Wind Ensemble Concert Review: Karel Husa's Music for Prague 1968
This concert review examines a wind ensemble performance featuring works by Karel Husa, Frank Ticheli, Michael Markowski, Vittorio Giannini, and others. The central focus is Husa's "Music for Prague 1968," a politically charged work commemorating Czechoslovakia's brief democratic flowering before the Soviet invasion. The review analyzes Husa's use of the medieval Hussite war song, bell motifs, and layered symbolism, contrasting these techniques with the nationalistic approaches of other composers on the program. The paper argues that Husa's emotional narrative and political protest elevated his work above the evening's more crowd-pleasing pieces.
- Introduction: A Night of Wind Ensemble: Overview of instruments and concert program
- Karel Husa's Music for Prague 1968: Themes and Symbolism: Hussite war song, bells, and national memory
- Nationalism and Contrast Across the Program: Husa versus other nationalistic works performed
- Husa's Motifs and Political Proclamation: Three-chord motif, bird call, and liberty symbolism
- Comparing Husa to Other Works on the Program: Repetition and narrative compared to Ticheli and Markowski
- Conclusion: The Piece That Resonated: Husa's lasting emotional and political impact
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What makes this paper effective
- The review grounds its analysis in primary source material — the composer's own program notes — lending authority and specificity to its claims about Husa's intentions.
- It consistently situates the featured work in context, comparing it against multiple other pieces on the program rather than reviewing each work in isolation.
- The paper moves fluidly between musical description and cultural/political interpretation, connecting the sonic qualities of the work to its historical subject matter.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates comparative critical analysis: rather than simply describing each piece, the writer uses the other works on the program as foils to sharpen the argument about what makes Husa's composition distinctive. Phrases like "stands in contrast to," "far more striking than," and "less a homage, more of a political protest" show how comparison can be used as a tool of evaluation rather than mere description.
Structure breakdown
The review opens by surveying the ensemble's instrumental resources before narrowing immediately to the centerpiece work. It then builds outward — introducing Husa's themes, quoting the program notes, comparing his nationalistic approach to that of other composers, and finally contrasting his structural use of repetition with Ticheli and Markowski. The conclusion returns to an evaluative judgment about lasting impact, giving the paper a clear arc from description to argument.
Introduction: A Night of Wind Ensemble
Throughout the concert, most pieces made ample use of the variety of instruments at their disposal, including flutes, oboes, English and regular horns, bass and regular clarinets, bassoons and contrabassoons, trumpets, trombones, tubas, and percussion instruments, as well as piano and strings. The showpiece work of the evening was clearly Karel Husa's Music for Prague 1968. As its name suggests, it was written in commemoration of the brief flowering of democracy in Prague in 1968, before the Soviet invasion of the country.
Karel Husa's Music for Prague 1968: Themes and Symbolism
The work makes use of both old and new musical sounds, beginning with plaintive Renaissance-style choruses and a soft timpani drum. According to the program, in which the composer's own notes were transcribed verbatim, "the first and most important" theme is the fragmented use of an old war song from the 15th century — "Ye Warriors of God and His Law" — a resistance song. The composer writes: "The beginning of this religious song is announced very softly in the first movement by timpani and concludes in a strong unison Chorale. The song is never used in its entirety. The second idea is the sound of bells throughout; Prague, named also the City of Hundreds of Towers, has used its magnificently sounding church bells as calls of distress as well as of victory."
Nationalism and Contrast Across the Program
Although this gives a somewhat medieval cast to the work, the pastiche quality of the song and the bells stands in contrast to more traditional reworkings of Renaissance pieces, such as the more linear, toe-tapping melodies of Tylman Susato's The Danserye. The use of religious choruses is subtle and ambiguous, in contrast to David Gillingham's more straightforward Be Thou My Vision or even the elastic vocal tones of Pavel Tschesnokoff's Salvation Is Created. Although other works during the evening — such as Alfred Reed's Armenian Dances, Part I and Andreas Makris's Aegean Festival Overture — also made use of traditional, nationalistic melodies, the juxtaposition of "Ye Warriors" and the holy bells of the "Introduction," contraposed with the distress calls that immediately follow in the "Aria," make the Czech nationalistic sounds far more unsettling. The effect is less a homage and more a political protest.
Conclusion: The Piece That Resonated
Although Husa's work was not as crowd-pleasing as Markowski's or Ticheli's, much less the velvety tones of Vittorio Giannini's Symphony No. 3, it was the piece that resonated in the memory long after the concert ended. Karel Husa's remarks, which by his request are always included in the program note whenever Music for Prague 1968 is performed, speak to the work's enduring political and emotional power — a power that elevated it above every other composition on an already impressive program.
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