Nabokov, Nicolas [Nikolay]
Novak, Johann Baptist [Janez Krstnik]
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- BIBLIOGRAPHY
- Novák, Pavel [Zemek, Pavel]
- Novák, Vítězslav [Viktor] (Augustín Rudolf)
- WORKS Catalogue: M. Schnierer: Vítězslav Novák: tematický a bibliografický katalog/The Thematic and Bibliographical Catalogue (Prague, 1999) stage
Novak, Johann Baptist [Janez Krstnik](b Ljubljana, c1756; d Ljubljana, 29 Jan 1833). Slovenian composer. He was a civil servant in Ljubljana, and one of the founder-members of the Philharmonic Society in 1794. He conducted the orchestra of the society in 1799–1800 and between 1808 and 1825 was its musical director. In 1790 he wrote incidental music for T. Linhart’s play Ta veseli dan, ali Matiček se ženi (‘A Happy Day, or Matiček is Getting Married’). The music was given such prominence that the play became in effect an opera. Linhart’s plot leant heavily on Beaumarchais’s well-known comedy, and Novak, who must have known it through Mozart’s setting, renamed it Figaro (in the National and University Library, Ljubljana). His only other extant work is an occasional cantata, Cantate zum Geburts oder Namensfeste einer Mutter (I-Tscon); of another occasional cantata, Krains Empfindungen, performed in 1801, only the text survives. BIBLIOGRAPHYD. Cvetko: ‘J.B. Novak, ein slowenischer Anhänger Mozarts’, Musikwissentschaftlicher Kongress: Vienna 1956, 103–6 D. Cvetko: Evropski glasbeni klasicizem in njegov odmev na Slovenskem [European musical Classicism and its echo in Slovenia] (Ljubljana, 1988), 5–11 BOJAN BUJIĆ Novák, Pavel [Zemek, Pavel](b Brno, 14 Oct 1957). Czech composer. He studied composition and oboe at the Brno Conservatory (1971–7). He then attended the Janáček Academy in Brno (1977–81), graduating in oboe, then studied composition there with Miloslav Ištvan (1983–8). He teaches composition and theory at the Brno Conservatory. During his studies he was influenced by the compositional method of his teacher Ištvan, then he began to develop in a rather different direction, with evolutionary forms. From 1986 he worked with some London ensembles (The Schubert Ensemble and The Composers’ Ensemble). In 1992–3 he studied with George Benjamin at the RCM in London. Elements of diatonicism and consonance, and melodic writing in instrumental music more closely resembling a vocal idiom, became more pronounced features of Novák’s style during the 1990s. Classical rhythmic structures in multiples of two, with metrical fluctuations within an otherwise regular beat, became more emphasized in Novák’s works. In his evolutionary forms the ideas themselves fashion the structure, so that one element (rhythm, melody, colour) dominates. Behind this musical language stands an interest in Czech and Moravian folklore, and devout Catholicism. WORKS(selective list)
PETR KOFROŇ Novák, Vítězslav [Viktor] (Augustín Rudolf)(b Kamenice nad Lipou, 5 Dec 1870; d Skuteč, 18 July 1949). Czech composer and teacher. 1. Life. 2. Works. WORKS BIBLIOGRAPHY MILOŠ SCHNIERER (1, work-list, bibliography), JOHN TYRRELL (2) Novák, Vítězslav 1. Life.His father, Jakub Novák, came from an ancient southern Bohemian peasant family. He worked as a medical doctor and served the deputy president of the choral society Čechorod of Počátky. His mother, Marie Pollenská, was a forester's daughter, who played the piano. The family moved to Počátky in 1872, where Novák attended primary school and learnt the violin with Antonín Šilhan and the piano with Marie Krejčová. In 1882 Novák's father died, after which the family moved to Jindřichův Hradec, where Novák studied at the local grammar school. The conductor of the local fire brigade band, Vilém Pojman, who taught him music from the fourth form, was the first to recognize and develop his musical gift. Novák gave his first public performances in Jindřichův Hradec at the age of 17 and composed songs and piano pieces from the age of 16. Among them were four attempts at setting Mácha's poem Máj (‘May’), a classic of early Czech romantic poetry. After passing his final examinations (1889), Novák moved to Prague with his family. For two semesters he read law at Prague University, and then philosophy, following the advice of the professor of music history and aesthetics, Otakar Hostinský. He graduated in 1893. At the same time he studied composition at the Prague Conservatory (Sept 1889–July 1892). In the beginning his studies were not particularly successful: his ardently romantic personality did not readily submit to the strict disciplines of harmony and counterpoint. Independent development of his