#Brno city of music A NEW MUSIC GUIDE FROM BRNO, A UNESCO CREATIVE CITY OF MUSIC CLASSICAL MUSIC OPERA OPERETTA, MUSICAL JAZZ FOLKLORE “TRAMP” MUSIC, MODERN FOLK. COUNTRY ROCK, METAL, POP UNDERGROUND, ALTERNATIVE, PUNK ELECTRONIC MUSIC In 2017, Brno was awarded the prestigious title of UNESCO Creative City of Music, thus joining a network of 46 cities viewing music as one of their development priorities. Follow www.mestohudby.cz for the latest information on activities in the city of music. BRNO – 3× UNESCO BRNO ↓ LEOŠ JANÁČEK ARCHIVES ↓ VILLA TUGENDHAT ↓ UNESCO Creative City of Music UNESCO Memory UNESCO World Heritage List of the World Register #Brno city of music To write a guide to music in BRNO Of fundamental importance for Brno A basic feature of life in BRNO is the in the past and present means dig- is its proximity to important folklore way in which musicians and musical ging deep into one’s own recollec- regions, which are an endless source genres are interconnected through tions and those of others as well as of fresh, creative blood. On the other innumerable networks, something into sources with varying degrees hand, however, people often leave that long predates the age of the of reliability, and as far as possible Brno for larger centres - in the past Internet. When Brno became a mem- not believing anything automatical- mostly for Prague, but increasingly ber of the UNESCO Creative Cities ly but always asking “Did this really in the past thirty years for the whole Network in the field of music in happen just like that?” And in doing outside world. This is perhaps one 2017, it was simply a further logical so, to be very, very suspicious of of the reasons why the standard step in its long development. At the one’s own memory. musical genre in Brno is alterna- moment Brno is in the first stages of tive; genuine pop has always had preparing a bid to be named a Euro- Two basic questions that cropped a minimal presence here. With fewer pean City of Culture in 2028. up in connection with almost every than 400,000 inhabitants, Brno isn’t sentence were “What is it about In writing the individual chapters of really a very big city, though it’s big this band or that event that makes this guide, a multitude of facts had enough to be the Czech Republic’s them special? Would someone to be sacrificed on the altar of brev- second largest. Basically all the who’s never been to Brno and ity. The aim was to offer a general musicians in Brno know what all the has no ties with the city find it and personal view rather than an other musicians are doing. interesting?” exhaustive list. For the preparation BRNO is the unofficial metropolis of of this brochure, even the smallest At times Brno’s obsession with Moravia. It boasts a massive con- bits of information and advice were Janáček, whom it promotes as one centration of universities, theatres, always welcome: my thanks go to of the few figures of world stature clubs and all sorts of spaces suit- on-line sources and to individuals who lived here for a considerable able for playing music. There’s per- both living and dead, from nearby length of time, really does go too far. haps an even greater concentration and afar, people known personally But it’s thanks to a biennial festival of people who want to play, and to me and strangers: Jura Cancák devoted to his operas that ninety this is quite logical. Brno has more (trampsky-magazin.cz), Zdeněk years after his death the city has than twenty basic schools of the Černý, the Czech Theatre Encyclo- moved into the musical big league: in arts, a conservatory, the Janáček pedia, Jan Dalecký, David Dittrich, April 2019 Brno was presented with Academy of the Performing Arts, Martin Dohnal, encyklopedie.brna.cz, a prestigious International Opera and a Department of Musicology at Petr Gratias, L. P. Fish, Dušan Holý, Award in the Sadler's Wells Theatre in Masaryk University. A huge number folklornet.cz, Kateřina Hnátová, kftp. London. Earlier, in 2017, the Moravi- of people with a musical educa- cz, Vladimír Maňas, Ivo Medek, Jan an Autumn Festival staged a meg- tion are to be found in a fairly Němeček, Jiří Plocek, Jan Pohunek, aproduction of Arseny Avraamov’s small area. And it’s impossible to Irena Přibylová, Don Sparling, Milan The Symphony of Sirens, whose count the number of amateurs who Tesař, trampnet.sk, and myown- recording on the occasion was participate enthusiastically in all memory.bk. All helped to make the commissioned by Bavarian Radio, genres, from choir singers through guide what it is. which offers it to listeners on-line. So musicians in symphony orchestras Brno’s musical activities are far from For any shortcomings in the guide, to