Über Miloslav Istvan

The beginnings of Miloslav Istvan (2.9. 1928 Olomouc -26.1.1990 Brno) as a composer fall into the time of his studies at Janacek Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts (1948-1952, research student 1953-1956), when in Brno it came to the appreciation of Janacek s creative heritage and when, at the same time, the attention of the youth was turned to the rich sources of folk music, which had kept its traditional continuity in Moravia.
From Janacek s uncompromising innovation there was only a stop for Istvan to Bartok s modal composition. From Moravian folklore the study took him later on to the Balkan, to Asian and to African folklores. Everything that was bringing about new views of music structure, new harmonic and sonic solutions avoiding contemporary schematization, Istvan absorbed with the eagerness of youth, but also with critical distance of an expanding opinion of his own.
At the turn of the fifties and the sixties when he was active at JAMU as a teacher of composition (since 1957 senior assistant, since 1976 reader), he concluded the years of seeking with a symphonic fresco Ballad on the South, which, in spite of the after-effects of Bartok and Shostakovich, is bearing individual features of his own: robust dramatic expression and non-sentimental, socially committed feeling. In the stage of the realization of basic ways out, Istvan is affected - quite belatedly - by the information on the development of the 2nd Viennese School and its post - Webernese disemboguement together with the influx of New Music incursions. The composer adopts the twelve-tone technique. His production, however, is overwhelmed by modal series connected with typical interval characteristics of the Moravian folk song. It is only in 1967 that he grasps a text that in the orchestral Exorcism of the Time he leaves in natural spoken form, and only a year later, in the chamber Old Testament cantata "I, Jacob", he puts Hebrew extracts of the Bible to music, but the text important for its meaning is left with the reciter. In these works whose philosophical meditation about the sense of human existence is filled with the tension of dramatic clashes, Istvan has reached his own way of cutting assembly, which in future will stay a decisive technical mark of his musical communication and a basis for poly-stylish solution of the composition. Istvan s assembly, applied both in music and in text, is based on the alteration of contrastive objects which in repeating are left essentially without change, only being in various ways combined, permeated, thickened, diluted. Even archaic signs of Renaissance and baroque music are getting in contrastive relation, as well as characteristic elements of contemporary beat and rock, which at the same time are receiving a function of a semantic symbol. From the point of the tectonic process of composition, but also with respect to the listener's reception, an important element of Istvan s compositions is the refrain, of course not a refrain in the traditional meaning, but as a short expressive model appearing repeatedly in crucial points and making the listener's orientation easier. The rhythmics which entered to the foreground of the composer's interest in the seventies by means of Afro-Asian foklore, enhanced the significance of the percussion, utilizing it at a greater measure not only in the orchestra but also in chamber compositions (Psalmus niger, Capriccio, Duo for double bass and percussion, Trio for clarinet, percussion and piano). Inventive instrumental combinations, putting into practice even historical and popular instruments as well as sources of non-musical emblems, underline the timbre component, which has always been substantial for strict formal structure of Istvan s work.
The eighties witnessed a number of mature compositions which are increasingly responding to the instigations of the actual world. The thematic complexes of his works were concentrated on a passionate apology of the right to the dignity of man /chamber cantata Hard blues - a protest song with American Negroes wording, Love, Defiance and Death - composition instigated by a realistic drama from Moravian life, the indignantly brutal Tempus irae, remotely inspired by Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath (and on meditations about the content of human life) the cantatas of the late sixties were joined by the seven-part cycle Games, and lyrically conceived and compositionally simplified Vocal Symphony, and the subjective testimony in the String Quartet No. 2/, Istvan emerges as a full-fledged personality of contemporary Czech music, always bringing new instigations to his work and taking credit of both domestic and foreign listeners.