talents came only when he began attending the composition class of Dvořák, who succeeded Karel Stecker in the academic year 1891–2. In that period, in addition to a couple of smaller pieces, Novák wrote his Violin Sonata in D minor and Korzár (‘The Corsair’), an overture for orchestra. While Dvořák was away in New York, Novák orchestrated his Serenade in F for small orchestra in Karel Bendl's composition class (1894–5). Between 1891 and 1896 he attended Josef Jiránek's piano class. His first compositional successes brought some much-needed improvement of his precarious financial situation. He received a scholarship from the Apt Foundation of the Prague Conservatory (1894–6) and a state scholarship of 400 gulden (1896–8). Brahms became interested in some of Dvořák's pupils, including Josef Suk and Oskar Nedbal, and recommended Novák's piano cycles for publication by his Berlin publisher, Simrock: opp.6, 9, 10, 11 and 13 were published between 1895 and 1898. An important turn came in 1896, when Novák was invited by Rudolf Reissig (1874–1939), his friend from the conservatory, to explore the authentic folklore of Moravian Valašsko in Velké Karlovice (Vsetín district), an area famous for its natural beauty. Novák spent many summers on holiday in Velké Karlovice and went on numerous trips across Slovácko (Moravian Slovakia), Lašsko and Valašsko. Later he went even further afield into Slovakia. Inspired by the first impressions from his summer holidays, he decided to study the standard Czech and Moravian folksongs collections (Erben, Sušil, Bartoš). His own observations and notations of interesting songs made him familiar with the essence of folk music of the area. He also got to know the folk singers, musicians and folksong collectors, Martin Zeman, Hynek Bím, Jan Nepomuk Polášek and, most importantly in 1897, Leoš Janáček, the greatest authority on Moravian folklore at the turn of the century. Meeting outstanding figures then determining the nature of the rapid development of Czech nationalism in the late Austro-Hungarian Empire gave Novák an insight into the cultural atmosphere of Brno and Moravia. His friends and acquaintances included leading cultural figures such as the architect Dušan Jurkovič, the painter Jožka Úprka, the writers Alois and Vilém Mrštík, Josef Merhaut, František Mareš and many others. When Rudolf Reissig, after working briefly in Kroměříž, moved to Brno, where he became chorusmaster of the Beseda Brněnská (succeeding Janáček), he began systematically performing various works by Novák, beginning in 1899. This continued until 1920, when Reissig moved to the Prague Conservatory. The Novák cult in Brno even overshadowed the achievement of Janáček for a time. Both Novák and Janáček continued to be heard in Brno, thanks to the conductors Břetislav Bakala, Jaroslav Vogel and František Jílek, all pupils of Novák and later renowned Janáček conductors. From 1896 Novák turned not only to folklore but also to exploring the landscape of south-eastern Moravia and Slovakia, as an active walker, swimmer and mountaineer. His first stay in Velké Karlovice in 1896 was supported by a powerful emotional experience linked at the start of an unhappy love affair with the singer Josefína Javůrková, the recipient of the strain of ‘eternal longing’ detected by commentators in Novák's music. From then on a strongly personal synthesis of eroticism, nature and folklore can be traced in all his works. In the beginning, elements of folksongs represented merely an exotic aspect in his music, but from 1896 Moravian and Slovak folklore penetrated most of his compositions, resulting in a highly individual musical language. In addition to the Piano Quintet in A minor, written during the winter season of 1896–7 immediately after Novák's trip to Velké Karlovice, creative folklorism also imbued the original series of Písničky na slova lidové poezie moravské (‘Songs on Moravian Folk Poetry’), in which he provided original folk texts with settings based on his own melodic invention and his imaginative piano accompaniments. Later, he orchestrated these songs. In addition to his regular stays in Velké Karlovice and, at the beginning of 1906, in the Znojmo region around Bítov Castle, Novák visited almost every European country apart from Russia. Novák's knowledge of foreign languages – German, English, French, Spanish and Russian – literature, philosophy, fine arts and a vast repertory of European and Czech music, made him one of the leading figures of Czech culture and placed him among the most successful composers of the time. Unlike Janáček, Novák managed to become