60 strán významného amerického časopisu Music & Literature je venovaných Vladovi Godárovi, najvýznamnejšej postave súčasnej slovenskej hudby. Na počesť vydania tohoto čísla sa bude 10. októbra konať v New Yorku aj komorný koncert z jeho tvorby.
Recenzií a ohlasov na jeho tvorbu nájdete spústu všade. Jeho partitúry vydáva jedno z najvýznamnejších hudobných vydavateľstiev na svete. (nájdete tam aj audio ukážky)
Okrem toho, vydavateľstvo Dalkey Archive Press chystá na budúci rok knihu Vladových esejí v anglickom preklade.
Všetci títo vydavatelia a organizátori zjavne vedia čo robia.
Na ukážku jedna esej o Vladovi z nového vydania, ktoré vychádza na starom dobrom papieri, ale dá sa nájsť aj online.
Pred uvedením Concerta Grossa v Bratislave, skladateľ a dirigent
A toto som o Vladovi do časopisu napísal ja, s láskavým dovolením vydavateľa, nech sa páči:
The year was 1974. Amidst the worst of post-68 normalization two
18-year old music students met at the admission test for the University of Arts
in Bratislava. They both wanted to study composition. They both were admitted. But
something else also happened on that day - a lifelong friendship between Vlado
Godar and myself started.
We entered the school together, we went through it together, we both got married on the same
day and I don't think I've ever met a person with whom I'd have an
understanding as complete as with him. He would know what was going on, when
(yes, many years ago) a telegram was delivered by phone to his flabbergasted
father, who could not understand, why the Karamazov brothers would ask him to
pickle the oranges in casks .
Yes, I sent it, and Vlado knew immediately.
To this day we are able to communicate in our own shorthand
language. Rarely is any explanation necessary and most of the time an
unfinished sentence stands for many descriptive words. Despite the fact that
we've been living on different continents for over 20 years now, the connection
is as strong as ever and whenever we meet, even after many months, we just
continue our conversation as if we met for the last time just yesterday.
His knowledge and understanding of many areas is extraordinary.
Between all his work, teaching, raising children, taking care of the household
and other related tasks, he always manages to be entirely up to date with
music, whether classical, world or pop, literature, both fiction and
vocational, movies, politics, historical research... you name it. The stream of
incoming recommendations of things I should read, hear and see is incredibly
vast and virtually endless. I am unable even to follow everything that comes my
way from him, while he already included all the ramifications in his latest
writing.
My fascination with Vlado never ceases. The capacity of his
brain and its ability to find the most unbelievable and yet strongly logical
connections and associations is incredible. If there ever was a polymath, a
Renaissance man, it must be him.
I can imagine the pleasure of being his student. He doesn't
just teach the subject, his discourses always come with the entire context,
unexpected yet crucially important connections and associations and on top of
all that, a spirited and humorous delivery.
I know his musical output quite well, having even performed
a few of his pieces. It was always a creative adventure and a pure physical
pleasure, because his music is both incredibly well crafted and beautiful.
I can't even remember all the occasions when Vlado inspired
me and gave me new ideas for my work. Despite him not being a practical man at
all - he does not drive and I don't think he would be capable of any manual
labor [there is a famous story how at the hardware store the salesman refused
to sell Vlado a chain saw just from looking at him] - he is an incredible
organizer and an inspiring force to anybody who has the luck to collaborate
with him.
It was during our university times when he started
suggesting, and later insisting, that I should be playing jazz piano more
seriously. Luckily enough I listened then, and every time later, whether it was
a suggestion of a possible musical partner, or an opportunity to present a piece
I wrote. He was quite instrumental for several key performances of my life and
did all this very unselfishly. Needles to say, I was not the only one to enjoy
the stream of Vlado's ideas, suggestions and causal chains.
Vlado has an unbelievable eye and ear for discovering
extremely talented musicians. Besides discovering, he feels the responsibility
to help them to kick start their careers and he organized an uncountable number
of concerts, giving opportunities to many beginning musicians. In the same way
he discovers forgotten or neglected composers from the past and helps to
re-create and revive their compositions in order to present them to public.
The service he did to preserving important composers of
Slovak and European music history and their output is immense, and so far
totally underappreciated.
As a conductor performing contemporary music quite
extensively, I really cherish Vlado as a composer, because he always strives to
make his music accessible, but before anything else, beautiful. No matter what
the subject is, whether it is a very serious piece, bringing up themes that
determine history and societal changes or if it is just a short musical joke,
the music always maintains its most important attribute - beauty. At the same
time, the highest level possible of musical craft he operates with is crystal
clear. I have to stress this, because these qualities are seldom found in most contemporary
pieces.
As long as I can remember, we shared the same opinion about
what music should bring to people and how it should be done. Within the ivory confines of today's academia,
despite the proven fact that audiences are quite uninterested in it, our colleagues
firmly rooted in Darmstadt/Adorno tried to ignore, ostracize, boycott and harm
Vlado uncountable times. Instead
of appreciating his qualities, his colleagues, whether composers, writers or teachers
tried very hard to exclude him from their institutions. However, Vlado's work
and music makes most of the inrigues disappear.
The world, and his
audiences especially recognized the quality and the deep humanity of Vlado's
music and its message. His music stands firmly on the shoulders of history, yet
it is innovative and unusual. It is often connected to the best works of literature
throughout human history - from folk poetry (whether Slovak or African), to the
works of great Slovak, Chinese and other poets, through the most important
texts like Gilgamesh, Jan Amos Komensky, Erasmus of Rotterdam, James Joyce,
Skhlovsky or Chiladze to mention just a few.
Vlado refuses to create music aimed at a pseudo intellectual
crowd, such as those who pretend to fall into a false trance over three minutes
of silence, or those who are excited by three hours of a repeated five notes,
even when such music is put on a pedestal by dumbed-down media and critics
living in constant fear of being exposed as promoters of the emperor's new
clothes. He always knew that it is of utmost necessity and a matter of artist's
responsibility to carry the torch of tradition, to stress and highlight the
focal points in human history and to strive for peace, love, beauty and
understanding.
The same goes for his writing as a scientist and historian.
His ability to find and connect points in the history of the human race that
are not only invisible, but often completely unknown to most of us, is uncanny.
By doing that, Vlado is able to arrive at new and rightly generalizing
conclusions, which are often quite surprising, but always completely relevant.
They help the rest of us to understand, at least partially, the message that
the quest for finding sense in human existence is still important, even if we
probably won't ever get a lucid answer from it. And his music somehow lets us
feel that all of a sudden, everything, at least for a fleeting moment, makes
complete sense indeed.
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