Jan Novák

SONATA SUPER "HOSON ZES..."

Jan Novák (1921-1984) is one of the most distinctive phenomena of post-war Czech musical culture. After graduating from the Brno Conservatory in 1946 he spent a short period at the Academy of Performing Arts and received a scholarship to study in the USA where he attended composition classes led by A. Copland. Apart from Vítězslava Kaprálová, he was Bohuslav Martinů´s only Czech pupil, and he consciously followed in his teacher´s footsteps.
Sonata super "Hoson zes..." is one of the works written during the final period of the composer´s life in Ulm. It bears the typical hallmarks of Novák´s musical language - a synoptical formal plan, a regular structural layout, great motific inventiveness, graceful melodies and an outstanding harmonic sense above all on modality and bitonality. Moreover the "ideological background" present in various metamorphoses in each of his compositions, namely, Novák´s penchant for the culture of Antiquity (he would frequently use the metre of the Latin text as an underlying component of his compositional technique and almost invariably give his works Latin titles, since he regarded Latin as a living language with a future) is obvious here. The basic theme here is the "Song of Seikilos", one of the oldest relics of the music of Antiquity, being a literary codification that combined text and musical notation.

Novák wrote Sonata super “Hoson zes…” in 1981 originally for violin and piano, and dedicated it to a friend from his period of emigration, the violinist Jiří Trnka, for whom he also wrote other violin pieces. While he was writing the work, however, he was already considering an arrangement for flute. His source of inspiration was – as in the case of his other flute compositions – his daughter Clara Nováková, who also shared in the preparations for this particular edition.

H 7855, ISMN 979-0-2601-0211-8, 48/16/12/ pages, price 24,95 EUR   BUY