rockers and singer-songwriters. local in their impact. the responsibility is mine. Boris Klepal #symphony of the city CLASSICAL MUSIC Cultivated music, art music, serious music … shifting from one of these messy labels to another usually has one aim: to avoid the problematic “classical music”. Today this misleading term covers everything that was heard in medieval churches, in the course of Baroque festivities, in the age of bourgeois revolutions and at experimental con- certs that saw shoes being thrown at the performers. Brno happily recalls visits here by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Franz Liszt and Bedřich Smetana, short as they were. But it also remembers the Hollywood film music celebrity Erich Wolfgang Korngold, who spent his earliest years in Brno. Brno might appear to be a city of brief sojourns, were it not for Leoš Janáček, who made it his home and in the course of the past forty years has become one of the world’s most frequently performed composers. But the musical history of the city mirrored the turbulent political changes in the nineteenth century and drew on the enormous energy released by the creation of a free Czechoslovakia in 1918: never since then has its progressive character vanished completely. #symphony of the city HOUSES OF (MUSICAL) One of the greatest musicians of It was musicians from St James’s PRAYER the day, Alessandro Striggio, was Church who formed the core of the enticed to Brno by the Habsburg orchestra that accompanied the For hundreds of years the city’s emperor Maximilian II, who was eleven-year-old Wolfgang Amadeus skyline has been dominated by the attending a session of the Moravi- Mozart when he performed here in Cathedral of SS Peter and Paul, an Estates here. Striggio wished 1767. His concert is commemorat- situated on a hill overlooking the to present the emperor with his ed by a statue by Kurt Gebauer in city, and the Church of St James at forty-voice mass Ecco si beati front of the Reduta theatre, where its very heart. These two churches giorno. A second great Renaissance the young Mozart appeared. housed schools where young boys composer was present in Brno as Without Reduta, the subsequent were also trained in singing. Another a member of Maximilian’s retinue musical life of Brno would have been important musical centre was the - Jacob Handl Gallus. Many works unthinkable. It was the site of the Basilica of the Assumption of Our found in the archives of the city’s first opera performances in Brno but Lady in Mendel Square. This was churches can be heard in Brno also a suitable space for concerts. founded in 1323 by Queen Eliza- today as part of the annual Easter Much later, operetta found a home beth Richeza, quite unaware that Festival of Sacred Music. many centuries later Brno’s greatest here, and chamber concerts and operas have continued to take musical figure,Leoš Janáček, would begin his musical career here. FROM BAROQUE ORGAN TO place here down to the present. But THE TWENTIETH CENTURY of course the hall is too small for Liturgical singing is not what we concerts by today’s first-rate musi- today term “musical life”, and has Even after the arrival of the Ba- cians: the size of the public and its nothing in common whatsoever roque in Brno, the local churches diversity have multiplied exponen- with concerts as such. Never- remained the city’s musical centres. tially since the eighteenth century. theless, musical activity in those By this time the Jesuits were While not even the Janáček Theatre, long-gone days often anticipated established here, and in 1743 they which can seat more than one thou- social development. Paintings by had the city’s second organ in- sand spectators, could answer the leading medieval and Renaissance stalled in their church; it remained demand for tickets to a concert by artists were probably not to be there until destroyed by bombs in Valery Gergiev and the London Sym- phony Orchestra in 2013, the much smaller Reduta was large enough for a charity concert by Franz Liszt and the appearances of Clara Schu- mann and of Johannes Brahms with the violinist Joseph Joachim. But far more important than visits by outstanding musicians was the city’s everyday musical life, which took on enormous momentum after 1860, when it became possible to establish associations: this was an important stimulus to the emergence of what we now term civil society. SOCIAL GATHERINGS, ASSOCIATIONS AND THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN Schola Gregoriana Pragensis´ Holy Week Meditations at the Easter Festival of Sacred Music. NATIONALITIES Photo: Brno Philharmonic At the time, Brno was run by its seen in Brno’s churches, but music 1944.