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Sovietizing Czechoslovak Music:
The “Hatchet-Man” Miroslav Barvík and his Speech The Composers Go with the
People
THOMAS D. SVATOS
Miroslav Barvík (1919-1998) was the most powerful
musician in
This study examines Barvík as a young, idealistic, and zealous apparatchik—the strongman of musical politics during the formative phase of the communist regime. I focus on the moment that virtually consecrated his authority over Czechoslovak musical life: his speech to the Union of Czechoslovak Composers (henceforth UCC) for the UCC’s first plenary conference in April 1950. Entitled The Composers Go with the People according to the working motto of the conference, Barvík’s speech came at a time Cold War tactics abroad and repressive measures at home were escalating to new extremes.[3] Marking the complete Sovietization of Czech musical culture, the document he produced stands as a landmark in Czech music history, and overall, one of the most fanatically driven musical manifestos ever written.
Had it not been for his role as
chief executioner of communist musical policy, Barvík would not merit a study
of this size. He is unknown internationally, and even in today’s Czech Republic,
he is an obscure figure for the reasons I discuss. But the very phenomenon of
Barvík is just as important to note, as the role he played as a young
apparatchik sheds light on the state of Czech music at this time. The
pronouncements of Stalin’s cultural commissar Andrei Zhdanov to the various
Soviet artistic unions after World War II—including his January 1948 “inquiry”
into Soviet music—called for a complete rejection of “anti-people modernism.”[4] On the Czechoslovak music scene, enforcing
Miroslav Barvík was born in the small south-east
Moravian town of
After compositional studies with Vítězslav Novák in
Figure 1. Miroslav Barvík, 14 November 1951.
The Syndicate and the Coup
In the early days of the coup, Barvík was at the ground floor of the Party’s efforts to transform all existing artistic organizations into single, centralized unions, which—on matters of Party policy—were to function as “levers of transmission”[10] to the masses. The SCC, with its newly installed personnel, led this process in musical life, before it dissolved into the UCC. Barvík’s behind-the-scenes work with the Central Action Committee soon made him feared by musicians throughout the country.[11] But the positions through which he introduced policy and attempted to persuade the musical community took form as Editor-in-Chief of the official music journal Hudební rozhledy [Musical Perspectives] and as Secretary-General of the UCC.
Briefly examining the SCC and the coup will help us understand the forces that allowed Barvík to emerge with so much administrative and ideological control. From its inception in February 1946, the SCC was primarily a promotional organization that provided support to composers, managed international relations, and organized events, most notably the Prague Spring International Music Festival, an annual event that began in May 1946. As part of the 1947 festival, the SCC organized the First International Congress of Composers and Music Critics, which ran parallel with the concerts.[12] In light of its success in reestablishing links between musicians after the war and promoting international debate, the SCC organized a second congress for the following year, which was to address the question, “Where is music heading?” What had prompted this theme was the perceived crisis in music: that the production and performance of serious art music had become too esoteric and was rapidly losing ground to popular, “uncultured” forms.[13]
Intervening between the two congresses were the dramatic political events of late February 1948, when twelve non-communist ministers resigned in protest over what they saw as the Communist Interior Minister’s imperious actions.[14] Rather than face civil war brought on by the “People’s Militias,” or the communist paramilitary, the president Edvard Beneš sanctioned the appointment of communists to the vacated ministries. On 10 March 1948, the new government was endorsed by the recently purged National Front, or the parliamentary coalition of five political parties that had agreed to a common program of collectivization after the war but was comprised now of only the communists and a number of satellite parties.[15] It was also on 10 March 1948 that the only remaining non-communist minister, Jan Masaryk, died under mysterious circumstances.[16]
On 30 May 1948, just after the SCC’s Second International Congress adjourned, the first mock parliamentary elections were held, where the voters, closely monitored by Party officials, were given the chance to approve the purified National Front, or cast blank “white ballots,” a tactic resulting in an 89% mandate for the assembly. On 7 June 1948, President Beneš resigned and the National Front approved the prime minister and Communist Party leader Klement Gottwald as his successor. Beneš’s abdication left all organs of power in the hands of the communists, which allowed them to “intensify the class struggle.” The full force of this campaign was launched in Fall 1948 with the preparation of the first labor camps and show trials, inducing fear over the entire population.
It was in this stream of events that the SCC’s
Second International Congress was held, which now called for an outcome that
would conform to Soviet socialist realism, the new state’s official aesthetic.
The congress’s resulting document was the “Proclamation and Resolution of the
Second International Congress of Composers and Music Critics,” otherwise known
as the “Prague Manifesto.”[17] The Proclamation and Resolution ascribes the crisis in music to
capitalist society and calls on composers to abandon “subjectivity” in favor of
genres communicating concrete ideas and styles more easily understandable to
the masses.[18] Although the document is clearly consistent with
In October 1948, the organ was established that would provide guidance to composers about the aims of the new music. This was Hudební rozhledy,[20] where Barvík served as Editor-in-Chief until 1953. Barvík’s mission statement for the new journal makes clear that musical life would be synchronized with the demands of Soviet policy and no other views would be tolerated.[21] On the discontinuation of all other music periodicals, Barvík writes euphemistically that “there is no more time” for other journals such as Tempo and Rytmus but “we do not mean in any way to belittle their merits in the promotion of our music.”[22] He also states that, “in this journal we want for us, composers and musicologists, to learn how to think anew, feel anew, to live anew. We want to help in the search for the new forms of the new life and art. On these pages, we want to help bring into the world the new music that will be a reflection of life in socialist society.”[23]
In his mission statement, Barvík also heralds the Gleichschaltung of all professional music organizations, which would bring him to the top of the musical hierarchy. Reflecting his urgency and impatience, he writes, “it only remains for us to finish the process of consolidating societies that unnecessarily squander our efforts and today no longer have ‘raison d’ętre’, for in most cases they emerged during the [national] revivalist times or mature capitalism and whose creative artists and patrons came together in conjunction with these concerns.”[24]
The final consolidation of musical life was realized in May 1949 with the incorporation of the SCC and several other music associations into the UCC.[25] Contributing to his growing megalomania, Barvík acquired the authoritarian, Soviet-style title of “Secretary-General,” marking his complete administrative control over the national music scene.[26]
The first plenary conference of the UCC was held in April 1950 under the banner The Composers Go with the People, where Barvík gave the principle address.[27] Ostensibly, the event’s rationale was to rally support among composers to make statements in the name of the socialist cause. The ulterior motive, however, was to censure those musicians perceived out of line with Party policy. Miloš Jůzl, in his study “Music in the Totalitarian Regime,” describes the ramifications of speeches read by executive functionaries at union meetings:
Every so often introductory speeches at annual meetings of the Union of Czechoslovak Composers might contain critical objections against particular composers, music historians, or musicologists, who would then experience many difficulties. These reports were then consulted with the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, and this also applied to all the other artists’ unions. Communist union officials were then required ‘to rectify the deficiencies that were found’; so it was left to the moral and professional qualities of union officials as to how strongly these directives would be applied within a particular union.[28]
I shall now turn to the actual content of Barvík’s speech, which will show exactly which musicians were favored or disenfranchised. In addition, we shall learn the particular narrative through which Barvík vindicates the development and “victory” of socialist music and how he castigates those forces that had stood in its way. But most of all, we should remember that Barvík read his speech during the most oppressive reign of terror, when virtually any citizen could be suddenly charged with treason against the working class, incarcerated, sentenced to years of “class-conscience reeducation” (i.e. hard labor), and in some cases death. Thus, although we might read his speech today with a sense of amusement over its outlandish formulations, the auditors could not help but be unsettled by the fact that their union executive would then report his opinions, perhaps putting to an end their livelihood and careers.[29]
Figure 2. Leading
Czechoslovak and Soviet participants at the UCC’s first plenary session (from
the right): chair of the plenary session
The Artist’s Role in the Cold War Struggle
Barvík’s speech is divided into three relatively equal-sized portions throughout which he cycles a number of modalities to make his points clear. Emerging at the opening is an East vs. West dichotomy, where the socialist utopia being cultivated at home under the patronage of the Soviet Union is brought into dramatic comparison with the sick and declining West led by America. To support this idea, Barvík presents a statistical enumeration of the successes of the national economy during the period 1948-49, or the period after the February 1948 coup, otherwise known as the “Victorious February.” Concerning the industrial sector, he boasts “a 3% increase in mining, a 9% increase in metallurgy, a 10% increase in energetics, and a 12% increase in the metalworking industry.” [30] Regarding the successes of the agricultural sector, he claims that “our children drank 22% more milk, and we ate 34% more eggs and 93% more pork.”[31] And on distribution to the agricultural collectives, he praises the delivery of “5,500 tractors, 5,900 tractor ploughs, and 2,000 reaper-binders.”[32] To summarize the situation in relation to the enemies in the West, he states that “these numbers provide clear testimony about the unstoppable expansion of our economy and testimony to the fact that our working man, emanating values for everyone, knows how to run the economy much better than the capitalist, who thinks only about profit, his wallet, and how to easily enjoy and extort from the work of others.”[33]
The outsider expecting that an address to a
composer’s union will be a more purely musical discussion might be surprised by
the fact that rhetoric of this kind regarding economics dominates the entire
first portion of his speech. But from Barvík’s socialist point of view,
cultural production is to be an outgrowth of the proletariat, whose most basic
needs must first be secured. Once the needs of the proletariat are met and the
oppressive forces of capitalism overcome, artists and intellectuals will be
free to create and help sustain a truly democratic society. This, in fact, is
the nature of “progress,” where the “working majority” is in complete control.
