Presentation of 21st-century Czech music (I): Hanuš Bartoň and Michal Nejtek

“I have known Michal Nejtek for a long time. I remember how he came to me for consultation while still studying at the conservatory, and it occurred to me at that moment that if I continued my engagement in music, this would probably not be our last meeting. Today we are colleagues and we both teach composition at the Faculty of Music of the Academy of Performing Arts.

I seem to like the D note, which forms the basis of two compositions of mine. Yet each of them is different.

„In D“ for Solo Clarinet and a Soundtrack is the result of playing with the sound of the spoken word. Once I read a musicological article, and suddenly, in the middle of that professional article, I was caught by surprise by a part of one sentence, “because it is possible to predict the future“. It was like from another world, a completely unexpected change in the style of interpretation and mood, just what I like in music. I recorded that fragment of speech on my computer, and the track with the color of its sound in my computer became the basis for my long-planned composition for clarinet. It came out in D major.

32 Variations on the D Note, on the other hand, is a pun. When Beethoven could write his 33 great variations on a not so great theme by Antonio Diabelli (which is in C major), I got the idea of writing one variation less, but entirely without a theme.

Ten Miniatures for Wind Trio, Series 2 is the second attempt in my oeuvre for a composition in the form of a television series. The principle is that each miniature gradually develops into a situation which gives rise to the next one.” Hanuš Bartoň