Czech Music around 1900 by Křupková, Jiří Kopecký et al. (review)

"We get a fascinating kaleidoscope … around the question of Czech music by some of the leading scholars in the field, much of which has never before been available in English" (p. 13). These words from Michael Beckerman's article "Flowers in the Graveyard, Tombstones in the Garden" aptly sum up the achievement of this generously illustrated book. Its main beneficiaries are four Czech composers born after Leoš Janček, who so far have received comparatively little attention by Western musicologists: Josef Bohuslav Foerster (1859–1951), Víteˇzslav Novák (1870–1949), Josef Suk (1874–1935), and Otakar Ostrčil (1879–1935).

This publication, made possible by a grant from the Czech government, unites nineteen essays by nine authors. No editor is identified, but two people named on its title page—both professors at Palacký University in Olomouc, Czech Republic—are the de facto editors, as they sign the "Introductory Remarks on the Conception of this Book." Two more generalizing articles follow: Beckerman's highly personal commentary, with musings on Czechness and the devastating impact its implementation had on the ethnic minorities of the country, and Marta Ottlová's "The 'Other World' of Music at the Turn of the Century," which, written for an exhibition in Amsterdam in 1999, surveys the Czech music scene around 1900 and places it in the context of the philosophical and ideological debates of the time. The remaining articles are grouped under three headings—"In the Footsteps of Tradition: The Spirit of Romanticism," "Czech Music at the Heart of European Music round [ sic] 1900," and "The Clash with Compositional Issues in European Music"—but this categorization seems rather arbitrary. The following description ignores it.

Bedrˇich Smetana was long dead by 1900, but his music was very much alive. Kopecký's "1892: The International Success of Smetana's The Bartered Bride" traces the history of this opera's reception and how it defined notions about Czech opera in general. David R. Beveridge's "A Rare Meeting of Minds in Kvapil's and Dvorˇák's Rusalka" (Jaroslav Kvapil was the librettist) is a highly elucidating case study originally written in 2009 for a program booklet of the National Theater in Prague. I was particularly impressed with the discussion of the quotation in Rusalka, hitherto unnoticed, from Antonín Dvořák's (p. 67). "Tchaikovsky, Charpentier and the Formation of Janáčěk's Mature Operatic Style" by the late John Tyrrell, based on his Janáčěk: Years of a Life(vol. 1, The Lonely Blackbird[London: Faber and Faber, 2006]), draws fascinating parallels between Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky's Pikovaıa dama[The Queen of Spades], Gustave Charpentier's Louise, and Janáčěk's operas. In "čapek's Feminism and Janáčěk's Femme fatale: Notes on Traditional Opera Aesthetics in Janáčěk's Opera The Makropulos Case," Křupková convincingly argues how Janáčěk turned the work's protagonist into a larger-than-life operatic heroine by downsizing the male characters from Karel Čapek's play and following operatic convention in the musical setting. But is it really true that Literaturoper(literary opera) gravitates towards the lieto fine(happy ending; p. 96)?

"Josef Bohuslav Foerster's Lyrical Opera Evaand the Tradition of the French Drama[ sic] lyrique" by Kopecký, the only article in the collection dedicated to this composer, explores French influences. Zdeněk Nouza (who died before publication) contributed "Josef Suk, Dvořák's Favorite Pupil," which constitutes a comprehensive survey of the composer and his music. "Josef Suk's Ripeningand the Birth of the Czechoslovak Republic" by Judith Fiehler provides a wealth of information on this work, arguably Suk's masterpiece, alongside Asrael, and includes facsimile pages from the score. Both Suk articles come with extensive quotations from source texts, especially from correspondence.

Two of Křupková's seven (!) articles on Novák...