Barvík brings this into contradistinction with the “reactionary” forces of the
Our
undeniable economic superiority is further along such that, in comparison with
the capitalist
From this passage, it might seem that all was won
with the Victorious February. But Barvík exhorts composers to remain vigilant,
as the reactionary forces of the
Barvík’s reeducation of musicians continues with a closer examination of contemporary Western and Soviet cultural production.[36] The Western bourgeois countries have demonstrated nothing other than the kind of degeneration and decline that is indicative of their unjust societies.[37] He claims that everything truly great in Western art grew from a battle against capitalism and for a better social order. Such artistic works stand on the side of progress, but for the most part, nothing really great will be found in the reactionary camp aside from an “extraordinarily large heap of decadent art and pornographic literature.”[38] To elucidate the situation in France, Barvík relies on a contribution to the communist magazine Var by Jaroslav Bouček, who characterizes French production as a “bottomless swamp” replete with “deranged and sadistic people, prostitutes, thieves, murderers as well as lunatics who torment, rape, rob, and murder each other, whether in the backdrop of a cave, palace, brothel, or gothic castle.”[39]
For his scolding of the U.S., Barvík
relies on Vladimír Pozner’s anti-American tract Divided States,[40] where culture is seen as a purely monetary enterprise with complete
disregard for art’s nurturing potential.[41] For his discussion of the American music scene in particular, Barvík
quotes a number of passages that had “slipped out” from the pen of the musical
organizer and composers’ rights lawyer Jan Löwenbach, who Barvík insists
“cannot be suspected of prejudice against America.”[42] Indeed, Löwenbach, like his friend and one-time artistic collaborator
Bohuslav Martinů, chose to reside in
Barvík then extols Soviet cultural production,
which has become the sustenance of the new people, and he enumerates several
Soviet novels and films through which Czechs and Slovaks can now educate
themselves.[46] These works, according to Barvík, reflect the attributes of the “camp
of peace,” which include “a strength of ideas, a high morale, as well as a
fostering of fairness, honesty, and dignity.”[47] Indeed, the
Music during the “Bourgeois Republic”
The second portion of Barvík’s speech reevaluates
the music of the
One of the most important criteria for Barvík’s
appraisal of musical works is “ideovost,” a notion that has its origins in the
first serious studies of Bedřich
Smetana and which can be translated here simply as “programaticism.” Smetana’s
early defenders, who were led by Hostinský, found Smetana’s oeuvre replete with
themes that were designed to raise national conscience, and for this reason
considered his output the programmatic foundation of modern Czech music. With
the fulfillment of the nation-building process through “Czechoslovak”
sovereignty in 1918, the call for national ideovost began to gradually merge
with the demand for socialist ideovost, a process led by Nejedlý throughout the
As a result of the “misguided structures” of
bourgeois society, the
A complete agreement is all the more rare when the author’s personality expresses itself more clearly. The more (the artist) eliminates everything that comes from without, or everything that is not him and what is not “inside of him,” the more he disappoints the expectations of the wider audience, because people are restrained by everything that is unusual to them.[57]
The implication of this remark is that—by choosing formalism over progress—Stravinsky has become an agent of the ruling class, whose principle objective is to keep the proletariat disenfranchised politically:
This is why we understand formalism today as an instrument in the hands of the bourgeoisie against the programmatic progress of ideas.[58]
We may now turn to Barvík’s appraisal of specific composers and see how two of the most important living personalities of Czech musical culture—Bohuslav Martinů and Alois Hába—became the primary targets of his revisionist criticism.
Among the continuators of national ideovost, Barvík first honors Josef Bohuslav Foerster, who had returned to his homeland patriotically after twenty-five years abroad, as well as the “great school” of Vítězslav Novák.[59] It was Novák, in fact, who had instigated the establishment of the Society for Modern Music in 1921, which then transformed into the Czechoslovak chapter of the ISCM.[60] But according to Barvík, Novák gradually distanced himself from the Czechoslovak ISCM chapter because he “recognized the aberrant nature of its paths which left the field free for composer-experimenters.”[61] And among the most prominent experimenters of the new society, Barvík cites Ernst Křenek,[62] as well as the pioneer of microtonal music, Alois Hába.
Barvík then turns his attention to the
destructive influences of cosmopolitan
The first to be
allured by
It was with this
musical chaos that Martinů presented himself on American soil, it was through these compositions that
Koussevitsky discovered him, it was through these compositions that he gained
his first great success in
Zdeněk Nejedlý, on the other hand, a “truly progressive spirit,” saw the new state’s future in Moscow rather than Paris and established The Society for the New Russia.[66] And as early as 1923, Nejedlý had shown the futility of experimentation: on the subject of melody, for example, Nejedlý wrote that new attempts at melodic conception “will only be found once we begin living the new life that our era is giving birth to [...] for this reason, playing games with quarter-tones is not a response to a world that is new, but rather to the one that is old and dying away.”[67]
By citing Nejedlý’s criticism of microtonal
music, Barvík sets the stage for his revision of Alois Hába and the formalist
theorists of the
Martinů emerges once again in the discussion of musical production during the 1930s. But this time, after a few remarks about the misguided aspirations of the Slovaks, Barvík contrasts Martinů with a number of more socially progressive composers:
The 1930s brought great clarity to the situation in our music, when the new Slovak generation, seduced by Prague, begins allegedly “to catch up with the world” and “opens up a window to Europe” (although it has treasures of folk creativity at home that have not yet been appraised) and when the battle against the fascist menace nevertheless unites many artists with the camp of progress. And thus we see that, while Boh. Martinů writes his “Plays of Mary” and leads listeners’ attention away to the middle ages, Ostrčil composes “Johnny’s Kindom,” Vomáčka “The Guards of the Lighthouse,” and even someone like the one-time hardened formalist and typical cosmopolitan Ervín Schulhoff reverses the direction of his work to a new, clear goal and attempts to set the “Communist Manifesto,” [and we see that] Vítek Nejedlý writes scenic music for revolutionary worker plays and Stanislav holds discussions in the Soviet Union about his “Granada.”[74] The battle against the occupiers intensified the positions of the two camps and brought more artists into the camp of progress, even though the effects of pseudo-art and formalism became detrimentally attached to many fighters in their struggle against the fascists.[75]
Towards the end of his revisionist discussion, Barvík plays musical excerpts to the assembly in order to demonstrate reactionary and progressive attributes of more recent works.[76] Barvík first nods to tradition by playing an unnamed polka by Smetana, which he follows with Karel Reiner’s Piano Sonata No. 2[77] from 1942:
AUDIO EXAMPLE 1
Karel Reiner: Piano Sonata No. 2, Mov. I, Opening
Performed by Cezary Kwapisz
(Recording
courtesy of Anke Zimmermann)
If media player does not appear above, click here.
Barvík states, “Is this really progress? Is this cacophony—in comparison with Smetana’s joy and optimism—the kind of progress with which we can possibly proclaim the music of the new age? And isn’t ‘Polka,’ written by Václav Dobiáš in 1950, a genuinely progressive composition?”[78]
It is unclear which Dobiáš composition Barvík chose to play at this moment, but two of Dobiáš’s works from this time are possible. If it was one of the Three Poetic Polkas for solo piano, the work displayed a “return to Smetana” as a sign of progress.[79] But more likely than not, Barvík’s selection was the cantata for mixed chorus and orchestra Build Up Your Country to Reinforce Peace! A Czechoslovak Polka,[80] which demonstrated stylistic allegiance to Smetana, the pathos of the Soviet mass song style, and the communication of both nationalist and socialist ideals through the text:
AUDIO EXAMPLE 2
Vaclav Dobiáš: Build Up Your Country to Reinforce Peace!