involved in the social and musical life of Prague. In 1901 the ‘Podskalská Filharmonie’ came into existence in Prague as a friendly association of artists around Novák (who lived in Podskalská ulice). After the death of Fibich in 1900 Novák took over some of Fibich's pupils, at the same time preparing his own applicants for study at Prague Conservatory. In time he developed an enviable reputation as a teacher. In September 1909 he opened a masterclass in composition at the Prague Conservatory, teaching over 100 composers until his retirement in 1939, including many Czechs, Slovaks and southern and eastern Slavs. Even after leaving the conservatory he continued to give private lessons to young composers. One of his last pupils was Ilja Hurník. Novák's major achievements of the period include orchestral works, Maryša (1898), the symphonic poem V Tatrách (‘In the Tatras ’, 1902), the Slovácká suita (‘Moravian-Slovak Suite’) for small orchestra (1903), the symphonic poem O věčné touze (‘Eternal Longing’, 1903–5), the Serenade in D for small orchestra (1905), the symphonic poem Toman a lesní panna (‘Toman and the Wood Nymph', 1906–7) and the cantata Bouře (‘The Storm’) on words by Svatopluk Čech (1908–10). These works, together with piano works such as the Sonata Eroica (1900) and Pan (1910, orchestrated 1912), made Novák one of the founders of Czech modernist music of the early years of the 20th century. A turning point in Novák's career came with his marriage (in 1912) to Marie Prášková, the daughter of a businessman from Skuteč, and Novák's former pupil from the conservatory. The marriage gave him an emotional anchor and provided a stable family background. He began work on larger compositions, including the cantata Svatební košile (‘The Wedding Shift’, 1912–13), four operas and two ballets. Although he enjoyed maximum official recognition at the time when the first independent Czechoslovak state came into existence, he was no longer seen as a progressive figure. Despite that, he was a member of many domestic and foreign music societies, academies and juries, and his works were continued to be published by Universal Edition, and by domestic publishers. In the 1920s Novák was elected rector of Prague Conservatory on three occasions. His works were performed in Vienna, in Germany and in other foreign countries, and his premières in Prague and Brno were major social and musical events. In the 1930s his orientation slowly began to change, youthful romanticism being replaced by a more reflective style as in the Podzimní symfonie (‘Autumn Symphony’, 1931–4), followed by a turn towards objective patriotism directly related to political events of the time. On the eve of the Munich tragedy he wrote the Jihočeská suita (‘South Bohemian Suite’, 1936–7) for orchestra and the Third String Quartet (1938), embodying feelings of resentment and of patriotic pride. In the protests against the Munich events and the establishment of the Protectorate, Novák remained silent for three years. Then, in the middle of the greatest national catastrophe, in 1941, he wrote his symphonic poem for large orchestra and organ De profundis (1941), the Svatováclavský triptych (‘St Wenceslas Triptych’) for organ and orchestra and a one-movement Cello Sonata. During the occupation he showed great personal courage, putting in his music allegories of national political resistance which even the Nazis were able to recognize (the St Wenceslas Triptych was referred to as ‘ein schönes Werk, aber sehr politisch gefärbt’ – ‘a beautiful work, but very politically coloured’). During this period Novák spent most of his time in Skuteč, writing his memoirs (Vítězslav Novák o sobě a o jiných), some small compositions and the Májová symfonie (‘May Symphony’, 1943), a herald of liberation. For his lifetime achievement as a composer he was appointed National Artist in composition together with Josef Bohuslav Foerster, on 23 November 1945. He composed music until the very last day of his life. When he died in Skuteč the female chorus Hvězdy (‘Stars’) to a text by his wife and the unfinished cantata Na orloji věčna léta vteřinami jsou… (‘On the Tower Clock Eternal Years are Mere Seconds’) lay on his desk. Novák, Vítězslav 2. Works.Novák wrote works in all genres though his career was carefully paced and the larger works for chorus and orchestra and the stage works appeared only after his 40th year, suggesting a rational choice rather than a natural bent in these areas. His creative personality was in place by the turn of the century. A natural inclination towards gloomy romanticism and