(Ger. Brünn).
Second largest city in the Czech Republic and the cultural centre of Moravia. From the 13th century onwards the original Slavonic inhabitants were augmented by German colonists and by a large number of Romance/Norman and Jewish immigrants. A systematic Germanization of Brno took place, especially after the Battle of the White Mountain (1620), so that by the end of the 19th century under half the inhabitants claimed Czech nationality. A reversal in the relative proportion of Czechs and Germans took place after 1919, but until 1945 there was still a sizeable German minority in Brno. As a result of this ethnic dichotomy, from the 18th to the 20th centuries the city's cultural life developed along parallel lines, Czech and German.
ALENA NĚMCOVÁ
Medieval musical relics preserved in the city include 13th-century neumatic missals, 14th-century antiphoners belonging to Queen Eliška Rejčka, and 14th- and 15th-century liturgical volumes from the church of St Jakub. In the 13th century schools were founded at the churches of St Petr and St Jakub; at the time of the Reformation (16th century and early 17th) Protestant hymn-singing was also taught at private schools. The large Jewish community preserved Hebrew chanting, and this was used to give a festive welcome to King John of Luxembourg during his entry into the city in 1311.
One noted choirmaster active at St Petr was Matěj František Altmann (late 17th century to 1718), who later moved to St Jakub, where he compiled a collection of Italian Baroque music and kept in touch with Roman and Viennese composers. A number of works by the St Petr choirmaster Gotthard Pokorný (1733–1805), revealing the influence of Viennese and Italian Classicism, have also survived. The choirmaster Josef Dvořák (1807–69) also held several posts in the city, from chorister at the Augustinian monastery in old Brno to solo bass at the municipal theatre and director of German choral societies. Under his direction the organist Josef Neruda (1807–75), founder of a well-known musical family, worked with the choir of St Petr from 1832 to 1845. In 1714 Jakub Wachter (d 1741) became the first of a long line of remarkable organists active at St Jakub; his Requiem, performed at his own funeral, displays elements of the mature Viennese Baroque style. From 1762 the musical tradition of St Jakub was fostered by the choirmaster Peregrino Gravani (1732–1815), an ardent admirer of Haydn and Mozart, who left behind a large number of works composed in the Viennese Classical style and an extensive thematic catalogue.
The archives of the Brno monasteries contain evidence of an intensive cultivation of music, both within the liturgy and in the monks' refectories and at public academies, and also allude to the choristers' participation in opera performances. The Premonstratensians at Brno-Zábrdovice were visited by Jacobus Gallus around 1579. The library of the Augustinians includes 16th- and 17th-century publications by masters of the Dutch, Roman and Venetian schools, as well as a collection of manuscripts including works by native organists and members of the Augustinian order, such as Jeronym Haura (1704–50), composer of the Czech pastoral song Hej, chval každý duch, Jan Brixides (c1712–c1772) and Pavel Křížkovský (1820–85). The collection also contains a number of symphonic, chamber and dramatic works, among them a musical play on a Czech text, Opera bohemica de camino (c1772), ascribed to the composer Karel Loos.
The Augustinian foundation, established in 1653, had a far-reaching effect on the training of young musicians right up to the 19th century. In the mid-19th century, when the young Leoš Janáček (1854–1928) arrived at the choir school, the Augustinian monastery was the centre of intellectual life in the city and its systematic musical training provided the basis for Brno's musical education. The atmosphere of national revival prompted the priest František Sušil to compile and publish his collection Moravské národní písně (‘Moravian Folksongs’, 1835), which during the course of further editions grew into a monumental work (comprising 2361 texts and 2091 melodies), which provided the basis and the model for later studies of folk music. It was also a source of inspiration for many Czech composers, including Křížkovský, Dvořák, Janáček, Novák and Martinů.
