Alois Hába

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Hába in 1957

Alois Hába (21 June 1893 – 18 November 1973) was a

neutral second) in his theoretical works[1][2][failed verification] but he used scales in this tuning in sections of some of his compositions. In his prolific career, Hába composed three operas, an enormous collection of chamber music including 16 string quartets, piano, organ and choral pieces, some orchestral works and songs.[3] He also had special keyboard and woodwind instruments constructed that were capable of playing quarter-tone scales.[4]

Life

Alois Hába was born in the small town of

timbre of the speech. In 1908 he entered the teachers' training college in Kroměříž, where he began to develop an interest in Czech national music, analyzing the works of Bedřich Smetana. Already at that time he found out from his textbooks that the European system of music was not the only one in the world and that even some European music had in the past used different scales than the ones used in his time. He therefore started to develop his own point of view in this issue. After finishing his studies, he got a job as teacher in Bílovice, a small town near the Hungarian (now Slovak) border. Simultaneously, he continued his own musical studies and in 1913 wrote his first compositions, displaying an unwillingness to "follow the rules", which he maintained all his life. Hába was dissatisfied by small-town life, and in 1914, he moved to Prague and became a pupil of neoromantic composer Vítězslav Novák. Here he was interested in analysing the works of Claude Debussy, Max Reger, Alexander Scriabin, and Richard Strauss, and in harmonization of Moravian
folk music.

Vienna

During

Arnold Schönberg's Verein für musikalische Privataufführungen, and became particularly influenced by the "athematic" style used by Schönberg in his Erwartung. First publications of his compositions included the String Quartet No. 2, his first major quarter-tone work which was composed in 1920. At that time, his lifelong friendship with Hanns Eisler
– with whom he shared political beliefs (Hába became an ardent communist at this time) as well as musical opinions – began.

Berlin

Hába found his first success as a composer in Berlin, where he followed his teacher Schreker in late 1920. He published his first theoretical treatise (in Czech), the small booklet Harmonické základy čtvrttónové soustavy (Harmonic Essentials of the Quarter-tone System). In 1923, he met Ferruccio Busoni, who had advocated the sixth-tone system and encouraged Hába to continue his work in microtonality. The same year, Hába began to attempt the establishment of a school of microtonal music, but as the Nazis started to gain power in Germany, he came under attack and was driven out of Berlin. He returned to Prague and managed to get a job teaching workshops at the Prague Conservatory.

Prague

Quarter-tone grand piano (1924) designed by Hába, built by Förster firm; it consists of two independent bodies, features the three manuals (aux. short key/quarter tone higher/normal).
(exhibited at Czech Museum of Music)[5]
Sixth-tone harmonium (1937) designed by Hába, built by Förster firm; it features triple-reed, three manuals, two knee levers, and six registers.
(exhibited at Czech Museum of Music)[5]

In July 1923 at the festival of modern music in

harmonium
, patterned mostly after the design by Busoni.

After the premiere of his quarter-tone opera

National Theatre in Prague in 1936 had to be cancelled by intervention from the Ministry of Culture as communist and pro-soviet propaganda
.

In 1933, when

anthroposophical teachings of Rudolf Steiner
.

In 1939 the German

Nazis
occupied Czechoslovakia and banned performance of Hába's work. They closed down the Prague Conservatory in 1941 and prevented him from teaching. During the war Hába wrote a continuation of his Theory of Harmony, completed, as already mentioned, a sixth-tone opera (which was never produced), and considered constructing a twelfth-tone harmonium.

After

Marxist aesthetics
.

In 1953 he was sent into retirement, but in his own words it was only at that point that he achieved real creative freedom. In 1957 he was named an honorary member of the ISCM. When Hába returned to his style, he continued in his experimental musical studies, which culminated in the 1960s with the use of fifth tones in his Sixteenth String Quartet in 1967. This work was premiered in the same year at the ISCM festival in Prague, performing by Novák Quartet.

Hába was a prolific composer and continued to compose almost to the end of his life. He taught and influenced many musicians. Besides followers in his own country, Hába attracted students from South Slavic countries (Slovenia, Serbia, Bulgaria), Lithuania, Turkey, and elsewhere. The Prague Conservatory in general enjoyed an international reputation, and a great deal of credit for that goes to the contacts and pioneering efforts of Alois Hába. Despite these facts, he died in relative obscurity in Prague in 1973.

