Tortoiseshell Music Home of composer Nathan Curtis

This week, I continue my Tuesday feature series with a longtime favorite piece of mine, Music for Prague 1968 by Karel Husa. First, the basics: Music for Prague 1968, for symphonic band, was composed in the fall of 1968 by Karel Husa, a Czech composer living in America. The work is in four movements -- Introduction and Fanfare, Aria, Interlude, and Toccata and Chorale -- and a complete performance lasts 20 to 25 minutes. Movement 3, the Interlude, is scored for percussion only; the other movements all utilize the full band.

I have a strong personal connection to this piece, going back to my early musical development. My high school wind ensemble played Music for Prague during my junior year, and I rate our performance of the last two movements at our pre-festival concert as one of the most profound musical experiences I have had the fortune to participate in. Our full performance of Prague at our end-of-year concert was not as stirring; we did not have enough time to adequately work up the first two movements, and we got out of practice with the last two movements. Nevertheless, Music for Prague was among the pieces that inspired me to more seriously pursue music in general, and composition in particular, when I went off to college.

Not everybody in the wind ensemble shared my enthusiasm. Music for Prague is by no means an easy piece: it is one of the most technically difficult works in the band repertoire, and it is hardly ingratiating to the ears. Some of us reveled in the ear-splitting dissonances of the piece; our motto was "Prague is Power!" But an equally vocal contingent complained that this wasn't what music was supposed to be like. Music for Prague was so divisive that the yearbook article on the wind ensemble was entirely about the band's mixed opinions of the piece. But the starkest illustration of the difficulty of appreciating Music for Prague was the pre-festival concert I mentioned previously. We put together an amazing performance of the last two movements. Many of us held nothing back, and even those students who were less enthusiastic about Prague put in a great deal of effort. After the last notes of the closing chorale died away, the parents and family members in the audience responded with polite but clearly half-hearted applause. We followed that up with Who's Who in Navy Blue, a harmless little Sousa march notable only for the fact that we had the brass section sing the melody during the trio. And that brought the house down. I felt that Prague was by far the worthier performance of the two, but what do I know? Probably too much.

So Music for Prague was controversial, at least during my formative years. But that doesn't make it great. What makes it great for me? Well, aside from my personal history with the piece, there are several things:

Music for Prague is timely. It was written in response to the Soviet invasion of Prague following the Prague Spring, and the spectre of oppression which hangs over it has sadly remained all too relevant. If Music for Prague is dissonant, anguished, even violent, there is good reason for it. Music for Prague is a piece which decidedly exists in our world, rather than some fantasy world of motives and pitch relationships and rhythms which remains untroubled by reality. Of course, some people don't want that. I welcome it. Here, dense brass clusters herald the oppressive Soviet presence in the Fanfare section of the first movement.

Music for Prague 1968, movement 1, Introduction and Fanfare. Eastman Wind Ensemble, Donald Hunsberger conducting.

Music for Prague uses its materials well. Most of the piece is atonal, deriving from twelve-tone rows and pitch-sets which are often cause for the audience to walk out before they hear anything. But it's not merely a theoretical exercise that requires a PhD to understand; while the harmonies and melodies may be completely foreign to most listeners, they are not the only expressive elements in the piece. The is a lot of content in the rhythms, melodic contours, registers, and timbres as well, and you don't need perfect pitch or a theory class to feel the impact of those elements. And Husa is adept at balancing simplicity and complexity. The opening piccolo solo of the first movement is markedly atonal, but also clearly evocative of birdsong, which Husa uses to represent the freedom which Prague has seldom enjoyed in its thousand-year existence:

Opening of Music for Prague 1968, movement 1, Introduction and Fanfare. Eastman Wind Ensemble, Donald Hunsberger conducting.

And while the disjointed melodies, implacable dissonances, and obsessive rhythmic tattoos of the Toccata in the fourth movement create an unmistakable air of terror and confusion, the chorale that follows is even more gripping for its primal nature, featuring the 15th century Hussite anthem "Ye Warriors of God and His Law"¹ symbolically rising over the tumult:

Transition in Music for Prague 1968, movement 4, Toccata and Chorale. Eastman Wind Ensemble, Donald Hunsberger conducting.

Music for Prague is an uncompromising piece for band. Concert bands gets a lot of flak from "serious" musicians, especially composers, for playing a lot of lightweight pieces. Bands definitely have one thing going for them: they play a lot of contemporary music, simply because there wasn't a lot of band music written before the 20th century.² But many of the pieces that get a lot of play on the bandstand are certainly more conservative than their orchestral counterpoints (and far more conservative than contemporary chamber music, which is where the action's really at). But harmonically conservative -- that is to say, tonal and mostly consonant -- does not mean musically inferior. My favorite band pieces tend to be those that do not compromise artistic expression for accessibility, regardless of their harmonic language: Holst's Hammersmith, Hindemith's Konzertmusik, Joseph Schwantner's ...and the mountains rising nowhere, Ron Nelson's Passacaglia, and large portions of Grainger's and Persichetti's outputs number among them, as well as Music for Prague.

