Czech music is extraordinarily rich and varied, many would agree. But who actually gets to be called Czech? Professor Michael Beckerman hosts a panel discussion about how to conceive of questions of Czech nationality/ethnicity in music from the early Renaissance to the 20th century. Invited panelists include scholars and musicians Erika Supria Honisch, David Hoose, and Carl C. Bettendorf.
Up for consideration are topics such as how to think about the term "Czech" before the advent of the Czech National Awakening, but also for "minority" composers (Jews, Germans, etc.) after that point. What is the cost/benefit of considering composers like Biber, Zelenka, and Gluck, who were born in the Czech Lands, as well as the 19th century's most influential critic, Eduard Hanslick, as part of the Czech tradition? And then moving later to figures like Gustav Mahler, Erwin Schulhoff, Pavel Haas, and Viktor Ullmann, variously described as "Austro-Czech," "Jewish," "Czech Jewish," etc.
In other words, is what we call "Czech music" a set with fuzzy edges, or actually, no real set at all?
Be prepared for a fresh walk through “Czech“ musical history, supported and amplified by selected musical illustrations.
Free and open to the public. Suggested donation $10. RSVP through Eventbrite is required.
This event is organized by the Dvořák American Heritage Association (DAHA) with support of the Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association.
About
MICHAEL BECKERMAN is Carroll and Milton Petrie Chair and Collegiate Professor of Music at New York University and a Vice-President of the Dvořák American Heritage Association (DAHA). He has written many studies and several books on Czech music topics, including New Worlds of Dvořák (W.W. Norton, 2003), Dvořák and His World (Princeton University Press, 1993), Janáček and His World (Princeton, 2004), Janáček as Theorist (Pendragon Press, 1994), and Martinů's Mysterious Accident (Pendragon, 2007), as well as articles on subjects such as Mozart, Brahms, film scoring, music of the Roma (Gypsies), exiled composers, and music in the camps. Dr. Beckerman has been a frequent contributor to The New York Times and was a regular guest on Live from Lincoln Center and other radio and television programs in the United States, Europe, and Japan. He is a recipient of the Dvořák Medal and the Janáček Medal by the Czech Ministry of Culture, and is also a Laureate of the Czech Music Council; he has twice received the Deems Taylor Award. He served as a Distinguished Professor at Lancaster University (2011–2015) and was The Leonard Bernstein Scholar-in-Residence at the New York Philharmonic (2016-17). In 2014, Dr. Beckerman received an honorary doctorate from Palacký University in the Czech Republic. In 2021 he was awarded the Gratias Agit Award from the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Harrison Medal from the Society for Musicology in Ireland, and in 2023 he received an honorary doctorate from Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic.
CARL CHRISTIAN BETTENDORF is a New York-based composer/conductor. Born in Hamburg, Germany, he studied composition with Hans-Jürgen von Bose and Wolfgang Rihm before receiving his doctorate from Columbia University under Tristan Murail. His compositions have been played at many prestigious venues and festivals on four continents. He has received numerous awards, among them residencies at the Cité des Arts (Paris) and MacDowell as well as commissions from the Fromm Foundation and the Ralph Kaminsky Fund. As a conductor, Mr. Bettendorf has worked with ensembles in New York (Wet Ink, counter)induction; Ghost and Talea ensembles) and abroad (piano possibile in Munich, Ostravská banda in the Czech Republic) and was director of the Manhattanville and Bates College orchestras. Opera credits include Bard College and the Opéra national de Montpellier (France,) and he has served as assistant conductor of the Columbia University and American Composers orchestras. He has recorded for Albany, ArtVoice, Carrier, Cybele, Hat Hut, Indexical, New Focus, and Tzadik. Mr. Bettendorf is a 2022-23 Fellow at the International Artist Residency Villa Concordia in Bamberg, Germany.
ERIKA SUPRIA HONISCH is Associate Professor of Music History and Theory and Graduate Program Director in the Department of Music at Stony Brook University, and Affiliate Faculty in the History Department. She works on music, politics, and religious culture in early modern Europe, with related emphases on historical sound studies, music’s materialities, historiography, and music in ritual. Her articles have appeared in Music & Letters, Journal of Musicology, Early Music History, Plainsong and Medieval Music, Organised Sound, Austrian History Yearbook, and Common Knowledge, and in the edited collections Renaissance Music in the Slavic World, New Perspectives on Early Music in Spain, and Sakralmusik imHabsburger Kaiserreich 1570–1740. Her article “On the Trail of a Knight of Santiago: Collecting Music and Mapping Knowledge in Renaissance Europe,” co-authored with Tess Knighton and Ferran Escrivà-Llorca, was awarded the 2020 Westrup Prize from the Music & Letters Trust. Her book manuscript, The Ends of Harmony: Sacred Music and Sound in Prague, 1550–1650, uses sacred music and sound to explain how people of different faiths tried, and failed, to live together in the city that hosted the opening and closing acts of the Thirty Years War. In addition to leading Stony Brook’s Baroque Performance Practice Workshop with Arthur Haas, Honisch has partnered with a number of early music groups, including Schola Antiqua, Third Coast Baroque, the Newberry Consort and, most recently, Cinquecento, for their album Regnart: Missa Christ isterstanden and other works (Hyperion). A frequent collaborator on international research projects, she is a member of the Spanish working group CONFRASOUND and a founding member of Musica Rudolphina, based in Prague.
DAVID HOOSE is Music Director emeritus of Cantata Singers & Ensemble, an organization he led for thirty-eight years, and he is Professor emeritus at Boston University, where he was the School of Music Director of Orchestras and taught conducting for twenty-nine years. For eleven seasons, he was Music Director of the Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra, and he is in his thirtieth season as Music Director of Collage New Music.
In 2016, the Czech Republic awarded Mr. Hoose the Silver Jan Masaryk Honorary Medal, presented “for [his] role in raising the profile of Czech composer Jan Dismas Zelenka’s music in the United States. The City of Boston proclaimed November 3, 2017, as “David Hoose Day,” for his “enormous contribution to the musical community both here in Boston and around the world.” He is recipient of the Ditson Conductors Award for the Advancement of American Music, the Choral Arts New England Lifetime Achievement Award, the ASCAP/Chorus America Award for Adventurous Programming, the 1981 Walter W. Naumburg Award for Chamber Music (as hornist of the Emmanuel Wind Quintet), and the Dimitri Mitropoulos Award at the Tanglewood Music Center. With Collage New Music, he was a Grammy Nominee for “Best Recording with Small Ensemble, With or Without Conductor.”
Mr. Hoose has appeared as guest conductor of the National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra, Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Korean Broadcasting Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, Utah Symphony, Chicago Philharmonic, Quad Cities Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony Chamber Players, and Handel & Haydn Society. He has also conducted, among others, Emmanuel Music (numerous times), the Fromm Chamber Players, Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra (numerous times), as well as at the Tanglewood, Monadnock, and New Hampshire music festivals.
David Hoose studied composition at the Oberlin Conservatory with Richard Hoffmann and Walter Aschaffenburg, and at Brandeis University with Arthur Berger and Harold Shapero. He studied horn with Barry Tuckwell, Joseph Singer and Richard Mackey, and his conducting studies were with Gustav Meier at the Tanglewood Music Center.