of the Prague FOK SO. From 1964 to 1968 he was second conductor of the Czech PO, chief conductor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra and Generalmusikdirektor of the Leipzig Opera. In 1968 he became chief conductor of the Czech PO, a post he held until 1990 and again in 1992–3, and from 1970 to 1973 was Generalmusikdirektor of the Stuttgart Staatsoper.

Neumann was a highly experienced, versatile conductor, able to connect organically the emotional and intellectual sides of music and build an effective dramatic climax both in concerts and operas. His repertory included Janáček’s major operas (he recorded The Cunning Little Vixen and From the House of the Dead) as well as Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, Tristan und Isolde, Boris Godunov and Shostakovich’s Katerina Izmaylova. With Czech and other orchestras he toured Europe, Japan and the USA, and appeared frequently at several international festivals. His concert repertory extended from Classical to contemporary music; a particular favourite was Mahler, most of whose symphonies he recorded. He also promoted Czech Classical and contemporary works – he was acclaimed, for instance, for giving the première of Vladimír Sommer’s Vocal Symphony in 1963, and recorded an admired series of Dvořák symphonies. In the late 1980s he broke his contracts with Czech TV and Czech Radio in protest at discrimination against fellow-musicians.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

J. Kozák: Českoslovenští koncertní umělci a komorní soubory [Czechoslovak concert artists and chamber ensembles] (Prague, 1964), 331–3

V. Pospíšil: ‘S Václavem Neumannem o hudbě nejdnešnější’ [Neumann on the most up-to-date music], HRo, xvii (1964), 96–8

Z. Candra: ‘Pátý šéf’ [The fifth chief conductor (of the Czech Philharmonic)], HRo, xxii (1969), 46–7

V. Pospíšil: Václav Neumann (Prague, 1981) [incl. discography]

ALENA NĚMCOVÁ