Concomitant with the uncompromising nature of Music for Prague is the fact that Husa treated the concert band as a fully independent and versatile ensemble, rather than a poor substitute for orchestra, or a halftime marching band that happens to be sitting down. Music for Prague was Husa's first composition for band, although you wouldn't know it from listening. He gets a lot of great sounds out of the ensemble, and makes good use of the band's unique assets, especially the low woodwinds. Husa subsequently made an orchestral arrangement of Music for Prague, because, in his words, "in Europe this piece wouldn't have been performed with band". Frank Oteri, who is famous for being one of the most open-minded listeners in all of music, thinks that "it is through the forces of a complete symphony orchestra that [this work attains its] fullest majesty, mystery, and universality,"³ but I have to disagree. In the opening of the second movement, the low woodwinds give a doom-laden sound to the wandering melody in the original version, while the cellos in the orchestral version sound petulant:

Opening of Music for Prague 1968, movement 2: "Aria". Eastman Wind Ensemble, Donald Hunsberger conducting.

Opening of Music for Prague 1968 (orchestral version), movement 2: "Aria". The Louisville Orchestra, Jorge Mester conducting.

In the closing chorale of the final movement, it may be easier on the performers to transfer the trumpets' sustained high A to the violins, but it loses a lot of its immediacy:

Music for Prague 1968, movement 4: "Toccata and Chorale". Eastman Wind Ensemble, Donald Hunsberger performing.

Music for Prague 1968 (orchestral version), movement 4: "Toccata and Chorale". The Louisville Orchestra, Jorge Mester conducting.

There are many other moments where I strongly prefer the Eastman Wind Ensemble's recording to the Louisville Orchestra's, but these may be due to performance choices rather than the transcription itself: in the Louisville recording, I think the metallic percussion instruments are played too harshly, individual lines are singled out for undue prominence in some of the deliberately cacophonous sections, and when the full ensemble suddenly cuts out except for the ringing of the vibraphone, the effect is ruined by an excessive use of the vibraphone motor.

I in fact own four recordings of Music for Prague 1968, perhaps more versions than any other piece in my collection. In addition to the Eastman Wind Ensemble and the Louisville Orchestra, I also have recordings of my high school wind ensemble (with yours truly on the bass trombone, naturally) and the Duke Wind Symphony (before I joined, but in a performance conducted by Karel Husa himself). The Eastman Wind Ensemble gives a superior performance overall, and I fine the orchestral version superfluous on general principle, but the other two band recordings have their merits as well. The tympani are very prominent in Music for Prague, and I think my high school band offers the best rendition of the part -- we had an incredible tympanist, who was something of a cult figure in the band. And getting to hear Husa's own interpretation of Prague is quite a treat, though he makes some very interesting decisions -- he asks for the bass notes in the background of the opening of the second movement, which I believe are marked mezzo-piano (medium-soft) in the score, to be LOUD. Maybe he wanted the mood of the opening to be apocalyptic, rather than merely foreshadowing. Sadly, both of these recordings are on cassette, so I cannot share them with you. But I can share some more of the Eastman recording. I haven't yet featured any excerpts from the third movement, so here is the beginning of that Interlude:

Music for Prague 1968, movement 3, Interlude. Eastman Wind Ensemble, Donald Hunsberger Conducting

In some ways, this may be the best place to approach Music for Prague if all the dissonance scares you. There is very little pitched material here, so one would be inclined to pay attention to those other musical elements I talked about: rhythm, contour, timbre, and density. And these are the sort of things that you should listen for in the other movements as well, even if you cannot make sense of the pitch content.

So I think there are several reasons why Music for Prague 1968 is a great piece. But there's an even simpler explanation for why I love it: I'm a bass trombonist, and I love getting to play something loud and raw. Some people like heavy metal, I like thorny classical music. As they say, "Prague is Power!"

Music for Prague 1968, movement 2, Aria. Eastman Wind Ensemble, Donald Hunsberger conducting.

And, for the curious, here's more information about the recordings I've cited.

Eastman Wind Ensemble Plays Husa, Copland, Vaughan Williams, Hindemith, Eastman Wind Ensemble, Donald Hunsberger conducting. Recorded in 1989. CBS (now Sony), MK 44916.

Karel Husa: Music for Prague 1968, Apotheosis of this Earth, Louisville Orchestra, Jorge Mester conducting. First Edition Music, FECD-0009. The CD appears to be unavailable, though mp3s can be purchased online.

The recordings by the Duke University Wind Symphony and the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology Symphonic Wind Ensemble and not commercially available.

Well, I failed to get this posted on Tuesday by almost an hour, but at least it's a good bit shorter than last week's edition. See you next Tuesday!

1This song is widely recognized by Czechs, and is prominently featured in at least two other Czech nationalist works: Smetana's Ma Vlast and Dvořák's Hussite Overture.
2Although many band directors make up for this deficiency by programming a fair number of transcriptions of orchestral classics. I think that a reliance on orchestral transcriptions delegitimizes the existing band repertoire, sending the message that all the good music was written for orchestra. Of course, I don't really see the dearth of the three B's in the band world as a problem, so my opinion on this matter, as with Music for Prague 1968, may be an outlier.
3Quoted from the liner notes to the album Karel Husa: Music for Prague 1968 and Apotheosis of this Earth.