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Kabelac's message: the electro-acoustic composition E fontibus Bohemicis, op. 55.

Article Excerpt
It was characteristic of Miloslav Kabelac the composer that he never shut the door on any impulse or inspiration that might potentially be fruitful for his music. He always, however, used such impulses and transformed them in a highly individual and often very unconventional way. He avoided useless stereotypes, and was continually attracted to new creative problems and new solutions. (This is particularly well demonstrated in his eight symphonies, each written for a different set of instruments and each quite differently conceived, specific and distinctive). Kabelac had a very wide knowledge of contemporary music and the music of past epochs, and also knew a great deal about the music of non-European cultures, but he never accepted any work he encountered in a passive spirit. With each one he started--as a composer--a critical intellectual dialogue, whether sympathetic or polemic. Clearly he was very much taken with electronic music, which opens up a large new field of possibilities for composers, and he himself became on of its leading pioneers in this country.

When the potential for composition in a sound laboratory became apparent--first in the Radio and Television Institute in Prague and then particularly in the electro-acoustic studio of the radio station in Plzen--Kabelac started on work of his own. Naturally, in his electro-acoustic composition, a composer as distinctive and strong-minded as Kabelac was going to imprint the new material with the typical features of his creative idiom just as he did when working with traditional note material.

At that time his idea was to create a three-part composition in "musique concrete" extracted using just the sound material of a bell. The bell that he chose was Zikmund in the Prague Cathedral of St. Vitus and on the 12th of September 1965 he made a recording of the bell from three places: in the tower over the bell, in the third castle courtyard and in the royal oratory of St. Vitus's Cathedral (it turned out that only the recording from the tower, technically the best, was suitable for use in electro-acoustic composition). He planned to call the piece Hradcany Vigils and he continued to use the name long after he had basically changed the whole concept of the work, to which he finally gave the more precise name E fontibus Bohemicis--Six Pictures from Czech Chronicles in the last stages of composition.

By the spring of 1966 Kabelac had created one part of the originally planned Hradcany--Fantasia on the sound of the Zikmund Bell. The hymn Hospodine pomiluj ny [Lord Have Mercy upon Us], created purely by electro-acoustic treatment of the sound of the bell, appears in the middle section of this work. In the meantime, however, the whole concept of the piece had begun to grow and change in the composer's mind. As originally intended the Hradcany Vigils were supposed to have primarily composition studies in the field of "concrete music". Gradually, however, elements of programmatic direction began to enter the plan. Here the idea of using the song Lord Have Mercy upon Us and the very name Hradcany Vigils may have played a part as catalysts.

At that time--and for a long time to come--Kabelac was exploring the hymn Hospodine ... Lord Have Mercy upon Us in all its aspects; he reflected on its character and musical structure, and traced its historical roots and connections. At the same time,...