Eugen Suchon
Encyclopedia
Eugen Suchoň was one of the greatest Slovak
composer
s of the 20th century.
, (Slovakia). His father, Ladislav Suchoň, was an organist
and teacher. His mother, Serafína Suchoňová, was a piano teacher, and it was from her that he received his first piano tuition. The house was always filled with music and, as a small child, he would listen from under the piano when his father rehearsed at home with other musicians. In 1920, at the age of twelve, he started taking piano lessons at the Bratislava
School of Music with the distinguished musician Frico Kafenda
. Later, from 1927–1931, he continued his studies with the same teacher at the newly established Academy of Music in Bratislava. His early works include several piano compositions and a choral work Veľky Pôst (The Great Fast). He graduated from his composition classes with the Sonata in A-flat for Violin and Piano and a String Quartet
(op.2, 1931, revised 1939). His two year studies at the Prague Conservatoire
under Vítězslav Novák
set the seal on the thorough training he had received from Kafenda.
Compositions from this period include a Piano Quartet
(1933), and the song cycle
Nox et solitudo for mezzo soprano and small orchestra or piano (1932) based on a poem by Ivan Krasko
, Little Suite
with Passacaglia
for piano (1930, orchestrated in 1967), Serenade
for Brass Quintet
and the Burlesque
for Violin and Orchestra. All these works show an already distinguished and mature composer. During this time Eugen Suchoň taught music theory at the Academy of Music and Drama in Bratislava (1933). His works from this period are in a late Romantic
idiom with elements of folk modality combined with chromaticism
. In particular the popular male choral cycle O horách (“Of mountains”) was a seminal work which established a Slovak national style. This was followed by his monumental cantata, The Psalm of the Sub-Carpathian
Land (1938). Many folksong arrangements date from this period, which reached a climax in his opera Krútňava
(The Whirlpool, 1949) with its rich portrayal of characters.
(“King Svätopluk”), completed in 1959. This historic opera represents the monumental dramatic fresco from the period of the Great Moravian Empire. It is a large-scale work with noble aspirations, displaying Slavic
motifs and culminating in the victory of good over evil. The work was premiered in Bratislava in 1960, and performed the same year in Prague
and Košice
.
. His style changed as he incorporated serialism
into his compositions. Harmonies emphasizing 2nds, 4ths and 7ths led to polymodality
. His later output consists predominantly of chamber and orchestral works, e.g. the song cycle Ad astra (1961), based on poems by Štefan Žáry
, the mixed choir cycle O človeku (“On Man”), the Poème macabre for violin and piano, Contemplations for narrator and piano, Six Compositions for Strings, the Rhapsodic Suite for piano and orchestra and the Symfonická fantasia na BACH (1971). His piano cycle Kaleidoscope also exists in a version for piano, string orchestra and percussion. His last works include a Concertino for Clarinet and Orchestra, Elegy, Toccata, and the song cycle
s Glimpse into the Unknown and Three Songs for Bass.
Slovakia
The Slovak Republic is a landlocked state in Central Europe. It has a population of over five million and an area of about . Slovakia is bordered by the Czech Republic and Austria to the west, Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east and Hungary to the south...
composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
s of the 20th century.
Early life
Eugen Suchoň was born on September 25, 1908 in PezinokPezinok
Pezinok is a city in southwestern Slovakia. It is roughly northeast of Bratislava and has a population of 21,334 .Pezinok lies near the Little Carpathians and thrives mainly on viticulture and agriculture, as well as on brick making and ceramic production.-History:From the second half of the 10th...
, (Slovakia). His father, Ladislav Suchoň, was an organist
Organist
An organist is a musician who plays any type of organ. An organist may play solo organ works, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers or instrumental soloists...
and teacher. His mother, Serafína Suchoňová, was a piano teacher, and it was from her that he received his first piano tuition. The house was always filled with music and, as a small child, he would listen from under the piano when his father rehearsed at home with other musicians. In 1920, at the age of twelve, he started taking piano lessons at the Bratislava
Bratislava
Bratislava is the capital of Slovakia and, with a population of about 431,000, also the country's largest city. Bratislava is in southwestern Slovakia on both banks of the Danube River. Bordering Austria and Hungary, it is the only national capital that borders two independent countries.Bratislava...
School of Music with the distinguished musician Frico Kafenda
Frico Kafenda
Frico Kafenda was a Slovak composer, and a musical pedagogue. His piano students included a famous composer Eugen Suchoň....