self- dramatization had been tempered by a rigorous academic training. This left him with an easy ability in the standard forms, mostly in chamber music and songs, and an orientation towards a conservative idiom. His two strongest attributes were already well in evidence: a fine ear for melody and orchestration. What took him out of a conventional late-Romantic idiom derived from Brahms, Grieg and Tchaikovsky was his encounter with Moravia. A decisive work is the First String Quartet op.22 (1899). The sonata-form first movement shows its provenance: Dvořák and even his rival Suk lurk in the background (in the careful craftsmanship and the harmony rather than in the cut of the melodies). But in the remaining movements Novák pulls abruptly away from this tradition; the solemn little scherzo is not only humorous, but folk-inflected in its harmonic and melodic vocabulary; the final movement may have had a Dvořákian dumka in mind with its alternation of the wild and the ruminative but in fact it looks more towards a Hungarian topos. Novák designated these two movements respectively as from ‘Valašsko’ (next door to Janáček's Lašsko) and ‘Slovácko’ (the Moravian-Slovak setting of both Janáček's Jenůfa and Foerster's Eva). The result is a delightful amalgam that could not be further from Janáček's earthiness or Suk's smoothness and was wholly Novák's own. Not everyone approved. Zdeněk Nejedlý castigated its ‘pictorialism’ (quite inappropriate in a string quartet, he declared) but, however misguided, he had clearly detected something that departed from the official Smetana road. Novak had already taken this road in his orchestral overture Maryša (1898). A miniature tone poem, it contains clearly-drawn portraits of the three protagonists: that of the heroine Maryša is derived from a familiar Moravian folksong. It was only a small step to the Moravian-Slovak Suite (1903), set like Maryša and the second movement of the String Quartet op.22 in the Slovácko region of Moravia, whose folk rituals it evokes. But three of the five movements (describing respectively children at play, love-making and a nocturnal scene) could have been set anywhere. And what might be thought of as the defining movement as far as location is concerned, ‘U muziky’ (‘With the band’) is only skin-deep in its ethnographic gestures: open string chords with 4th and 5ths, Scotch snaps and other Moravian rhythmic fingerprints but all safely contained as a fruitful exoticism rather than the root-and-branch re-examination of musical language undertaken by Bartók and Janáček. The same point is made in the Piano Trio op.27 (1902). For all its Moravian mirror rhythms it is the fine ensemble writing and above all the striking one-movement form encompassing all the elements of a four-movement structure which impress today. But Moravian exoticism had clearly released something within Novák and he went on to his best known works such as the tone poems In the Tatras and Eternal Longing. The first is monothematic and is an example of the composer's response to nature, here of the Tatra mountains of Slovakia seen in a variety of moods and weathers. The second proposes a simple narrative based on one of Hans Christian Andersen's prose poems but also allows the depiction of natural phenomena such as the ‘strange forms’ that lurk in the ocean or the flight of swans. It is ravishing music, achieved by comparatively simple means. Like much of Novák's music of the time its simplicity and confidence is deceptive, as can be seen from its long gestation (1903–5), a point made by the later revisions (1905, 1907) of In the Tatras (1902). A later work in this succession of orchestral pieces, the overture Lady Godiva (1907), also illustrates how careful Novák needed to be to tap into what was personal and distinctive. Stepping outside into foreign territory (Czech commentators enterprisingly detect a ‘Scottish atmosphere’ in Novák's musical reworking of the Coventry legend), he reverts to gestural Romanticism and a rather too obvious sonata form with its competing ‘masculine’ first subject (depicting the violent Earl Leofric), ‘feminine’ second subject (the gentle Lady Godiva) and conflicted development. Another work from the period, the Serenade in D (1905), is admirable in its craftsmanship and achieves its aim of delighting, but lacks both the urgency and the personal identity of most of the other orchestral works of the period and shows how easily Novák could descend to note-spinning. In his music up to about 1908 Novák seems to have found a personal voice when his imagination was released by Moravian topoi or