PRAHARPHONA

In April 2008, Kryštof Mařatka received the commission for a Harp Concerto from the Kiel Philharmonic Orchestra (Germany). The idea came from Czech harpist Jana Boušková who created the full-version piece in Kiel in October 2010. By its formal structure, its proportions and its orchestration, the work recalls one of Mařatka’s most frequently played pages, the clarinet concerto Luminarium, whose 27 sections are grouped into 9 movements. There, the “scenario” was geographical, using traditional music from many countries around the world. In Praharphona, this journey through space is replaced by a trip back in time, as indicated by the subtitle “Music from the Old and the New Prague”. And the milestones guiding the eight movements of very variable dimensions are here calligrams. They are more of a secret code, the starting point of the composer for an imaginary journey to Prague through the Golden City’s memory of space and time.

In the second movement, we’ll notice that O. = 72 (“the rhythm of things”) is both the normal metronomic rhythm of the human heart... and the year of birth of the composer!...

In the third movement, the letters of the word “labyrinth” are scattered in the minds of the exiles. The graphic ^=v representing the Jewish city might remind us that Hebrew is read from right to left and that the clock hands of the Old Synagogue are turning “backwards”. In the orchestral version of this typical Jewish dance, the clarinet plays in the klezmer style. The (silent) exclamation "!!?, both stupefaction and misunderstanding, symbolizes the smallness of spirit (a curse that too often restrains Czechs from necessary revolts), the familiar “bar code” present on any object that one buys represents the consumer society governed by the law of the Market. It is a toccata evoking perhaps the incessant pace of cash registers.

In the fourth movement, crossing the familiar Charles Bridge reminds us of the University that bears the same name, the oldest in Central Europe, founded sixteen years earlier than Leipzig. And if this rapprochement dangerously evokes a tourist visit, we are warned of it by the following pun, even if its slogans are harmless. Under the communist regime, the only existing tourist agency (Čedok) was of course governed by the state, hence a reminder of the absurd dogmas of the dictatorship, hammered at the obtuse pace of the goose step. Mařatka has lived this until the age of 18 and the traces in him remain indelible.

Like the initial Prelude, the fifth movement is a brief and static interlude, a slightly worrying time of rest and night solitude.

In the sixth movement, the allusions to non-European instruments are more present in the orchestral version. Family, roots are symbolized by a circle, and the music temporarily takes on a more traditional aspect. Then, a pair of glasses represents astronomy, with a very brief episode whirling at a vertiginous speed. The notes “D D D D E C C E” will be familiar to every music lover as the first of the famous Hussite hymn “Ye Who Are Warriors of God", as found in the last two parts (Tábor and Blaník) of Smetana cycle My Country, in Dvořák’s Hussite Overture and in many other classics of Czech music. A little later in history, we reach the reign of Emperor Rudolph, the legendary age of the alchemists. Read meloG from right to left the Hebrew way and you will discover the famous Prague Golem, created by Rabbi Loew. Pád means fall, a reminder of the fatal defenestrations (among many others) from the top of Prague’s Castle, the last dating back to 1948 when Jan Masaryk was “committed suicide” by the communists, and his memory quickly swallowed up by the tide.

At the beginning of the seventh movement, a splendid succession of seven chords represent the noble facades of the houses of Prague, and the flames are of course alluding to Jan Palach’s sacrificial suicide after 1968’s Soviet occupation, but also to the flames of Jan Hus and of the Prague National Theatre that burned so quickly after its inauguration. Here, the composer asks the harpist to insert sheets of paper between the strings to suggest cracklings. The sad song of the second violin sounds like a cantus firmus. The accomplished sacrifice remains alone, rising to the inaudible infinity of a shrill B flat.

In the eighth movement, Nepomuk refers to the saint symbolizing the forced return to Catholicism imposed on the Czech people by the Habsburgs after the defeat of the White Mountain, marking the beginning of a long darkness (Temno). The most recent one, under the Communist yoke, was much more terrible, but fortunately much shorter... “XX” are the “enlightened strangers”, both Praguers and foreigners, whose presence has always enriched the life of this hospitable city, not to be confused with the hordes of tourists who invade it nowadays. The word “evolution” is intentionally written with the simple € representing the European currency, symbolizing Prague’s recovered place in the very heart of Europe. However, may it remain faithful to its traditional identity, incarnated by the multiple taverns and cafés, pretext here to a loud and truculent dance. The thirteen last strokes of the work (thirteen, not twelve!) punctuate the pencil strokes on the cardboard coasters to indicate the number of pints consumed of the best beer in the world. Thus, the permanency of the Czech pivo will optimistically prevail over all the tragedies that the city has experienced, especially as its architectural treasures have miraculously survived all wars. Perhaps it is this smallness of spirit (malost), by dint of down-to-earth common sense, that has allowed this survival... Nothing has yet been said about Praharphona’s music, which even the minutest technical analysis wouldn’t do justice. For here, we find permanent invention of the most exuberant richness, an infinite variety of new sounds obtained by purely natural and artisanal means. Here, everything is “handmade”. The presence, so colourful, of the slide whistle, the kazoo or the harmonica, some of the twenty instruments married by the only percussionist, are all clear allusions to the field of universal folklore. But if the percussionist so frequently crosses the border of noise, the harp, the winds and the strings cross it in the other direction; from so-called “sound” to “noise”, at indeterminate height. This brings us back to the very origins of musical innovation, under the imaginative fingers of old minstrels that can still be found in the most remote corners of the planet."

Harry Halbreich