A Czechoslovak Polka
Performed by Karel Ancerl and the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra
(Supraphon, 1951)
Text: We, Czech and Slovak people, promise from the bottom of our hearts to answer loyally the call of duty given to all of us by our country.
If media player does not appear above, click here.
Barvík’s decision to play this work at this moment
helped crown Dobiáš as the paradigmatic Czech communist composer of the time.
Other works by Dobiáš that are consistent with Barvík’s prescription for the
new music include the cantatas
Figure 3. Václav Dobiáš, 18 August 1950.
Music of the Socialist Future
In the third portion of his speech, Barvík provides specific instructions on the subjects and styles Czech composers should embrace.[82] His discussion is organized by genre. He continues with his revisionist commentaries about formalist works of the past, comparing them with the progressive efforts of the past, present, and socialist future. It is his final effort to crystallize a canon of Czech communist works and the compositional philosophy of the new socialist state.
Barvík begins with the song production of the
He then turns to choral music, which he considers
one of the most progressive genres of the
Regarding opera, he reminds the assembly about
the pronouncements of
Barvík then grills the
Cantata production was remarkably strong during the bourgeois years, but Barvík notes that creative strength was somehow insufficient to show the greatness of the nation’s struggle and that composers were unable to continue the venerable tradition that began with Smetana’s warm and rejoiceful Czech Song.[103] Indeed, the spirit of the cantata during the 1920s began to meander, as elements of subjectivism, mysticism, and symbolism began to permeate works that lost touch with the masses.[104] It was at this time, for example, “during the proletariat’s fierce struggle with the bourgeois minority,” that Ladislav Vycpálek composed About the Last Matters of Man but when the poet S.K. Neumann “called the people into battle which ended with the definitive liberation of man and the foundations for the new life.”[105] And Barvík reminds the audience about the great example of Stanislav’s Song about Granada, a “hymn from 1936” about the battle of the Spanish people which “even aroused discussions in the Soviet Union” but was rejected by the bourgeois critical establishment in Czechoslovakia as an “impetuous street brawl that has no place on the concert podium.”[106]
His verdict on symphonic production during the bourgeois years is negative on the whole, as the orchestra had become “a free field for experimenters whose works lacked programmatic ideas.”[107] As a result, the symphonic composer became a specialist in racket and novel sound combinations to the detriment of pure idiomatic sonority. But the situation was not so one-sided. Barvík writes, “let us just recall some of the masterworks by Ostrčil, Schulhoff’s battle with the legacy of formalism in his Symphony of Freedom,[108] works by Vítek Nejedlý particularly from his residence in the U.S.S.R., Vítka Kaprálová,[109] The Red Army Symphony by Josef Stanislav, and the many other compositions in which authors strove for new content that was expressed by realistic music that relied on the development of melody.” Regarding the new symphonic works, Barvík asserts that they should continue in the great tradition of Smetana’s Má vlast and strive to express “the joy in building the new life, the greatness of our national heroes, the heroes of battle, labor, and so forth.”[110]
Then Barvík comments on a number of different areas: he criticizes chamber music as another arena of the formalist experimenter,[111] folk song for having become relegated to the museum or commercial exploitation due to its neglect by composers,[112] and the fields of theory, education, and criticism for becoming disconnected from practice and insufficiently guiding musical debate.[113] Sustaining the greatest burden of disapproval here is the theorist-composer Karel Janeček.[114] As an example of the formalist chamber music, Barvík plays Janeček’s Tema con variazioni for solo piano,[115] a work demonstrating “melodic deficiency,” “burdensome impotence,” and “harmonic confusion.”[116] And Janeček could not even sidestep his penchant for formalism in his instructional works for young musicians. To illustrate his point, Barvík plays a Janeček waltz for solo piano from 1926, which “had been even carefully edited by a noted expert.”[117] Barvík writes that the purported goal of such works was to help accustom students to the dissonant sounds of modern music over time, but in the end, the formalist pedagogues only disgusted their protégés and dissuaded them from further study.[118]
Then Barvík turns to the impact of theory on higher education, where esoteric systems and speculative concepts were forced on students to the detriment of genuine feeling and inspiration.[119] This holds true for the instruction of harmony, which became prone to the calculated mixing and matching of abstract sonorities. For this Janeček is partially to blame, but also the theorist-composer Zdeněk Blažek. Condescendingly, Barvík writes that Blažek’s study on “two-way alteration” is an example of an artist who creates systems for systems’ sake which “do not hide their support of formalistic tendencies and which are geared [purely] towards technical and sonic issues.”[120] And Barvík notes that Blažek had even defended the necessity of his work on the premise that the Germans had come much further in this area and that he had thus helped facilitate the development of Czechoslovak music.[121]
Barvík’s conclusion showcases the leading thinkers who had brought Czechoslovak musical culture to the present day.[122] He looks to the “other side” of the formalist camp to Otakar Hostinský, whose ideas came to a climax with the work of Zdeněk Nejedlý.[123] But Nejedlý’s efforts as the valiant propagator of Smetana, Jirásek, and other great symbols of Czech culture have yet to be appreciated in full, as he still tends to be viewed through the distorted eyes of the bourgeois class.[124] It was Nejedlý, in fact, who had “always stood fearlessly at the most exposed positions of the progressive cultural front” and who had “converted his university lecture hall into an assembly for the working masses.”[125] Indeed, Nejedlý does not understand musicology as the explanation of abstract theories, but has shown instead the levers of progress through his studies on the Hussites, Smetana, and Soviet music among others.[126] In homage to the man upon his seventieth birthday, President Klement Gottwald even wrote that Nejedlý had served as a guardian of the nation’s past, because he realized that “the proletariat and the working people are the nation’s new leading force and the ones who breed and disseminate the best the nation has ever created.”[127]
Figure 4. Zdeněk Nejedlý at the podium one year later at the UCC’s second plenary conference in 1951.
The following pages are replete with phrases demonstrating the new Czechoslovak-Soviet solidarity. Barvík insists that “we fully agree with Khrennikov”[128] regarding the contributions of Slavic nations to European civilization and “with Stalin we believe” in the blossoming of national cultures in the new socialist epoch.[129] It was Stalin, in fact, who once said that the artist is to be “an engineer of the human spirit,” an idea that flies flat in the face of the Kantian tradition of German idealism that had attempted to eradicate all political engagement from the arts through its objectivity.[130] The new state fully embraces Stalin’s motto and realizes that it is the government’s responsibility to support artists in their endeavor to foster the socialist spirit.[131] It is for this reason that the union shall offer grants for workshops, where musicians will be able to discuss, criticize, and help one another “reveal the path.”[132] In addition, monetary awards will be given to ensure composers’ financial security.[133] He exclaims, “what other government, apart from ours, a people’s democratic government, could allow for such events, could provide such convincing evidence for the generous support of artistic activity? Did the bourgeoisie care for art and artists in this way?”[134] It then comes somewhat by surprise that Barvík announces the financial support that will be given to two casualties of his address who have apparently been given a second chance: the union will pay Karl Reiner eight months’ salary so he is completely free to compose an opera, and a portion of Alois Hába’s salary at the conservatory will be subsidized so he may realize what he has committed to by manifest, i.e., the production of new songs, choruses, cantatas, etc.[135]
Barvík
returns to Stalin’s motto through the words of
This holds true for all of the arts. It was before the war that Vladimír Helfert had called for something similar in music—“a new greatness, a new pathos, a new monumentality, a new heroic idea.”[140] And this is exactly what Zdeněk Nejedlý had pointed out during his arduous battle against the reactionary forces of the bourgeoisie, whose fraudulence and treachery he fully revealed.[141]
The creative artist now stands in front of these ideals. No longer does he need to stand silent in modest amazement in the face of the flagrant excesses of chic bourgeois art, nor bow to the opinions of decadent aestheticians.[142] Instead, artists have now been granted the freedom to fulfill the honorable task of devoting their entire creative efforts to the construction of the new society.[143] Barvík parts with the assembly with the motto of President Comrade Klement Gottwald, “FROM WORDS TO DEEDS!” and concludes:
We are led by our love
for our native country and the working people, we are led by the example of the
The Hatchet-Man Confesses
Miroslav Barvík’s speech from April 1950 represents the official rhetoric on music during the “Sharp Course,” the frenzied formative period of the Czechoslovak communist state.[145] Lasting from Fall 1948 until Fall 1951, the Sharp Course was dominated by the Party’s effort to restructure all areas of cultural life according to Soviet models and ideas. The UCC was one of several newly consolidated institutions that served as the gears for enforcing change. As a result of official policy, the arts were transformed into propaganda for the regime, a manipulator of public opinion, and a disseminator of ideologically defined culture. The contemptuous and disrespectful attitude of young apparatchiks such as Barvík towards older and eminent figures was justified by Stalin’s thesis regarding the “intensification of the class struggle,” which placed into the firing line any individual who could be suspected or “proved” of disloyalty to Party ideas.
