Alois Hába: A Catalogue of the Music and Writings (review)

If Alois Hába belongs among the better-known Czech composers of the first half of the twentieth century, it is mostly because of his reputation as a composer of works in the quarter-tone and sixth-tone systems. This has been both a blessing and a curse: a memorable label but one that obscures his full range and stature. The publication in Leipzig of his treatise Neue Harmonielehre des diatonischen, chromatischen, Viertel-, Drittel-, Sechstel- und Zwöflteltonsystems in 1927 and the high-profile premiere of his quarter-tone opera Matka [The mother] in Munich under Scherchen in 1931were highlights of his early career. But he was also one of the most respected and influential teachers of his generation. His quarter-tone classes, begun at the Prague Conservatory in 1924, grew into a fully-fledged department of microtonal music in 1934 that attracted students from Germany, Yugoslavia, and beyond. While the Nazi occupation halted such activities, his public profile increased even more in the immediate post-war period with his appointment as head of the Grand Opera of the Fifth of May and as teacher of composition at the newly created Academy of Performing Arts. The Mother eventually received its Czech premiere in 1947. Although a committed Communist (who composed fifty-two mass songs), Hába’s modernist leanings did not suit the new regime. After the 1948 Communist putsch he lost his posts both at the theatre and at the academy (his quarter-tone music department was closed down in 1951) and until his retirement in 1953 he worked part-time in the Prague Conservatory archive. However, he was not persona non grata: he continued to publish articles, to compose, and to be performed. His belief in microtonal music remained unshaken and he went on composing in microtonal systems to the end of his life. He died full of honours in 1973 at the age of 80.

Czech composer catalogues have come a long way in user-friendliness since the vast Dvořák catalogue by Jarmil Burghauser in 1960. In his attempts to satisfy several language constituencies, Burghauser conveyed his information with so many abbreviations that readers find their fingers continually stuck in the long list of abbreviations. The splendid Suk catalogue by Zdeněk Nouza and Miroslav Malý (2005; reviewed in Music & Letters, 90 (2009), 501–3) presented a bilingual text, first Czech, then English, for each work—much easier to use than the Dvořák catalogue but massively bumping up the size and of course the price. The present catalogue, published in the Czech Republic by a Czech publisher, presents its material in English, though with the original Czech given where it is essential (titles, Hába’s comments, etc.). The result is an exemplary 300-page catalogue fully available to an international readership and a genuine pleasure to handle. The days have passed since English-language publications from the Czech lands came in a home-grown and sometimes incomprehensible brand of English. The clear and idiomatic translation here is by Paul Christiansen, an American Janáček scholar. The titles and incipits of mass songs were perhaps his greatest challenge; generally, however, Christiansen has opted for unvarnished literal translations such as ‘When once a snowstorm blew down the scaffolding in Prague’, ‘The forged piece shines under the power hammer’, and ‘What a giant! What a stout fellow!’. Of the two authors, Jiří Vysloužil (now in his late eighties) has laboured long and hard in the field (the bibliography lists twenty-three items by him, notably his standard biography of 1974, based on unparalleled access to the composer). The bulk of work on this catalogue, however was done by Vysloužil’s much younger colleague at Brno’s Masaryk University, Lubomír Spurný.

The catalogue lists works by genre (nine main sections each designated by a roman numeral followed by IX, X, and XI: Unfinished, Lost and Arrangements); individual works are...