The Melancholic Chicken - Jan Ryant Dřízal
"The composition The Melancholic Chicken is freely inspired by a short story of the same name by Karel Josef Šlejhar, in which a boy and an animal cannot resist the cruelty ofthe surrounding world.
For me, the fight of a fragile mind with a reckless substance as an allegoric fight of an individual with a society has become the basic idea that I had in my mind when composing. The organic ungraspable mind is being torn out of its balance by so called scare-fears (Šlejhar's term for a sudden scare) that gradually form disturbing march rhythm.
In the middle of the composition, I let the orchestra march in a naturalistic way and, subsequently, this archetypical principle takes over. Orchestral sound mass wins over meditation in a series of grotesque musical scenes until it is again intersected by so far silenced hovering choral. Piccolo is a kind of a symbolic quide and its music material is derived from a short motif of a boy's solo from opera Vojcek by Alban Berg." Jan Ryant Dřízal
The composition The Melancholic Chicken has won the competition for composers announced by Czech Philharmonic in 2014. Its part is devoted to Jiří Bělohlávek and Czech Philharmonic that premiered the composition on 7 October 2015 in Dvořák Hall in Rudolfinum.
Parts only for hire at nakladatelstvi@rozhlas.cz