Home Slovenská hudba 2023 Slovenská hudba, Vol. 49, No 1, p.51-58, 2023

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Slovenská hudba, Vol. 49, No 1, p.51-58, 2023

Title: Autobiografické momenty v diele Tadeáša Salvu
Author: Michal Ščepán
Abstract: Autobiographical Factors in Tadeáš Salva’s Oeuvre
In his analytical writings the Polish musicologist Mieczysław Tomaszewski pointed to the fact that an artifact possesses certain specific features related to the life of its author. Among them also autobiographical factors can be found, representing the evidence of life events, namely of the social situation in which the author lived and worked. Their presence can be identified not only on the basis of the time of origination but also in the title and subtitle, or dedication given in the work. Tadeáš Salva (1937–1995) was among those composers whose life and work cannot be perceived as two autonomous entities; on the contrary, his compositional activity was distinctively influenced by his experience in human society. Namely, social and political crises decidedly contributed not only to the origination of particular works of his but also considerably affected the development of Salva’s creation and character of its respective phases. It is peculiar to the pieces from the 1960s that they reflected the experience of crises taking place on the background of dramatic social-political processes both in our country and abroad. The piece Metamorphoses for strings, with a subtitle “To the heroes who were tortured in the concentration camp in Oświęncim” (1961), originated as a reminiscence to the World War II events. However, the peak of Salva’s work is represented by two sacred works: Requiem aeternam (1967) and Mša glagolskaja (Glagolitic Mass, 1969). While the first of them responds to the escalation of tension in international relations during the Cold War, the second one reflects the domestic situation after the August 1968 events. His compositions from later years likewise disclose their autobiographical factors, namely the peace oratorio War and World (1972) and Four Little Preludes (for piano, 1989), which were written under the impression of the revolutionary days of November 1989. The mosaic of Salva’s artistic personality sensitively reacting to the outside world is complemented with his statements from interviews, correspondence and his autobiography, unfortunately not published yet.

Keywords: Tadeáš Salva; Slovak music avant-garde; autobiographical factors; sacred music; social-political crises
Published online: 03-Apr-2023
Year: 2023, Volume: 49, Issue: 1 Page From: 51, Page To: 58
doi:10.4149/SH_2023_1_4


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