In March 1951, the UCC held its second plenary
conference, this time entitled “Our Music Fights for Peace,” where Barvík once
again gave the most extensive address.[146] Maintaining the Sharp Course and the Korean War now serving as the
backdrop, Barvík exhorts composers to contribute to peace in the world by
highlighting the utopian conditions at home. Barvík’s thesis holds that once
the beauty of the nation is illuminated in full next to the “capitalist
agitators” across the
The period from Fall 1951 to Fall 1952
represented a thaw in cultural politics. Heralding the thaw and sending shock
waves throughout the political establishment was the imprisonment in November
1951 of Rudolf Slánský, the Secretary-General of the Communist Party. As
Secretary-General, Slánský was the leader of the Party’s Central Committee and
its powerful Apparatus. It was the Party Apparatus, in fact, that had
orchestrated support throughout society—or the illusion of public support—for
the communist seizure of power. But since that time, the Apparatus had come
under the suspicion of Gottwald and the government for having become a kind of
competing, if not quasi-independent ministry. Although the secret orders for Slánský’s imprisonment had come directly from Stalin, the publicized
accusations included attempting to create a “second center of power,” fostering
ties with “breakaway” Yugoslavia,
and Zionism. The fact that Slánský was Jewish fell into the lap of his
prosecutors, as American support of
Toning down the vulgar radicalism of the Party Apparatus, the unions, and other organizations was part of the reasoning behind the Slánský affair. Sending a clear message to emboldened functionaries that power was being retracted to an elite circle around Gottwald was another motivation. Becoming the code-word of the day for reforming policy and purging the ranks was “slánština,” or “Slánskýism,” which became suddenly bandied about by functionaries as an excuse for accesses in power. The disarray in cultural life can be seen by the fact that many of the artistic union meetings scheduled for 1952, including the one of the UCC, were canceled. Slánský’s imprisonment, which culminated in his trial and execution one year later, initiated a period when the unions were no longer certain whether they were accountable to the Party Apparatus or the ministries, particularly the Ministry of Information, led by the government’s most powerful ideologue Václav Kopecký. [149]
Figure 5. Miroslav Barvík delivering the concluding speech at the UCC’s second plenary session in 1951. Seated in the panel are Jan Kapr, Dalibor Vačkář, and Jan Seidl.
Figure 6: The House of Artists, today’s Rudolfinum, adorned with the motto of the UCC’s second plenary conference “Our Music Fights for Peace”
The Slánský affair made its
definitive impact on musical life in February 1953, when the UCC’s Central
Committee held two critical meetings, the first of which was to honor Zdeněk Nejedlý upon the Education Minister’s seventy-fifth birthday and
rally support for the statewide conference that was to be held in June later
that year.[150] The real agenda of the meetings, however, was to initiate change in
personnel and policy. For this reason, the union put forth as its motto
“Criticism and Self-Criticism as a Powerful Weapon in the
Three weeks later, on 27-28 February, the UCC’s Central Committee held the follow-up meeting that was to serve as the stage for Barvík’s self-criticism.[155] With the transcript to Dobiáš’s speech disseminated to union functionaries, Barvík gave his rambling, half-hearted confession. In numerous places and without further explanation, Barvík states that he agrees with Dobiáš’s speech, which he admits had been primarily about him.[156] In a string of turgid formulations, he explains how “Slánskýism” had infected the UCC’s working methods.[157] After explaining how he “fell into” the position of Secretary-General, from which he became accountable for so many facets of musical life, he describes how he had gradually assumed a feeling of “ineradicability, indispensability, inviolability, and infallibility.”[158] Barvík clearly knew he was stepping down when he suggests that “it is necessary to insure future leadership that divides up the work and stays in touch with the people.”[159] And after reminiscing about his role in the construction of post-Februarian musical culture, he admits what probably captured feelings about him the most:
I could talk about many things concretely. But if I were to summarize matters, I would say that, already in 1948, and perhaps even before that time, I earned a certain reputation—the reputation of the “hatchet-man.”[160]
By the end of 1953, the position of UCC Secretary-General was abolished, strengthening the position of the chairman and board,[161] while the position of Editor-and-Chief at Hudební rozhledy went to Jaroslav Jiránek. Barvík went on to become the Chair of the Music Division at the Ministry of Culture, remaining a reliable but less empowered ideologue in the Zhdanovite cultural front.[162] The overall decentralization that went into gear at this time insured that no single functionary would ever have so much control over musical life.[163] Contributing to the decline in the Zhdanovites’ stranglehold over music was the currency reform measure of 1 June 1953, which ended the lavish flow of money from the Authors’ Rights Protection Union for the production and performance of socialist works. Before this time, composers were generously supported to write “the new music” for concerts that went free of charge. But now, concert institutions had to fend for themselves: in the need to draw larger audiences, the priorities of programming went to the classics and international twentieth-century repertoire. And despite persistent ideological interventions, the new situation allowed for certain artists, such as the Czech Philharmonic’s Music Director Karel Ančerl, to become emboldened enough to refuse programming the socialist music generally viewed as inferior in artistic merit.[164]
Despite the appointment to Hudební rozhledy of Jaroslav Jiránek—the most demonic of musical ideologues remembered for his Bolshevization of cultural programming at Czechoslovak Radio—a change in face for the official journal set in.[165] Articles of a completely non-ideological nature began to share the rubrics with the socialist-realist items, gradually superseding them. A defining moment came in the 1954 edition dedicated to the fiftieth anniversary of Dvořák’s death, where a heart-warming letter by Bohuslav Martinů was printed.[166] Martinů, who apologized for being unable to travel in from abroad for the commemorations, enclosed a flower to be placed at Dvořák’s grave. Martinů’s gesture thoroughly moved the union’s membership and underscored the difference in demeanor between the composer hitherto charged as a “traitorous émigré” and the fundamentalist policies of the union executives.[167]
The further attrition in ideological influence over the course of the 1950s led to the more genuinely liberal situation of the 1960s. Milestones in this process included the reestablishment of ties in 1955 between the UCC and the ISCM, which had been terminated since 1950;[168] Khrushchev’s 1956 speech denouncing Stalin and the cult of personality; the 1958 rehabilitation of Soviet Composers, which was printed in Hudební rozhledy;[169] and the death in 1961 of Václav Kopecký, who, by this time, had been completely abandoned by the eminent artists he had enjoyed surrounding himself with during his earlier years in office.[170]
Figure 7. Ministers Zdeněk Nejedlý and Václav Kopecký watching the May-day parade from the platform, ca. 1948-53.
Assessing Barvík and Communist Ideology
Miroslav Barvík was one of several young careerists who fell to the intoxication of the post-Februarian atmosphere. From his speech The Composers Go with the People, there can be little question he believed an historic moment had arrived, which vindicated ruthless action, or justified turning a blind eye to the injustices being committed around him. Thus, how are we to appraise him today? And is it necessary to revise, or polemicize with the formulations he and other communist ideologues made in the service of the regime?
Before turning to these issues, we should note a
bizarre twist in his story. As mentioned earlier, Barvík’s earlier career is
not widely remembered in today’s
We should also note that, later in life, Barvík clearly regretted his work as an apparatchik. During his last year, Barvík wrote an autobiographical sketch in which he makes absolutely no reference to his role in the Action Committees, his editorship of Hudební rozhledy, or his tenure with the UCC, choosing instead to focus on his scholarly work on Janáček,[172] his directorship of the Brno State Opera (1966-72), his broadcasting activities on Czechoslovak Radio, and his lifelong activities as a theory and composition teacher.[173] And showing that he never came to terms with his earlier work in communist cultural politics, Barvík—to our astonishment—even protests the injustices he had suffered during the Normalization, particularly the censorship of his work.[174] Indeed, crying out injustice at the hands of the new cadre of communists who came to power during the Soviet occupation provides an historical irony, as it was Barvík himself who took a leading role in the construction and canonization of the structures that later hindered his own artistic ambitions.
The focus of this study will undoubtedly draw
protest in certain circles in today’s
But when we hold accountable the collaborators of
the regime, we might ask ourselves how we might have acted as leftist-minded
intellectuals in the post-World War II climate, when visions of a more just
society seemed so near at hand.[175] We might ask ourselves—had we come to maturity during the Nazi
occupation and Soviet liberation—would we have been able to clearly identify
the dangers of the
In my coverage of The Composers Go with the People, I have made available to English-language readers the story of Czech music according to the communists. But I have made no attempt at correcting Barvík’s innumerable lies, distortions, and euphemistic manipulations.[176] Undoubtedly providing no comfort to musicians who were hurt during this period is my view that polemics with the determinism of communist ideology bear few rewards. Another shortcoming might be found in the fact that I have provided no account of how musicians dealt with the harsh circumstances and carried on with their work.
