Contents of this Volume
- The ‘Stamitz’ caprices for solo flute ►
- ‘Rare in a generation of remarkable women’: Mildred Hill, Dvořák, Black street cries and the making of ‘Happy Birthday’ ►
- The United Kingdom career of Jarmila Novotná in the late 1920s and 1930s ►
- The Panocha Quartet: A catalogue of recordings ►
- The position of Martinů’s music in Great Britain ►
- The role of the motto in Dvořák’s Requiem ►
- Ferdinand Sabathil, Bohemian flautist and composer (1852–1937) ►
The ‘Stamitz’ caprices for solo flute
Tom Moore
Journal of Czech and Slovak Music 28 (2019), pp4–6
The authorship of a set of eight caprices, for some time attributed to Anton Stamitz, is challenged in this article, where the author presents compelling evidence to support his identification of four of the individual pieces as the work of the French composer Joseph Tacet.
‘Rare in a generation of remarkable women’: Mildred Hill, Dvořák, Black
street cries and the making of ‘Happy Birthday’
Michael Beckerman
Journal of Czech and Slovak Music 28 (2019), pp7–50
This wide-ranging article begins with a biographical profile of Mildred J. Hill (1859–1916), journalist, researcher, historian, publisher, energetic organiser and composer of piano pieces and children’s songs, most famously the music of ‘Happy Birthday to You’. The correspondence between Hill and Antonín Dvořák during the Czech composer’s stay in America is discussed, and her major contribution to the landmark ‘Woman’s Edition’ (an all-female issue of the Louisville Courier-Journal newspaper, 1895), i.e. her article ‘Unconscious composers’ in which she responds to comments made by Dvořák and includes a selection of Black street cries, is considered in the context of the Czech composer’s pronouncements on the raw material for the creation of a national school of American composition. The author also establishes thematic connections between some Black cries and the structure of ‘Happy Birthday’.
The United Kingdom career of Jarmila Novotná in the late 1920s and 1930s
Richard Beith
Journal of Czech and Slovak Music 28 (2019), pp51–60
The Prague-born soprano Jarmila Novotná (1907–1994) was a major star of the European opera house circuit from the late 1920s until 1939, when she reached the USA and settled in New York. Her career developed in Berlin, Milan, Paris, Prague, Salzburg and Vienna under conductors such as Klemperer, Korngold, Krauss, Krips, Walter and Toscanini. This article explores the singer’s visits to London, where she participated not in opera but in a number of concerts between 1928 and 1937.
The Panocha Quartet: A catalogue of recordings
Peter Herbert
Journal of Czech and Slovak Music 28 (2019), pp61–103
This is a comprehensive list of almost 160 individual works and of all known recordings by the Czech string quartet.
The position of Martinů’s music in Great Britain
Patrick Lambert
Journal of Czech and Slovak Music 28 (2019), pp104–132
This is the first of two articles on Bohuslav Martinů in a series entitled ‘Czech music through the eyes (and ears) of an Englishman’, in which the author offers a personal view on how the British perceived the music of a ‘far-off land’. Beginning with Vilém Tauský’s championing of the composer in the 1940s the survey reaches the late 1960s, including the BBC television film about the composer which was made in 1967.
The role of the motto in Dvořák’s Requiem
Wolfgang Marx
Journal of Czech and Slovak Music 28 (2019), pp133–154
One of the central features of Dvořák’s Requiem is its use of a motto that opens the work and is repeated in almost all movements. Later in the work several variations of it appear, particularly one identified by the author as the ‘counter motto’ and which develops an identity in its own right. This essay attempts an interpretation of the role of the motto entirely based on reception and proposes a new reading of it, according to which it represents a musical ‘other’, namely death.
Ferdinand Sabathil, Bohemian flautist and composer (1852–1937)
Tom Moore
Journal of Czech and Slovak Music 28 (2019), pp155–166
The flautist and prolific composer Ferdinand Sabathil is among the many German-speaking natives of the Kingdom of Bohemia and subjects of the Austro-Hungarian Empire whose heritage has tended to be forgotten in the later part of the twentieth century and early twenty-first century, with the disruptions to centuries-old German communities in eastern Europe caused by the effects of the Second World War. One connection with Smetana is the fact that Sabathil worked briefly in Gothenburg before returning to central Europe. His principal employments tended to be in provincial centres, and he is listed as a member of the Bayreuth orchestra in the late 1880s. The article incorporates a list of compositions.