I came across this composers some months ago, and as I haven't found anything related to him or his music, I thought I'd start a topic on this composer.
I listened to the overture of his opera 'Svatojánské proudy' (which translates as St. John's Rapids, which was a 'stretch of flast flowing water' on the Moldau.)
Right at the start, it sounded a little bit familiar in some way, as if I was listening to Smetana. (My feeling was right. After looking them up, I found that they had the same teacher, Josef Proksch. Perhaps he made them do a 'musical exercise' to portray the river Moldau?)
Anyway, after a soft start, it became a bit more powerful, in which I possibly recognized a bit of Wagner. I think he had a personal musical language, but I'm not certain of that yet. Then halfway through it gradually went a bit more peacceful, and the themes you could hear in the beginning are repeated, with a fitting ending.
Perhaps anyone else knows more about him? (Besides the fact that he composed some more operas and a little bit of other orchestral and chamber music.)
Sounds like a rip-off of Smetana to me. Highly attractive, though.
There's an excerpt from the opera mentioned on this recital:
https://www.amazon.de/dp/B006HICBWO/ref=dm_cd_album_lnk (https://www.amazon.de/dp/B006HICBWO/ref=dm_cd_album_lnk)
Trouble is, I just couldn't listen repeatedly to the singer involved. It needs much better advocacy. Still, for the curious, perhaps - try track 7...
Yes - a very pleasant pastiche of Smetana. Would like to hear more to see if he wrote anything with greater individuality.
Actually, there's an interesting issue of chronology here. Rozkošný's opera (according to Wikipedia) dates from 1871, whereas, for example, Smetana's Má vlast was composed between 1872 and 1879, with Vltava dating from 1874. So who ripped off whom, I wonder?
That's an interesting fact indeed! And here's where it gets more interesting:
Rozkošný's opera was premiered on October 3, 1871. And there the work was conducted by none other than: Bedřich Smetana.
So perhaps this work was one of his inspirational sources in some way to compose 'Vltava'?
https://www.breitkopf.com/assets/pdf/EOS_20472_Pref.pdf
According to this authoritative Preface (to what I'm unsure) "There can be no question, however, of any musical influence (of Rozkošný's opera) on Smetana's work". So that's that, I guess - end of discussion.
The statement is made but with no convincing evidence to support it.
Exactly. It's just an unsupported assertion. Bit like a Trump tweet...
I get the feeling the question of Smetana's "borrowing" from Rozkošný (who, ironically, was actually one of his strongest supporters) must have been considered before in Czech musical circles, but the authorities decided to squash it as something of an embarrassment. I can't believe that Milan Pospíšil (writer of the Preface, presumably to the score of Ma Vlast) failed to notice such obvious resemblances. Bare-faced denial of plain evidence isn't a new ploy!
I agree, it's really interesting how he 'failed to notice' these resemblances. But perhaps he did.
But I also have the feeling that the fact that Smetana conducted the premiere of Rozkošný could've been influential on him.
I can imagine that conducting the premiere of an opera isn't something you would just forget.
So perhaps Rozkošný, in a certain sense, paved the way for Smetana to compose his masterpiece?
That could very well have been the case.
Geez, is there no respite from politics?
For innocent amusement I recommend googling Rozkošný's Wikipedia entry in Czech and selecting "translate". For useful information, the entry in Czech on Svatojánské proudy contains the following, which requires some intelligent interpretation:
The biggest lifetime of work retained a prelude Midsummer streams that used to be played in concert [13] a few times and recorded. Recalls some passages from Smetana's Vltava and even some recent work [15] deem it possible that she inspired Smetana. While the embodiment of the Vltava river and catch firefly music streams in Rozkošného Smetana's opera might be some general inspiration, original version of the opera in 1871 did not contain any overture, which some reviewers even surprise criticized [16] . It was completed much later for new production in 1880, a few years after the song Smetana (1874), and the influence is therefore reversed.
So not a repeat of the Mahler/Rott controversy!
What a satisfying reversal!
I just found some more fragments from Rozkošný's opera Svatojanské proudy on YouTube that haven't been mentioned here before.
You can listen to them here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftr_7DOHMsM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDU0aNE4n8c
And very nice they are too. Thanks for posting the links.
That's what I thought as well!
I found that Rozkošný didn't orchestrate the opera himself, but another composer did. And that composer was Karel Šebor.
I've been looking through the online database of the Czech National Library, and I've only found the piano reductions there (along with the sung texts, of course. They do have other works by him, so it's very interesting to browse it through, even though you can't view them.)
Hearing these fragments makes me wonder where they got the orchestrated score from.
btw article on the opera here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_John%27s_Rapids_(opera)) @ Wikipedia. (Doesn't mention that Sebor orchestrated it; if you could add thereto that information and where you got it from, that would be appreciated :) ) (Yes, St. John's Rapids is an English nickname for the opera, just as Die Moldaunixe is a German one.) (Though the only alternate title given in the Wikipedia article is Vltavská víla. The article on the composer does have "Svatojanské proudy (St John's Rapids, after the rapids on the Vltava) also called Vltavská víla (The Spirit of the Vltava) 1871" - Janacek wrote an article about it in 1887, I see from Google (" Nekolik slov o Svatojanskych proudech J.R. RozkoSneho [A few words about Rozkosny's St John's Rapids] signed: A HL,iii/9 (15 Feb 1887)"...)
Yes, I was already aware of the Wikipedia article on the opera, but I wasn't aware of Janáček's article. I think I should read that one through.
I found out about Šebor's (possible) orchestration on the Dutch Wikipedia article on Rozkošný.
The same article furthermore states that Šebor did the instrumentation for another one of Rozkošný's operas, Záviš z Falkenštejna, though there aren't any references to other sources given immediately. Hopefully those aren't 'spurious claims.' :)
By the way, the Czech wikipedia page on Svatojanské proudy also mentions that Šebor did the instrumentation.