Secular music was cultivated in medieval Brno at the court of the margrave. The brother of the Emperor Charles IV, Jan Jindřich (Margrave of Moravia 1349–75), had at his court two pipers; his successor Jošt (margrave 1375–1411) appears to have added two trumpeters to these. In the following century information about secular music is restricted to references to the participation of trumpeters and drummers in ceremonial welcomes given to important personages. In 1674 the municipal council commissioned Jan Jiří Janczi to retain a group of tower musicians; alongside these there existed in 18th-century Brno the trumpeters of the Regional Estates, whose function was to lend brilliance to meetings of the regional assembly and other administrative bodies. The municipal trumpeters took part on 30 December 1767 in a performance given by the 11-year-old Mozart and his sister in the hall of the Brno Reduta (Redoutensaale).
Concerts were given in the Reduta as early as the 1730s, at a time when music could also be heard in the town residences of the music-loving nobility. The orientation of the Moravian nobility towards Vienna had a decisive effect on musical taste. During the first half of the 18th century, on the recommendation of Cardinal Wolfgang Hannibal Schrattenbach of Olomouc, choral works by composers of the Venetian and Neapolitan schools (Caldara, Porpora, Leo) were performed in Brno, as well as oratorios by the cardinal's court composer Václav Matyáš Gurecký (in service from 1731 to 1736).
The Philharmonische Gesellschaft, founded in 1808, took over the organization of concerts, and the age of the virtuoso brought Hummel, Spohr and Nikolaus Kraft to Brno. In the 1840s performances by Liszt, Anton Rubinstein, Clara Schumann and Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst attracted attention; Ernst returned to his native city for several appearances. In 1848 the Male Choral Society was founded, whose mixed Czech and German repertory was directed alternately by Czech and German conductors (Křížkovský and Gottfried Rieger). In the 1860s two competing organizations were founded almost simultaneously, the Czech Beseda Brněnská (Brno Club) (1861) and the German Brünner Musikverein (1862), which later found homes in two newly built cultural and educational centres: the Czechs in the Besední Dům (meeting house, 1872) and the Germans in the Deutsches Haus (1891). The latter provided a base for other musical institutions: the Brünner Kammermusikverein (founded in 1886) and the ambitious Brünner Philharmoniker, the first Brno symphony orchestra, founded in 1902 on the model of the Vienna PO. The rich German concert societies continued to invite famous virtuosos (Henri Marteau, Anton Schnabel, Eugen d'Albert) and conductors; in 1906 Mahler conducted his First Symphony in the city, and in 1911 Richard Strauss conducted his Don Juan. During the second half of the 19th century an important contribution was made by the pianist-composer Agnes Tyrrell (1846–83), whose Zwölf grosse Studien, op.48 received a favourable verdict from Liszt.
Music in the Besední Dům was principally provided by the Philharmonic Society of the Brno Beseda (originally known simply as the Brno Beseda), founded in 1861, whose first choirmaster was Křížkovský. The Beseda's artistic stature was enhanced after 1876, when Janáček became its musical director, a function he performed until 1888. Janáček expanded the original male-voice choir into a mixed choir and raised the artistic level of the Beseda's programmes, in which he took part as both choirmaster and pianist. Other noted choirmasters of the Brno Beseda included Rudolf Reissig (1874–1939) and Jaroslav Kvapil (1892–1958).
Smetana gave a piano recital in Brno under the auspices of the Brno Beseda (1873), and Dvořák appeared several times as conductor of his own works. As the Brno Czech community did not have its own symphony orchestra, the Czech PO was invited to give concerts, and the Czech Quartet and other chamber ensembles and soloists (e.g. Jan Kubelík and František Ondříček) often took part in chamber concerts. The choirs of D.A. Slavjanský and N. Slavjanská also gave performances in Brno. Janáček's efforts to create a permanent Czech orchestra came to fruition only in 1940, when the Brno RSO was set up; in 1956 it merged with the Brno Regional SO to form the Brno State PO, whose first chief conductor was Janáček's pupil Břetislav Bakala. Regular symphony concerts had, however, already been initiated by František Neumann with the opera orchestra of the Czech Theatre. Between the wars the Moravian Quartet (founded in 1923), the Moravian Wind Quintet (1927), the Vachův Sbor Moravských Učitelek (Moravian Women Teachers' Choir) conducted by Ferdinand Vach (formally constituted 1917) and the Academic Male-Voice Choir Moravan (1931) all flourished. After World War II further chamber ensembles were formed, notably the Janáček Quartet (1947), as well as three chamber orchestras and several high-class choruses. The political changes of 1989 brought an end to many of these ensembles but brought too the triumphal return of Rudolf Firkušný, who had begun his studies in Brno with Janáček.
