Zdeněk Nejedlý and his Critical Conception of the Great Czech Composer
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| Year of publication | 2016 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
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| Description | Zdeněk Nejedlý (1878-1962) was the only Czech musical critic or musicologist of the period of development of modern Czech music (ca. 1860-1918) who created comprehensive and coherent critical/historical conception of this process. Drawing on a theoretical approach known as “metahistorical analysis”, created by Hayden White, I have uncovered a hidden mythological imaginative model in Nejedlý’s critical discourse. Based on a previous analysis of Nejedlý’s main critical texts from the period 1901- 1921, the paper presents results of a deconstruction of Nejedlý’s conception of the Great Czech Composer. This conception is based on concepts of common ideal character traits, common martyr-like destiny, and common “Smetanian” or “Czech” spirit, shared by all great Czech composers (B. Smetana, Z. Fibich, J. B. Foerster). On the other hand, “reactionary”, “obscurant” composers (A. Dvořák, J. Suk, V. Novák and L. Janáček) lack the ideal character traits as well as the “Czech” spirit. The narrative mechanism of Nejedlý’s critical texts uses systematic referring to the conception of ideal Christian saint and was probably influenced or transmitted by the essential nineteenth-century conceptions of genius (Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche) as well as by the representations of great personae of Czech history ( Jan Hus, Karel Havlíček) in the two most important texts of Czech philosophy of history (František Palacký’s History of the Czech Nation and T. G. Masaryk’s Czech Question). |
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