Figure 8. Miroslav Barvík in his later years.
But to shed at least some contrasting light on the official record, I shall provide a hitherto undocumented anecdote about Alois Hába, a musician disenfranchised by Barvík and the regime. In his 1950 speech, Barvík frames the UCC’s “subsidation” of Hába’s salary at the conservatory—which was “to free him” so he could compose socialist music—as a benevolent act of the state. But in reality, Barvík’s formulation was a cover for the embarrassing fact that Hába, a composer of international repute, was about to be dismissed from HAMU, the newly established music academy, where Hába’s department for microtonal composition had already been discontinued.[177] Well-known for his indestructible personality, Hába made an open mockery of the young ideologues at the UCC’s 1951 plenary conference by forcing one of the sessions to an abrupt close. At one moment, when a fair number of auditors were nodding off, Hába suddenly raised his voice from the back of the hall crying out, “And I would like to say something!” He then went up to the podium and placed a stack of manuscript paper on the table exclaiming, “I’m in favor of a productive discussion, but what you’ve been saying here are empty phrases. During the time you’ve been speaking I’ve composed 40 mass songs. Here they are.” Caught by surprise, the speaker replied, “Thank you for your contribution, Comrade Hába, I think we can bring matters to a close now.”[178]
Thus what I have provided in this study is mostly a surface level transmission of a speech representing the official musical ideology in communist Czechoslovakia, which was enforced over forty years according to the political climate of the time. How we shall reconcile with the communist-era musicological literature will remain a dilemma for some time to come, as it was almost always subject to either official or auto-censorship.[179] Indeed, the vast majority of communist-era writings pose great dangers to the undiscerning eye, with those colored more subtly by official policy, or carefully omitting disagreeable facts and opinions, more hazardous than the self-evident dogmatic tracts. And how these sources have been transmitted into the international literature complicates matters exponentially. Indeed, whether there will be the courage to redress the misinformation about Czech music that was created during the communist era, or whether a strategy will be found for interpreting the communist-era sources, remains a question only the future can answer.[180]
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This
article offers a close-up view of musical politics during the early and most
repressive years of the Czechoslovak communist regime. Forming the focus is
Miroslav Barvík (1919-1998), the top apparatchik in music at this time.
Examined here are the political forces that gave Barvík the authority to create
and control a highly centralized musical arena to implement Soviet ideas. Given
extensive treatment is his 1950 speech to the Union of Czechoslovak Composers
entitled The Composers Go with the People. What on the surface level was
a call for musicians to join the socialist struggle was in reality an
instruction for them to prove themselves ideologically. Barvík’s speech reveals
the story of Czech music according to the communists and shows which musicians
were favored or disenfranchised. Barvík is virtually unknown internationally
and even in today’s
For
granting me enlightening interviews on the subject of early communist-era Czech
musical culture, I would like to thank Ivan Medek and Ivan Vojtěch. All
translations are by the author; rights for all audio-visual materials have been
secured where needed. The following abbreviations are used in this
study: CCP = Czechoslovak Communist Party; HAMU = Music Faculty of the
[1] In this study, the period of Czechoslovak Stalinism shall refer to the years 1948-53.
[2] For a discussion of the Action Committees in early communist-era cultural politics, see Jiří Knapík, V zajetí moci. Kulturní politika, její systém a aktéři 1948-1956 [In the Captivity of Power: Cultural Politics, its System, and Participants 1948-1956] (Prague: Nakladatelství Libri, 2006), 19 ff.
[3] Miroslav Barvík, Skladatelé jdou s lidem. Referát generálního tajemníka Svazu čs. skladatelů na I. plenárním zasedání SČS v dubnu 1950 [The Composers Go with the People: A Paper Read by the Secretary-General of the Union of Czechoslovak Composers at the First Plenary Meeting of the UCC in April 1950] (Prague: Orbis, 1951).
[4] For
more on
[5] Prepared
for the need to school Czech functionaries in Soviet cultural policy,
Czech-language translations of Zhdanov’s lectures to the various Soviet
artistic unions about literature, music, and philosophy were issued as Andrej
A. Ždanov, O umění [About Art] (Prague:
Orbis, 1949). For more on
[6] By qualifying the term “socially conscious,” I do not wish to express skepticism over Kaprál’s views, but draw attention to the way the communist musicologists attempted to disenfranchise other musicians not seen in this way. In other words, the decisions a musician made as a composer, critic, pedagogue, or performing artist (i.e. choice of repertoire) defined his position in the larger socialist movement as a positive or negative force. Many of Kaprál’s numerous essays demonstrating his moderate socialist views were published in the leftist daily newspaper Rovnost [Equality] during the interwar era. For more on Kaprál, see Ludvík Kundera, Václav Kaprál. Kapitola z historie české meziválečné hudby [Václav Kaprál: A Chapter from the History of Czech Interwar Music] (Brno: Nakladatelství Blok, 1968).
[7] The tragedies of Kaprál’s later life include the death in June 1940 of his daughter Vítězslava, a composer of exceptional promise who studied with Bohuslav Martinů in Paris but succumbed to tuberculosis during the German invasion; Kaprál’s internment to the Nazis for almost three years due to his younger brother Bohumil’s service as an officer in the Czechoslovak army in France; and Kaprál’s death due to cancer on 6 April 1947. See Kundera, Václav Kaprál. In Kundera’s monograph, see in particular pp. 41-43, where Barvík’s 1946 essay on Kaprál from Rovnost is reprinted; Barvík’s portrait reveals the utmost devotion he and his fellow students had for their teacher and how Barvík regularly visited Kaprál during the latter’s incarceration.
[8] For a full enumeration of Barvík’s official functions, see Jiří Knapík, “Barvík, Miroslav.” Kdo byl kdo v naší kulturní politice 1948-1953 [Who was Who in Our Cultural Politics 1948-1953] (Prague: Nakladatelství Libri, 2002), 48-49.
[9] At one point in my Czech-language interview with Ivan Vojtěch, we discussed the circumstances surrounding the dismissal of the esteemed music critic Gracian Černušák from the Brno Conservatory during the first wave of purges in February-March 1948. Vojtěch recalled how Václav Dobiáš, an SCC Action Committee member, had later defended himself for having signed off on the decision, claiming that Barvík forced him to do it. Vojtěch exclaimed, “Mein Gott, it doesn’t make a difference, both of them were involved.” See Thomas D. Svatos, Interview with Ivan Vojtěch (Prague, Summer, 2006). For more on Černušák, the repression of musicians, and the culpability of functionaries from 1948 forward, see “Zpráva o činnosti rehabilitační a rekapitulační komise sekce hudebních vědců a kritiků Svazu čs. skladatelů” [“Report on the Activities of the Rehabilitation and Recapitulatory Commission of the Section of Musicologists and Music Critics of the Union of Czechoslovak Composers”] Hudební věda 6, no. 2 (1969): 336-337. The report was issued a number of months before censorship returned in the aftermath of the Soviet invasion.
Ivan Vojtěch (b. 1928), music critic and twentieth-century music scholar, was the functionary of the UCC who led the most vigorous polemics against the Zhdanovites during the 1950s. During his student years, however, he was close to the powerful Zhdanovite music scholar Antonín Sychra, the Dean at HAMU, and he has never been forgiven by some for his severe critique of Bohuslav Martinů in 1958, seen to uphold the Party line against the disenfranchised émigré composer. See Ivan Vojtěch, “Martinů a soudobá česká hudba” [“Martinů and Contemporary Czech Music”] Literární noviny 7, no. 25 (21 Jun. 1958): 5.
[10] For more on this concept, see Jiří Knapík, Únor a kultura. Sovětizace české kultury 1948-1950 [February and Culture: the Sovietization of Czech Culture 1948-1950] (Prague: Nakladatelství Libri, 2004), 137 ff.
[11] See
Viktor Pantůček,
“Musica politica. Budování nového řádu” [“Musica
Politica: Building the New Order”] Opus musicum 39, no. 1 (2007): 36-37.
Pantůček
presents two memoranda that Barvík expedited in the name of the Central Action
Committee’s Music Division to the Club of Moravian Composers in
[12] Papers
from the congress were published in Hudba národů.
Sborník přednášek
proslovených
[13] See Hudba národů, 3-4.
[14] The Interior Ministry’s purging of Czechoslovak security forces, where communists were installed in place of non-communists, was the main point of protest. See Ivo Duchacek, “The February Coup in Czechoslovakia” World Politics 2, no. 4 (Jul., 1950): 521 ff.
