Portrait of Miloslav Kabeláč

Miloslav Kabeláč (1 August 1908 – 17 September 1979) was a prominent Czech composer and conductor. Miloslav Kabeláč belongs to the foremost Czech symphonists, whose work is sometimes compared with Antonín Dvořák's and Bohuslav Martinů's. In the communist period Kabeláč's work found itself on the periphery of official attention and was performed only sporadically and in a limited choice of compositions.

Life

Kabeláč was born in Prague. In 1928–31 he studied at the Prague Conservatory as a pupil of Karel Boleslav Jirák, simultaneously (in 1930–31) he was a pupil of Alois Hába. In 1932–54 Kabeláč was employed by Prague Radio. From 1957 to 1968 he worked as a teacher at the Prague Conservatory. During his life Kabeláč was active in Umělecká beseda, in the Federation of Czechoslovak Composers and other organisations.

In the 1960s he tried to revive contacts with Western modern music and composers, but after the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia he was silenced. His works were performed only abroad from then on.

Works

Miloslav Kabeláč belongs to the most distinguished Czech composers of the 20th century. He soon created a distinctive style for which the auspicious melody and harmony, the ingenious polyphony and the consistent architecture of both small and large compositions are typical. His utmost expression was his conscious work with the intervals in which he emerged from non-European musical cultures. Kabeláč used here, for example, artificially numbered scale - modеs whose internal course has a larger range than an octave. He also denounced the term artificial tonal music, especially for the musical theoretical justification of his economical melody. In the interval structure, he also explored the possibilities of so-called interval augmentation and diminution, inversion and other practices brought to the music by the so-called 2nd Viennese school. The first mature compositions of this style include the anti-cantata Do not retreat! (1939), performed for the first time after the end of the Second World War (28 October 1945).

At the beginning and in the years of war, Kabeláč focused on chamber opuses (Wind Sextet, Sonata for cello and piano, Two pieces for violin and piano) and Symphonic (1st and 2nd symphonies). Over time, work with large occupation (8th symphony, Mysterium of Time, Reflections), which are his most significant works - along with songs for drums that have already come on European stages at the time (Eight Inventions for percussions). In the 1960s, which gave him wide recognition in the form of the State Prize and Foreign Orders, he received a number of stimuli from foreign avant-garde, which he had organically incorporated into his compositional morphology. He also excelled in pedagogical activities and interest in non-European cultures. He was one of the first promoters of electro-acoustic music in Czechoslovakia.

Numerous choreographers have also taken up his work "Eight Inventions for Percussion Instruments. ", Alvin Ailey with the American Dance Theater are the most prominent among them, his choreography titled Streams, was performed in Prague too in 1979.^[1]

References

• Jiří Vysloužil: Hudební slovník pro každého II. Vizovice: Lípa, 2001. ISBN 80-86093-23-9

External links

• Extensive biography