when writing programmatically for orchestra (especially in a response to nature) where his precise aural imagination was given free rein. When Novák capped this with two large-scale works in other genres, namely the cantata The Storm and the ‘symphonic poem for piano’ Pan commentators believed that he broken free of these creative restraints. However, both pieces are problematic. Like In the Tatras, Pan is essentially monothematic, in this case a structure of almost an hour derived from a four-note initial theme. Its second movement ‘Hory’ (‘Mountains’) is a typically atmospheric evocation of nature but the demanding third movement ‘Moře’ (‘Sea’) descends into a collection of tired Lisztian virtuoso devices: the resultant texture has neither the luminosity of contemporary French piano music nor the poignant directness of Suk's Things Lived and Dreamt or Janáček's On the Overgrown Path and In the Mists. The piano textures themselves seem insufficient and it is revealing that Novák went on to orchestrate the work. The Storm has different limitations. Technically it is a cantata with chorus (mainly male) and several soloists, but its vocal sections are embedded in an orchestral continuum of surprisingly generous proportions. At its triumphant première in Brno in 1910 it demonstrated how closely in touch Novák was with developments elsewhere in Europe. Its virtuoso deployment of the orchestra for instance recalls both the virtuosity of Strauss and incandescence of Skryabin. But the verbal text (a youthful narrative poem by Svatopluk Čech) is undistinguished and unconsciously comic; Novák's setting of the words is confined to ballad-like insertions which seldom breach the stanzaic structure of the poem. By far the most effective parts of this piece are the long orchestral sea interludes in which Novák was able to continue the concerns of Eternal Longing and In the Tatras. After The Storm Novák faltered. His next oratorio, The Wedding Shift (1913) was castigated as presumptuous after Dvořák's famous setting of Erben's text and the clutch of operas that he then embarked on are retrospective works mostly based on Czech classic 19th-century plays. His best-known opera, Lucerna (‘The Lantern’), has a cast of characters that could have come straight out of Dvořák's Rusalka or The Jakobin. Both Karlštejn and The Lantern were composed to rhymed verse which Novák did little to override rhythmically. His settings fall into regular, almost singsong rhythmic periods (as in The Storm) that can give a very formal, mannered impression, especially in dialogue. Significantly, in his final opera Novák returned to the surer ground of symphonic writing: Dědův odkaz (‘The Grandfather's Legacy’) has great swathes of symphonic interludes, postludes and dances. There is also an abrupt turnabout regarding choral writing (virtually absent from the previous operas) with the chorus consituting a particularly important element. Even more significantly the final stage works that Novák attempted were ballets, whose designation as ‘pantomimes’ refers to the detailed stage directions. In the case of Signorina Gioventù there is a prologue where the action is explained in a melodrama with a speaker and orchestra. The unadventurous idiom of these later works show how out of sympathy Novák had become with Modernist developments in music. Whereas the elderly Janáček espoused the novelties that he picked up at his sorties to ISCM festivals, all Novák seemed able to do was to enhance the brilliance of his orchestration and flirt with mild bitonality. It is astonishing in the South Bohemian Suite of 1936–7 how little he had in fact advanced from the Moravian-Slovak Suite of 30 years earlier. He has all his old skill in evoking a dreamy romantic atmosphere in the first two movements. The most distinctive element is the grim Hussite march of the third movement in which he reacted to the ominous events in Germany that would soon destroy the Czechoslovak Republic. A nationalist impulse accounts for the urgency of his most effective late-period works, the war pieces of the 1940s, De profundis and St Wenceslas Triptych. The former work is based on a gloom-to-transfiguration trajectory, emphasized by the control of orchestral colour (very low instruments at the start, harp and celesta at the end). Remarkable in its muscular counterpoint, it is one of the most potent artistic responses to political events to come from the region. Novák, Vítězslav WORKSCatalogue: M. Schnierer: Vítězslav Novák: tematický a bibliografický katalog/The Thematic and Bibliographical Catalogue (Prague, 1999) stageop.