Concept

Quarter-tone music, Hába was convinced, would represent a major enrichment of European musical language. As he repeatedly stated, it was the genuine folk music of his own native region that led him to the idea of enriching European musical language with smaller intervals than the half-tones that are usual in European genuine folk music.

It was with these words that Alois Hába introduced a concert of works composed by himself and his students on 13 March 1945 in the Municipal Library in Prague:

Often just raising the apex of a melody by a mere half-tone, a quarter-tone or a sixth-tone, just prolonging or shortening a certain passage by a single beat, just livening up or rearranging the rhythm will be enough to achieve some satisfactory musical expressivity. This work is like polishing a precious stone. Perfect polishing increases its value. And only the ability to do such polishing guarantees composers perfection in their creative work and certainty in their ability to evaluate their own work and that of others.

All three areas of Alois Hába’s activity – composing, teaching, and organizing – evince one of his fundamental characteristics: the courage to move into a territory where no one else had thus far dared go. Hába was not some kind of “microinterval fanatic” as is sometimes assumed. He did offer his students this path, but he never compelled them to travel it. He was an example of musical perseverance, and although the worldwide universal musical language which he strove to create proved to be a utopia, his importance for the development of music in the 20th century is unparalleled.[7]

Works

Alois Hába's works total 103 opuses, the majority of which are various kinds of chamber music. Among the most important are his string quartets, which document and demonstrate the development of his style. In addition to quarter tones, Hába used sixth-tones in his String Quartets nos. in the 5, 10, and 11, as well as in Six Pieces for Sixth-tone Harmonium or String Quartet (1928), Duo for Sixth-tone Violins (1937), Thy Kingdom Come, a Sixth-tone Musical Drama in Seven Scenes (1937–42), Suite in Sixth-tones for Solo Violin (1955), and Suite in Sixth-tones for Solo Cello (1955). For a detailed survey, see complete list of compositions.[8]

Representative recordings

  • Complete String Quartets (4 CDs, Bayer Records, Germany, 2006), performed by the Czech ensemble Stamic Quartet
  • Four Fugues for Organ as the part of the album Alois Hába / Miloslav Kabeláč / Jan Hora / Petr Čech – Complete Organ Works (Vixen, Czech Republic, 2001, CD)
  • Complete Nonets. The Czech Nonet (Supraphon, Czech Republic, 1995)
  • Czech Music of the 20th Century: Alois Hába – Chamber Music. Suk Quartet and Czech Nonet (Praga, France, 1993)
  • Mother by
    Prague National Theatre Orchestra, chorus and soloists (Supraphon, Czechoslovakia, 1966, 1980 & 1982 – 2LPs; CD)[9]

See also

References

  1. ^ Myles Lee Skinner, "Toward a Quarter-Tone Syntax: Analyses of Selected Works by Blackwood, Haba, Ives and Wyschnegradsky", PhD diss. (Buffalo: State University of New York at Buffalo, 2006; Ann Arbor: ProQuest/UMI, 2007), p. 15 Archived 2016-04-05 at the Wayback Machine.
  2. ^ Patricia Strange and Allen Strange, The Contemporary Violin: Extended Performance Techniques (Berkeley, Los Angeles & London: University of California Press, 2001), p. 165.
  3. ^ Lubomír Spurný and Jiří Vysloužil, Alois Hába: A Catalogue of the Music and Writings, trans. Paul Victor Christiansen (Prague: Koniasch Latin Press, 2010).
  4. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1968).[page needed
    ]
  5. ^ a b Bohuslav Čížek. "Quarter-Tone and Sixth-Tone Musical Instruments Built according to Designs by Alois Hába". Musicalia (1–2 / 2013). Journal of Czech Museum of Music: 43-52.
  6. ^ Editors of the Encyclopædia Britannica, "Alois Hába: Czech Composer", Encyclopædia Britannica Online (accessed 12 September 2016).
  7. ^ Vlasta Reittererová, "Alois Hába", Český rozhlas website (accessed 12 September 2016).
  8. ^ Joe Monzo, "Alois Hába – List of works" adapted in 1999 from Jirí Vyslouzil, Alois Hába: zivot a dílo, Prague, 1974.
  9. ^ "Alois Hába" (discography), Discogs (accessed 12 September 2016).

Further reading

External links

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