[15] By this time, the communists had realized their post-war scheme to infiltrate the opposition with communist fellow-travelers, who then came to the helm of their respective parties by appointment of the Central Action Committee. See Ivo Duchacek, “The Strategy of Communist Infiltration: Czechoslovakia, 1944-48” World Politics 2, no. 3. (Apr., 1950): 345-372.
[16] Jan
Masaryk (1886-1948), son of the first Czechoslovak president Tomáš Masaryk, was
serving as Minister of Foreign Affairs (without party affiliation) at the time
he fell to his death from a window at the
[17] The English music critic Alan Bush reports on the conference in “The Second International Congress of Composers and Music Critics” The Musical Times (Sep., 1948): 280-81. For an English-language translation of the proclamation, see Nicolas Slonimsky, Music Since 1900, 5th ed. (New York: Schirmer Books, 1994), 1055−57. The Czech-language version was first printed as “Provolání” [“Proclamation”] Hudební rozhledy 1, no. 1 (15. Oct. 1948): 40-41; it was famously critized by Theodor Adorno in his essay “Gegängelte Musik,” reprinted in Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 14 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1973), 51-66. In Czech, Adorno’s essay was published for the first time alongside the 1948 Proclamation as “Hudba na provázku” [“Music on a Leash”] Hudební věda 6, no. 1(1969): 92-101.
The full proceedings of the SCC’s Second
International Congress in
[18] It
has been something of a mystery in Czech musicological circles as to who exactly
conceived the manifesto. Nevertheless, Alan Bush, in a paper published in 1964,
states with no uncertainty that the document was drafted by Hanns Eisler; both
Bush and Eisler were participants at the 1948 congress. Bush writes, “It will
not be generally known that the draft of the statement which was accepted with
only minor changes by congress was largely [Eisler’s] work.” See Sinn und Form,
[19] See Jiří Knapík, Únor a kultura, 89 ff.
[20] The full title of the Czechoslovak analogy to Sovetskaya muzika is Hudební rozhledy. Měsíčník skladatelů a hudebních vědců Československa [Musical Perspectives: a Monthly Journal for Composers and Musicologists in Czechoslovakia].
[21] See Hudební rozhledy 1, no. 1 (15 Oct. 1948): 1-2. Barvík’s introductory essay to the new journal bears no title.
[22] Ibid., 1.
[23] Ibid. If it was unclear by now what direction music was taking, musicians and scholars could look to Barvík’s cantatas from this time, which included Gratitude to the Soviet Union, Song about the Soviet Land, A Pioneer’s Fairy-Tale, and Hands off Korea!, the last of which won him an honorary prize in the brethren socialist nation of North Korea. Barvík composed these works between the years 1947-53.
[24] Ibid., 2.
[25] See “II. Sjezd československých skladatelů a hudebních vědců” [“Second Conference of Czechoslovak Composers and Musicologists”] Hudební rozhledy 1, no. 10 (20. August 1949): 224-226.
[26] In the report on the conference that consecrated the UCC (see ibid.), it is claimed that Barvík was “elected” Secretary-General. Whether or not there was any choice but to elect to this position the Secretary to the Central Action Committee’s Music Division—or in what form the election was held—is unclear. Vojtěch remarked that the title of Secretary-General—reminiscent of the Soviet commissars—contributed to Barvík’s megalomania. Svatos, Interview with Ivan Vojtěch. With the abolition of the SCC, the work of the SCC’s Action Committee also came to an end, leaving control of musical life in the hands of the UCC’s Secretary-General and Central Committee.
[27] The
proceedings of the UCC’s first plenary conference were published as “Skladatelé
jdou s lidem.
[28] Jůzl, 46.
[29] As a note of explanation before the full text of his speech, Barvík explains, “Lady and gentlemen comrades, valued friends, esteemed and dear guests! The presidium of the Union of Czechoslovak Composers has entrusted me to give a theoretical presentation about the situation on the musical front for the union’s first plenary meeting. My paper emerged after detailed discussions with the accountable functionaries and is therefore the result of collective work—a result which all of the leading members of the union agree with and identify.” See Barvík, Skladatelé, 5. Vojtěch remarked that these lines were a clever “gangster-mafia” tactic: Barvík had written the speech entirely on his own and that, by insisting that it was a collective effort with which everyone agreed, he knew that any dissenters who voiced their views could count on repression. Svatos, Interview with Ivan Vojtěch.
[30] See Barvík, Skladatelé, 7.
[31] Ibid.
[32] Ibid.
[33] Ibid., 7-8.
[34] Ibid., 11.
[35] See ibid., 12-13, and 24-25.
[36] Ibid., 13-18.
[37] Ibid., 14.
[38] Ibid., 14.
[39] Ibid.,
14-5. Barvík is quoting from Jaroslav Bouček, “Dva tábory v boji o
francouzskou kulturu” [“Two Camps in the
A Czech cultural journal of leftist, or “progressive” political persuasion, Var was published by Zdeněk Nejedlý during the years 1921-30; Nejedlý served as editor during the years 1948-53 when it was reestablished towards the goal of helping develop socialist culture. The name of the journal could be translated roughly as “Ebullition,” or “At the Boiling Point.”
[40] See Vladimír Pozner. Rozpojené státy [Divided States] (Prague: Nakladatelství Svoboda, 1949).
[41] Barvík, Skladatelé, 15-6.
[42] Ibid., 16.
[43]See Jan Löwenbach, Hudba v Americe [Music in America] (Prague: Hudební matice Umělecké besedy, 1948). Löwenbach, under the pseudonym J.L. Budín, wrote the libretto to Martinů’s opera The Soldier and the Dancer (1927).
[44] Barvík, Skladatelé, 16-8.
[45] Ibid., 18. Here the subtext to an “absence of ideas,” i.e., “formalism,” is the absence of the right ideas, or those consistent with Soviet artistic policy.
[46] Ibid., 18-19. The Soviet novels that Barvík cites include Polevoy’s Story of a Real Man, Fadejev’s The Young Guard, and Ehrenburg’s The Storm; the Soviet films include The Academic Ivan Pavlov, The Battleship Potemkin, and The Battle of Stalingrad. For more on the Zhdanovite films and literature, see Werth, 9-16.
[47] Barvík, Skladatelé, 19.
[48] Ibid., 19 ff.
[49] Ibid., 20.
[50] Ibid., 25-40.
[51] For
more on the Hostinský-Nejedlý aesthetic lineage in the context of earlier
generations of musical debate, see Brian S. Locke, Opera and Ideology in
[52] By this period, Nejedlý, more of a symbolic figurehead, was far less involved in the battle over music culture, leaving this almost entirely in the hands of the young ideologues Barvík, Antonín Sychra, and Jaroslav Jiránek. For a fine study of Nejedlý during the communist period, where he is revealed as both uncomfortable and inept in the highest-ranking circles of communist power, see Jiří Křesťan, “‘Poslední husita’ odchází. Zdeněk Nejedlý v osidlech kulturní politiky KSČ po roce 1945” [“‘The Last Hussite’ Departs: Zdeněk Nejedlý in the Snares of CCP Cultural Politics after 1945”] Soudobé dějiny 12, no. 1 (2005): 9-44.
[53] Barvík, Skladatelé, 27.
[54] Ibid., 27.
[55] See Leon Botstein, “Modernism” The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd Edition (2001), 16: 868-875.
[56] Barvík writes, “This proves the entire deep divide between the individual and society, the intention of the bourgeoisie to isolate people, to confuse them – to isolate the artist!” See Barvík, Skladatelé, 34.
[57] Ibid., 18.
[58] Ibid., 33.
[59] Ibid., 28.
[60] Ibid., 28.
[61] Ibid., 28-9. An interesting subject for further study is how Barvík, undoubtedly as an expression of regional pride, elevates his fellow Moravian composers throughout his speech, i.e., Novák, Kaprál, Kaprálová, etc. The fact that Nejedlý had attempted to by-pass Leoš Janáček in the national musical history required Barvík to assess this particular Moravian composer more critically. Later in his career, Barvík championed Janáček.
[62] Ibid.,
29. It is interesting to note that, even twenty-five
years after the fact, the Czechs were still strangely co-opting and
(simultaneously) disowning Křenek as one of their own, all because of the Czech diacritic in his name. By this
point the Austrian composer had taken up residence in the
[63] Barvík, Skladatelé, 29.
[64] I
have attempted to define Martinů’s place in inter-war
[65] Barvík, Skladatelé, 29.
[66] Ibid., 30.
[67] Ibid., 30.
[68] Ibid., 32 ff.
