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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Vitezslav Novak (December 5, 1870 – July 18, 1949) was one of the most well-respected Czech composers and pedagogues, almost singlehandedly founding a mid-century Czech school of composition. Stylistically, he was a leading figure in the Neo-Romanticism movement, and his music has been occasionally considered an early example of Czech modernism.
Novak (baptized Viktor Novak) was born in Kamenice nad Lipou, a small town in Southern Bohemia. In his late teens he moved to Prague to study at Prague Conservatory, changing his name to Viteszslav to identify more closely with his Czech identity, as many of his generation had already done. At the conservatory he studied piano and attended Antonin Dvorak\'s masterclasses in composition where his fellow students included Josef Suk, Oskar Nedbal, and Rudolf Karel. When Dvorak departed for his three-year sojourn in America (1892-1895), Novak continued his studies with the ultra-conservative Karel Stecker. Novak would show his true colors, however, in the years shortly after graduation: just before and after 1900, he wrote a series of compositions that put distance between himself and the teachings of both Stecker and Dvorak, edging his style toward the fledgling modernist movement.
Beginning in the late 1890s, Novak began to explore influences beyond the prevailing Wagner/Brahms aesthetic of his contemporaries in Prague. Among these were folk influences from Moravia and Slovakia, which at that time were considered culturally backward in the cosmopolitan Czech capital. In many respects, Novak\'s career would follow a similar path as that of Strauss, in his early quest for new modernist expression and subsequent withdrawal from leadership in the movement.
Shortly after the turn of the century, Novak began teaching composition privately in Prague. From 1909 to 1920, he taught at the Prague Conservatory himself, and this occasionally occupied him to a greater degree than composing. During the same period, several events of a more personal nature affected Noa¡k\'s outlook on musical expression and artistic freedom. In the years 1901-1917, his apartment became the site of a discussion group known as the Podskalski filharmonie; while most of its members were musicians, including Suk, Karel, and the conductor Vaclav Talich, performances were confined to readings of new modernist works from abroad and the group\'s goals were primarily intellectual. Upon Czech independence in 1918, Novak turned toward a less personal manner of involvement in Prague musical life: the administration of culture in the new democratic regime. In this capacity, he led the push toward de-Germanification and nationalization of the Conservatory, during which process his German-Bohemian colleagues, including Alexander Zemlinsky and Paul Nettl, were forced out to form their own segregated institution. Novak became the new administrative head of the Czech-only institution and held various titles, alternating with Suk and others, until his retirement. During this period he continued to teach composition in the form of masterclasses, thereby influencing a new interwar generation of musicians, despite the increasing conservatism of his compositions in the 1920s.
In the 1930s, Novak enjoyed a period of artistic renewal with the premieres of some large-scale compositions. After the collapse of democracy and the ensuing Nazi protectorate in 1939, the retired professor gained considerable credibility among his younger Czech contemporaries through the performance of several patriotic and morale-boosting works, meant as a musical form of resistance. He died in Skutea in Eastern Bohemia, where he had spent much of his last years.
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