Jan Novák
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Jan Novák (1921-1984) was a popular Czech composer of classical music.
Jan Novák was born in a small town in Moravia, the birthplace of the Vranický brothers, Pavel and Antonín. Novák's parents earned their living partly in the monastery, where they also had their family home. Novák received a thorough education in the humanities at the grammar schools in Velehrad and in Brno, where he later learned Latin.
Novák showed excellence in music from an early age, especially on the violin, piano and organ. This was the time of some of his earliest compositions. He later travelled to Brno, where he studied composition with Vilem Petrzelka, and piano with Frantisek Schaeffer. His studies were interrupted by two and half years of forced labour in Germany during World War II.
In 1946 he graduated with a string quartet and the Dance Suite for orchestra. He then went on to the Prague Academy of Music Arts where he studied composition with Pavel Borkovec, before returning to Brno for a further period of study with Petrzelka. He completed his studies with a scholarship to the USA awarded by the Jezek Foundation. He spent the summer of 1947 at the Berkshire Music Center in Tanglewood, Mass., where he worked with Aaron Copland. At concerts presented by the students, he performed his Little Preludes and Fugues on a Theme of Janacek and the song cycle Carmina Sulamitis. For five months he studied with Bohuslav Martinů in New York, from where he returned on 25th February 1948, the day of the Communist takeover in Czechoslovakia. He then settled down in Brno where he lived as a freelance composer. "I did what I could to make both ends meet", he later admitted in a brief autobiography. He composed incidental music, music for short and puppet films and radio plays. He sometimes played in radio programme with his wife in compositions for two pianos, many of which were his own works. Such a liberal minded composer, with his uncompromising artistic and public attitudes, came into continuous controversy with official authorities and with the dogmatism of the leading representatives of the composers union. It is not surprising that he suffered discrimination. This was one of the reasons which led him to leave the country after the 1968 invasion. He lived in exile in Denmark, Italy (1970-1977) and finally in West Germany.
Jan Novák's early works showed his talent and a disciplined technical mastery of composition which ranked him among most promising members of the young post-war generation. Of the great number of compositions from this early period, only Carmina Sulamitis, a song cycle, was later approved by the composer himself and recognized by him as worthy of attention.
This starts the long series of Novák's Latin songs leading up to the extensive cantata Dido, the medieval miracle play opera Dulcitius and the ballet with lyrics, Aesopia. Jan Novák's meeting with Bohuslav Martinů had "substantive and immense significance" for the young composer. Martinů taught him the art of refinement of motifs; he discovered for him the wealth of possibilities in rhythm introduced him to his own favorite composers (Morley, Corelli and Haydn) and gave him an insight into his own creative process. For twelve long years until Martinů's death, the two composers corresponded and Martinů communicated a wealth of advice to Novák.
The first period of Novák's work marked by "Care pater, bone Martinů" ended in the late 1950s. During this period he developed the main characteristics of his work: the clear structure of form, mastery of instrumentation, complexity and free tonality. The early sings of his particular vocal style showed an unsentimental melodic line, using a balanced cantilena, parlando and ornamentation. Symbolically this period is framed by the Variations on a Theme by Bohuslav Martinů, which Novák wrote for piano in 1949 and orchestrated ten years later in the year of Martinů's death. Seven variations on the final motif of Martinů's Field Mass and the final double fugue demonstrate Novák's technical maturity. He was always open to all new trends, which he accepted or rejected according to his own feelings and without any respect for ideologies or current fashion. In this way he became acquainted with the principles of serialism and New Music at the turn of the 1960s. He adopted them only as he saw them appropriate to his purpose. The 12-tone system was used wisely and with wit in several compositions - for the first time in the middle movement of the Capriccio for cello and orchestra, in the lyrical Dulces cantilenae and with great mastery in the composition Passer Catulli for bass and nonet. However, he never became an apostle of serialism. In this period of his life he discovered attractive source of musical inspiration in his old love of Latin. This language was for him the source of musical poetry, which was reflected in a great number of vocal compositions in which the classical rhythm of Latin poetry was revived. Ancient, medieval and modern Latin texts (many of which he wrote himself) also influenced the formal scheme of the music as well as shaping its melody. Novák found his very personal musical language through this universal written language. His music never lacked creative invention, omnipresent humour and wit, so rare in an age of tragedies and dramatic changes.