[69] For more on Reiner, see Milan Kuna, Dvakrát zrozený. Život a dílo Karla Reinera [Twice Born. The Life and Works of Karl Reiner]. (Prague: H + H, 2008).
[70] Here it is Barvík who is skeptical of anthroposophy, not Reiner.
[71] Barvík, Skladatelé, 34-38.
[72] Ibid., 39.
[73] Ibid., 39. In his condemnation of Hába, Barvík makes the disclaimer that, “I would like to point out that we are dealing with Al. Hába as an historical phenomenon, as a one-time representative of a certain part of Czech music, or someone who is completely different from the Prof. Hába and his efforts today.” See Ibid., 37. Hába’s half-tone opera The New Land (1936)—yet to be performed to this day—deals with the Holodomor, or the Ukrainian famine of 1932-33.
[74] Josef
Stanislav (1897-1971) was a composer and propagator of socialist-realist
genres, in particular the mass song. Barvík’s reference is to Stanislav’s cantata
about the Spanish Civil War Píseň o Granadě [Song about
[75]Barvík, Skladatelé, 31.
[76] Ibid., 38 ff.
[77] Ibid., 38-9. Karel Reiner, Sonata No. 2 for Solo Piano, Melantrich (Prague: 1947). Vojtěch remarks that singling out Reiner had been an especially rude gesture, as the Czech-Jewish composer had been imprisoned by the Nazis in the Terezín concentration camp. See Svatos, Interview with Ivan Vojtěch. For more on this composition, composed by Reiner just before his deportation, see Kuna 132-36.
[78] Barvík, Skladatelé, 39.
[79] Václav Dobiáš, Tři poetické polky pro klavír [Three Poetic Polkas for Piano] (Prague: Orbis, 1950).
[80] Václav Dobiáš, Buduj vlast - posílíš mír!, československá polka [Build Up Your Country to Reinforce Peace! A Czechoslovak Polka] (Prague, Orbis 1950).
[81] For a more recent critical study on Dobiáš, see Geoffrey Chew, “Václav Dobiáš’s Celebration of Proletarian Prague: The Song Cycle Praho jediná,” Socialist Realism and Music, ed. Mikuláš Bek, Geoffrey Chew, and Petr Macek (Prague: Koniasch Latin Press, 2004), 214-223. The standard, communist-era monograph on Dobiáš is Jiří Štilec, Václav Dobiáš (Prague: Panton, 1985).
[82] Barvík, Skladatelé, 40-64.
[83] Ibid., 40 ff.
[84] Ibid., 40-1. Vít Nejedlý (1912-45), conductor and composer of socialist music and son of Zdeněk Nejedlý, died on the eastern front during the last phases of fighting in World War II. Barvík is showing affection for the Education Minister’s fallen son by using the diminutive “Vítek.”
[85] As top composers of the mass song, Barvík commends Václav Dobiáš, Jan Seidl, Josef Stanislav, Jan Kapr, Jiří Pauer, Radim Drejsl, and Vladimír Sommer. See Ibid., 41.
[86] Ibid., 41-2.
[87] Ibid., 42-3.
[88] Ibid.,
42-3. The term úderník (shock worker)
came to
[89] Barvík, Skladatelé, 43-45.
[90] Ibid., 43-44.
[91] Ibid., 44-45.
[92] Ibid.,
45-47. For
[93] Barvík, Skladatelé, 45.
[94] Ibid., 45.
[95] Ibid., 45.
[96] Ibid., 45.
[97] Ibid., 47.
[98] I have yet to find an example of a Hussite opera, but the followers of the early fifteenth-century Czech theologian are clearly shown in this light in the film trilogy Jan Hus—Jan Žižka—Proti všem. Vávra, Otakar, Dir. (Prague: Studio uměleckých filmů, 1954, 1955; Filmové Studio Barrandov, 1957).
[99] Barvík, Skladatelé, 47-49.
[100] Ibid., 49.
[101] Ibid., 49.
[102] Ibid., 49.
[103] Ibid., 49-51.
[104] Ibid., 50.
[105] Ibid., 50. Barvík cites Jiří Wolker (1900-1924) as an exemplary Czech author whose poetry served numerous socially conscious cantatas. As an example of a cantata on a Wolker text, Barvík cites Vilém Petrželka’s Námořník Mikuláš [Mikuláš the Sailor]. Wolker, along with Stanislav K. Neumann (1875-1947), had just been consecrated three months earlier (in January 1950) at the foundation of the official cannon of communist poetry by the top literary ideologue Ladislav Štoll; Štoll’s speech to the Union of Czechoslovak Writers, the most influential Czechoslovak artistic union, served as a primary ideological guide for Czech cultural politics at the time. See Ladislav Štoll, Třicet let bojů za českou socialistickou poesii [Thirty Years of Battles over Czech Socialist Poetry] (Prague: Orbis, 1950). S.K. Neumann’s place in the communists’ cultural canon was solidified by his 1937 tract Anti-Gide, or Optimism without Superstitions and Illusions, which served as the primary Czechoslovak communist rebuttal to André Gide’s Return from the U.S.S.R. See Stanislav K. Neumann, Anti-Gide, neboli optimismus bez pověr a ilusí [Anti-Gide, or Optimism without Superstitions and Illusions] (Prague: Vydavatelstvo Družstevní Práce, 1950). S.K. Neumann’s origins in the early twentieth-century Czech modernist movement were obscured in new editions of his works in the 1950s.
[106] Barvík, Skladatelé, 51.
[107] Ibid., 51-52.
[108] A reference to Schulhoff’s Symphony No. 6, “Symphony of Freedom.”
[109] Barvík, Skladatelé, 51. Václav Kaprál’s daughter Vítězslava Kaprálová undoubtedly emerged here for her orchestral movement Military Sinfonietta (1938), seen as a symbol of Czechoslovak resistance to Hitler’s ultimatums. Her place in the new canon was undoubtedly inspired by Barvík’s loyalty to the Kaprál family and his fellow Moravian composers in general. Barvík expresses his affection for Kaprálová by using the diminutive “Vítka.”
[110] Barvík, Skladatelé, 52.
[111] Ibid., 53-54.
[112] Ibid., 54-55.
[113] Ibid., 55-57.
[114] Ibid., 53 and 56 ff.
[115] See Karel Janeček, Tema con variazioni, op. 23 (Prague: Hudební matice Umělecké Besedy, 1949).
[116] Barvík, Skladatelé, 53.
[117] Ibid., 53.
[118] Ibid., 53-54. Janeček holds a special place in the history of compositional pedagogy for a method in which students learn to hear complex sonorities through pitch-sets rather than triadic foundations, pre-dating Forte’s pitch-set method for atonal analysis by a number of years. For a recent study on Janeček’s compositional method, see John MacKay, “An Overview of Karel Janeček’s Foundations of Modern Harmony” ex tempore 11, no. 1 (2002): 1-43.
[119] Barvík, Skladatelé, 55.
[120] Ibid., 56. Barvík is referring to Zdeněk Blažek, Dvojsměrná alterace v harmonickém myšlení [Two-way Alteration in Harmonic Thought] (Brno: Rovnost, 1949). On Blažek’s life and work, see Lubomír Peduzzi, Zdeněk Blažek. Obraz života a díla [Zdeněk Blažek: A Picture of his Life and Work] (Brno: Kulturní klub NV, 1988); Blažek’s work as a theorist is discussed on pp. 76-80. Among Blažek’s later achievements is a two-volume edition of Leoš Janáček’s theoretical works. See Leoš Janáček, Hudebně teoretické dílo [Works in Music Theory], 2 vols., ed. Zdeněk Blažek (Prague: Editio Supraphon, 1968, 1974).
[121] Barvík, Skladatelé, 56.
[122] Ibid., 57-64.
[123] Ibid., 57.
[124] Ibid.,
57. For a study presenting a collection of Nejedlý caricatures from the
[125] Barvík, Skladatelé, 57-58.
[126] Ibid., 59-60.
[127] Ibid., 58.
[128] Tikhon Khrennikov (1913–2007), Barvík’s Soviet counterpart as Secretary-General of the Union of Soviet Composers, was in attendance at the UCC’s 1950 conference. See Figure 2.
[129] Ibid., 59-61.
[130] Ibid., 60.
[131] Ibid., 61.
[132] Ibid., 61.
[133] Ibid., 61.
[134] Ibid., 61.
[135] Ibid., 62.
[136] Ibid.,
63. Here Barvík derived his remarks from
[137] Barvík, Skladatelé, 63.
[138] Ibid., 63.
[139] Ibid., 63.
[140] Ibid., 63-4.
[141] Ibid., 64.
[142] Ibid., 64.
[143] Ibid., 64.
