Alois Hába : A Poet of Liberated Music
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| Year of publication | 2020 |
| Type | Chapter of a book |
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| Description | The article is a critical interpretation of selected musical ideas of the Czech composer Alois Hába. Alois Hába (21 June 1893, Vizovice–18 November 1973, Prague) entered Czech musical culture at a time when the “lived inheritance of folklore” had come to be recognized as something of genuine potential value for high culture. Some passages in Hába’s music have an undeniable similarity with Eastern Moravian melodic types, but Hába does not falsify folklore or demean himself by trying for the required “folky” effect, that is, the admixture of the “folk” remains something more essential than contrived. Although regional roots play an important role in Hába’s music, the composer never imitates or parodies folk music. As one of the most radical representatives of the Central European aesthetic avant-garde between the wars, Hába expressed his individual style by drawing on the well-springs in the sense of his own lived experience of folklore but then reformulating this inspiration at the most universal levels – microtonality, athematism, and modality. |
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