In the 1730s companies run by various Italian impresarios (Angelo and Pietro Mingotti, Filippo Neri del Fantasia, Francesco Ferrari) performed Italian opera (Galuppi, Bambini, Porpora, Lucchini, Orlandini) in the Reduta. In the second half of the 18th century the Italians alternated with German companies performing Gluck, Mozart, Dittersdorf and Wenzel Müller. The first operatic performance in Czech was of Jan Tuček's Zamilovaný ponocný (The Lovelorn Nightwatchman) by a German touring company in 1767. In 1783 a new German opera by the local composer Ignaz Holzbauer, Günther von Schwarzburg, scored a great success, and three years later Josef II granted the city a theatrical privilege.
The initially bilingual municipal theatre company in 1840 staged Škroup's Dráteník (‘The Tinker’) alongside a German Hamlet by the Brno native and later successful operatic impresario Max Maretzek, and in 1841 put on Žižkův dub (‘Žižka's Oak’) by another local composer, František Bedřich Kott. From the 1860s onwards the company gradually became biassed in favour of German productions, and after the 1870 fire in the Reduta performed exclusively in German, at first in the hastily constructed Interimstheater and from 1882 onwards in the Stadttheater later known as the Divadlo na Hradbách (Theatre on the Ramparts). The repertory of this theatre was grounded in the standard Classical and Romantic repertory, with a definite emphasis on German opera and especially the operas of Wagner. Later, audiences at the German opera were introduced to the contemporary works of Strauss, the Brno-born Korngold and others. Singers from the Viennese Hofoper often made guest appearances, among them another Brno native, Maria Jeritza, and her compatriot Leo Slezak.
Opera in Czech for a while found refuge in the Besední Dům (1874–81). From 1884 Czech performances were given in a makeshift converted dance hall; against all expectations, these continued for 35 years. In 1894 Janáček's The Beginning of a Romance was performed here, followed on 21 January 1904 by the world premičre of Jenůfa, and several Czech artists made their débuts in the theatre, including the tenor Karel Burian and the conductor Karel Kovařovic.
Czech opera in Brno enjoyed a real flowering after 1919, when the company moved into the Stadttheater, thereafter known as the Národní Divadlo (National Theatre), and František Neumann (1874–1929) took charge. He created and maintained an artistically superior ensemble, and with the world premičres of Kát'a Kabanová (1921), The Cunning Little Vixen (1924), Šárka (1925) and The Makropulos Affair (1926) laid the foundations for a Janáček tradition that was to be continued by Bakala (who led the premičre of From the House of the Dead in 1930), Milan Sachs (1884–1968) and František Jílek (1913–93). Other works introduced here included a whole series of operas and ballets by Martinů, as well as Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet (1938) and Rafael Kubelík's opera Veronika (1947). In 1965 the opera company acquired a new building known as the Janáček Theatre.
Brno is home to a conservatory which grew out of Janáček's organ school in 1919, the Janáček Academy of Musical Arts (JAMU, founded in 1947), and the institute of musicology at the philosophical faculty of Masaryk University. Extensive archives, including Janáček's manuscripts, are preserved by the music history division of the Moravian regional museum. Valuable folk music collections are compiled by the Brno-based Institute of Ethnographical and Folklore Studies of the Czech Academy of Sciences. Every year Brno hosts an autumn music festival (latterly known as the Moravian Autumn) in connection with the musicological conferences that have taken place since 1966. The periodical Opus musicum (founded in 1969) is published in Brno. The Leoš Janáček Foundation was set up in 1991 to promote the works of Janáček.
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