[144] Ibid., 64.
[145] See Knapík, V zajetí, 96 ff.
[146] “Úkoly čs. skladatelů v boji za mír. Referát generálního tajemníka Svazu československých skladatelů Miroslava Barvíka, pronesený na slavnostním zasedání ÚV SČS dne 4. února 1951” [“Tasks for Czechoslovak Composers in the Battle for Peace: a Paper Read by the Secretary-General of the Union of Czechoslovak Composers Miroslav Barvík at the Ceremonial Session of the UCC’s Central Committee on 4 February 1951”] Hudební rozhledy 3, nos. 10-12 (5 Jun. 1951): 4-13.
[147] Ibid., 9.
[148] For more on Slánský, see Karel Kaplan; Pavel Kosatík, Gottwaldovi muži [Gottwald’s Men] (Prague: Paseka, 2004), 78-121 and Igor Lukeš, “The Rudolf Slansky Affair: New Evidence” Slavic Review 58, no 1. (Spring, 1999): 160-187.
[149] See Knapík, V zajetí, 322 ff. Along with 13 co-defendents (11 of whom were Jewish), Slánský was put on trial in an eight-day public spectacle that began on 20 November 1952. He was hanged in Pankrác Prison on 3 December 1952. The ironic fate of Slánský, one of the primary architects of labor camp repression, lies in the fact that he was convicted for crimes he had not committed, rather than those he had. See Kaplan; Kosatík, Gottwaldovi muži, 120.
[150] See “Směleji a rozhodněji za rozvoj české a slovenské hudby” [“More Audaciously and Decisively for the Growth of Czech and Slovak Music”] Hudební rozhledy 6, no. 9 (Jun. 1953): 372-383. The planned state-wide conference did not take place until 1955. See Knapík, V zajetí, 328.
[151] “Směleji,” 372.
[152] Ibid., 372.
[153] Ibid., 372.
[154] Ibid., 373.
[155] Ibid., 375-377.
[156] Ibid., 375.
[157] As examples of Slánskýism, Barvík cites “the vulgarization and perversion of Marxist-Leninist theories through ostensibly revolutionary leftist demands that were hastily implemented with no regard to the current situation; the mechanization of Marxist-Leninist, socialist-realist aesthetic principles; becoming alienated from the real life and feelings of man, sometimes under the garb of phrases about progress, socialism, etc.; the academic abstraction of impassioned artistic questions into incomprehensible analyses with no regard to real artistic work and the working methods of man today; ‘building socialism’ with only numbers, units, and statistics; a complete underestimation of man and his work; an inhumane, dryly calculated, coldly logical theorization of matters in relation to man; dictatorial interventions; the termination of independent organs; hectoring; etc.” Ibid., 375.
[158] Ibid., 376.
[159] Ibid., 377.
[160] Ibid., 376. After his self-confession, members of the UCC Central Committee were given the opportunity to openly respond to Barvík’s remarks. Vojtěch in particular did not let him off the hook so easily, grilling the lame-duck Secretary-General. See ibid., 380-81.
[161] Knapík, V zajetí, 327-328. As a note to clarify the union’s structure, the chairman and board of the UCC’s Central Committee met on a regular basis, i.e., in between meetings involving the UCC’s entire Central Committee or the UCC as a whole. No longer needing to coordinate affairs with the General-Secretary, the UCC’s chairman became the most important figure in the union.
[162] Ibid., 328.
[163] On the decentralization of musical life, see ibid., 273 ff.
[164] Thomas
D. Svatos, Interview with Ivan Medek (Prague, Summer, 2007). At the time of the
February 1948 coup, Ivan Medek (b. 1925) worked as Director of the Czech
Chamber Orchestra. He remembers being called in by Barvík, who, in the capacity
of Secretary to the Central Action Committee’s Music Division, informed him
that—by order of the Education Minister Zdeněk Nejedlý—Václav
Talich was to be immediately dismissed as the ensemble’s conductor. In disfavor
throughout the course of the regime, Medek was a signatory of the Charter 77
proclamation on human rights, which ended his work with Supraphon Records.
After interrogations by the state security apparatus, he immigrated to
[165] On
Jiránek, see Knapík, Kdo byl kdo, “Jaroslav Jiránek,” 120. Vojtěch
described Jiránek’s radicalism as a kind of “extremely radicalized trauma.” He
explained that Jiránek’s father had been a police official during the
[166] See “Antonín Dvořák” Hudební rozhledy 7, no. 7 (1954): 263-267.
[167] See
Svatos, Interview with Ivan Vojtěch.
Martinů became a naturalized
[168] See Knapík, V zajetí, 328.
[169] See “Usnesení Ústředního výboru Komunistické strany Sovětského svazu o nápravě chyb při hodnocení oper ‘Velké přátelství,’ ‘Bohdan Chmelnickij’ a ‘Z celého Srdce’” [“Resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on the Correction of Errors in the Appraisal of the Operas ‘The Great Friendship,’ ‘Bohdan Khmelnitsky,’ and ‘With All One’s Heart’”] Hudební rozhledy 11, no. 12 (1958): 489.
[170] For more on Kopecký, see Kaplan; Kosatík, Gottwaldovi muži, 216-245.
[171] Svatos, Interview with Ivan Vojtěch.
[172] In the field of Janáček studies, Barvík is not known for any vital contributions.
[173] See Miroslav Barvík, “Autobiografie” [“Autobiography”] Miroslav Barvík Memorial Website: http://web.iol.cz/mbk/ (Accessed Nov., 2007). The website, now removed from the internet, included a number of obituaries that weighed in on Barvík’s career positively and negatively; I was fortunate to have secured all of the texts from the site before it was discontinued.
[174] Ibid.
[175] For more on this line of thought, see Jůzl, 38 ff.
[176] For studies on the manipulative nature of Czech communist musicology, see Vladimír Karbusický, “K technologii pamfletů o hudbě z let 1948-1952” [“Towards the Technology of Pamphlets about Music during the Years 1948-1952”] Hudební věda 6, no. 2 (1969): 281-311 and Monika Kroupová, “Totalitní jazyk a jeho úloha v českém hudebním časopisectví na přelomu 40. a 50. let 20. století” [“Totalitarian Language and its Role in Czech Music Journalism at the Turn of the 1940s and 1950s”] Opus musicum 34, no. 1 (2002): 13-17.
[177] For more on Hába’s career during this period, see Jiří Vysloužil, Alois Hába. Život a dílo [Alois Hába. Life and Works] (Prague: Panton, 1974), 277-296. From Vysloužil’s monograph, I am led to believe that, although Barvík stated that Hába’s salary was to be subsidized at the conservatory, he was actually referring to Hába’s other position at HAMU. My conclusion comes from the fact that Hába signed “his” contract to compose socialist music with HAMU’s Rector’s Office. The contract is dated 1 February 1950 and the conference The Composers Go with the People took place not long thereafter on 22-25 April 1950; Barvík probably conceived his speech during the time in between. The confusion may come from the fact that, at this time, the Prague Conservatory and HAMU were still viewed in some sense as the same institution, as HAMU had been established only a few years earlier in 1945 on the basis of the Prague Conservatory’s Master Class, where Hába had been part of the leading faculty. At HAMU, Hába’s division for microtonal music was abolished at the beginning of the 1948-9 academic year and his contract there was discontinued upon the 1950-1 academic year, or the next academic year after Barvík’s speech. Through a decision of the Ministry of Education on 12 July 1951, Hába’s contract at the conservatory was almost terminated as well, had it not been for the intervention of the conservatory’s director, Václav Holzknecht, who found a way to allow Hába to remain under contractual employment until his retirement in 1953 by creating a position for him in the conservatory library, through which Hába continued to meet with students.
[178] This anecdote was related to me in Svatos, Interview with Ivan Vojtěch. Vojtěch also notes that the funds for Hába’s stipend came not from the UCC, as Barvík announced, but from the Authors’ Rights Protection Union. There is no mention of Hába’s stunt in the article in Hudební rozhledy that reports on the 1951 conference. See Úkoly, 4-13.
[179] For more on the issue of censorship and auto-censorship, see Jůzl, 45 ff.
[180] For the positive role
they played in the creation of this study, I would also like to thank Volker
Ahmels, Jan Andreska, Jan Asmussen, Marcel Černý, Nicolas
Deletaille, Brian Locke, Jan Kahuda, Jiří Knapík, Jiří Křesťan, Martin Sekera, Tomislav
Volek, David Walters, and Anke Zimmermann. I would also like to pay my most
sincere respect to Jan Kuklík (1940-2009), historian and specialist of the Protectorate of Bohemia and
Moravia, who granted me invaluable consultations on the subject of modern Czech
history during my research residences in