orchestral
choral
chamber and solo instrumental
songsfor solo voice and piano unless otherwise stated
folksong arrangements
Novák, Vítězslav BIBLIOGRAPHYČSHS Z. Nejedlý: Vítězslav Novák: studie a kritiky [Studies and reviews] (Prague, 1921) B. Vomáčka and S. Hanuš, eds.: Sborník na počest 60. narozenin Vítězslava Nováka [Collection in honour of Vítězslav Novák's 60th birthday] (Prague, 1930) A. Srba, ed.: Vítězslav Novák: studie a vzpomínky [Studies and reminiscences] (Prague, 1932, suppls. 1935, 1940) A. Hába: Vítězslav Novák: k 70. narozeninám (Prague, 1940) V. Štěpán: Novák a Suk (Prague, 1945) K. Hoffmeister: Tvorba Vítězslava Nováka z let 1941–1948 [Vítězslav Novák's works 1941–8] (Prague, 1949) V. Lébl: ‘Poslední tvůrčí období Vítězslava Nováka’ [Novák's last creative period], HRo, xi (1958), 400–03, 455–8 V. Lébl: Vítězslav Novák: život a dílo [Life and work] (Prague, 1964) R. Budiš: Vítězslav Novák: výběrová bibliografie [A selective bibliography] (Prague, 1967) V. Lébl: Vítězslav Novák (Prague, 1967; Eng. trans., 1968) M. Schnierer: ‘Vztahy Vítězslava Nováka k vídeňskému nakladatelství Universal Edition’ [Novák's relationship with the Vienna publishers Universal Edition], OM, i (1969), 289–93 L. Polyakova: ‘Vitezslav Novak i jeho opera “Karlshteyn”’, SovM (1970), no.10, pp.129–36 J. Volek: ‘Vítězslav Novák a secese’ [Novák and Jugendstil], OM, ii (1970), 225–9 F. Pala: ‘Novákův Pan’ [Novák's Pan], HRo, xxiv (1971), 78–82 ‘Ze symposia o životě a díle Vítězslava Nováka’ [From the symposium on Novák's life and work], HV, viii (1971), 53–65 K. Padrta and B. Štědroň, eds.: Národní umělec Vítězslav Novák, studie a vzpomínky k 100. výročí narození [Studies and reminiscences on the 100th anniversary of Novák's birth] (České Budějovice, 1972) [with Ger. summary] ‘Vítězslav Novák’, OM, v/5 (1980), 130–58 [Novák issue, incl. articles by J. Fukač, A. Očenáš, J. Racek, F. Jílek, M. Štědroň, M. Schnierer and I. Hurník] M. Schnierer, ed.: Zprávy společnosti Vítězslava Nováka [Bulletin of the Vítězslav Novák Association], nos. 1– (1982–) M. Schnierer: ‘Ke koncepci instrumentace v díle Vítězslava Nováka’ [On the conception of instrumentation in Novák's works], Hudební nástroje, vi (1989), 208–9 M. Schnierer, ed.: Vítězslav Novák: Mitbegründer der tschechischen Musik des 20. Jahrhunderts (Brno, 1989) Yüklə 10,2 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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