Hymnos - Svatopluk Havelka
Svatopluk Havelka (1925 - 2009) belongs among the most significant Czech composers of the second half of the 20th and the beginning of the current century. Besides his private composition studies with K. B. Jirák (1945 - 47), he also studied musicology at the Philosophical Faculty, Charles University in Prague. He became a professional composer in 1954, and gradually became a much-sought-for composition tutor; in February 1990, after the fall of the communist regime, he was finally appointed professor of composition at the Music Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague.
His music has been awarded many times, most recently in 2006, when he won the Minister of Culture of the Czech Republic Award for Lifetime Achievement. Apart from his symphonic and chamber music legacy, he is also the author of more than 150 scores of music for Czech films. In the field of film music Havelka met also with significant success - he was awarded for his scores for the director Vojtěch Jasný's films Až přijde kocour (When the Cat Comes, 1963), Všichni dobří rodáci (All My Good Countrymen, 1968), and the Minister of Culture Award winning Princ a večernice (The Prince and the Evening Star, 1981).
Hymnos, a chamber cantata for baritone, clarinet and vibraphone based on the Greek text of Paul the Apostle's Epistle to the Philippians from 1999 belongs to a free cycle of vocal-instrumental compositions based on Greek biblical texts. The author worked on the cycle from 1993 (Pareneze for soprano, piano and 2 percussionists) up to the first years of this century (Alpha and Omega - 2002). A typical feature of Hymnos lies in the use of the vibraphone as one of the accompanying instruments. Havelka's continuing affection for percussion instruments is maintained in this work, and the way - in many aspects a revealing one - these instruments are used is transferred to the stylistic environment of the author's late works.
Other compositions by Svatopluk Havelka published in Czech Radio:
Agapé
Parénéze
Symphony No. 1
The Signs of Times
instrumentationbaritono solo, cl, vibfdescriptionscore, partpubl.NoR 188price240,- CZK