. Later, from 1927–1931, he continued his studies with the same teacher at the newly established Academy of Music in Bratislava. His early works include several piano compositions and a choral work Veľky Pôst (The Great Fast). He graduated from his composition classes with the Sonata in A-flat for Violin and Piano and a String Quartet
String quartet
A string quartet is a musical ensemble of four string players – usually two violin players, a violist and a cellist – or a piece written to be performed by such a group...
(op.2, 1931, revised 1939). His two year studies at the Prague Conservatoire
Prague Conservatory
Prague Conservatory, sometimes also Prague Conservatoire, in Czech Pražská konzervatoř, is a Czech secondary school in Prague dedicated to teaching the arts of music and theater acting.- Instruction :...
under Vítězslav Novák
Vítezslav Novák
Vítězslav Novák was one of the most well-respected Czech composers and pedagogues, almost singlehandedly founding a mid-century Czech school of composition...
set the seal on the thorough training he had received from Kafenda.
Compositions from this period include a Piano Quartet
Piano quartet
In European classical music, piano quartet denotes a chamber music composition for piano and three other instruments, or a musical ensemble comprising such instruments...
(1933), and the song cycle
Song cycle
A song cycle is a group of songs designed to be performed in a sequence as a single entity. As a rule, all of the songs are by the same composer and often use words from the same poet or lyricist. Unification can be achieved by a narrative or a persona common to the songs, or even, as in Schumann's...
Nox et solitudo for mezzo soprano and small orchestra or piano (1932) based on a poem by Ivan Krasko
Ivan Krasko
Ivan Krasko was a Slovak poet, translator and representative of modernism in Slovakia....
, Little Suite
Suite
In music, a suite is an ordered set of instrumental or orchestral pieces normally performed in a concert setting rather than as accompaniment; they may be extracts from an opera, ballet , or incidental music to a play or film , or they may be entirely original movements .In the...
with Passacaglia
Passacaglia
The passacaglia is a musical form that originated in early seventeenth-century Spain and is still used by contemporary composers. It is usually of a serious character and is often, but not always, based on a bass-ostinato and written in triple metre....
for piano (1930, orchestrated in 1967), Serenade
Serenade
In music, a serenade is a musical composition, and/or performance, in someone's honor. Serenades are typically calm, light music.The word Serenade is derived from the Italian word sereno, which means calm....
for Brass Quintet
Brass quintet
A brass quintet is a five-piece musical ensemble composed of brass instruments. The most common instrumentation is two trumpets or cornets, one horn, one trombone or euphonium/baritone horn, and one tuba or bass trombone....
and the Burlesque
Burlesque
Burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects...
for Violin and Orchestra. All these works show an already distinguished and mature composer. During this time Eugen Suchoň taught music theory at the Academy of Music and Drama in Bratislava (1933). His works from this period are in a late Romantic
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
idiom with elements of folk modality combined with chromaticism
Chromaticism
Chromaticism is a compositional technique interspersing the primary diatonic pitches and chords with other pitches of the chromatic scale. Chromaticism is in contrast or addition to tonality or diatonicism...
. In particular the popular male choral cycle O horách (“Of mountains”) was a seminal work which established a Slovak national style. This was followed by his monumental cantata, The Psalm of the Sub-Carpathian
Carpathian Mountains
The Carpathian Mountains or Carpathians are a range of mountains forming an arc roughly long across Central and Eastern Europe, making them the second-longest mountain range in Europe...
Land (1938). Many folksong arrangements date from this period, which reached a climax in his opera Krútňava
Krútnava
Krútňava is an opera in six scenes by Eugen Suchoň written in the 1940s to a libretto by the composer and Štefan Hoza, based on a novella, Za vyšným mlynom by Milo Urban...
(The Whirlpool, 1949) with its rich portrayal of characters.
Middle years
The success of Krútňava established modern Slovak opera, and drew international attention. From 1948–1960 Suchoň was professor and head of the Department of Music Education at the Teacher Training College in Bratislava. Works from this period include the Fantasies for Violin and Orchestra, Metamorphoses for piano, and the Symphonic Suite for grand orchestra. Suchoň became heavily involved in the practical and theoretical aspects of music education. Of particular significance was his second opera Kraľ SvätoplukSvätopluk (opera)
Svätopluk is a Slovak opera by Eugen Suchoň with the subtitle Musical drama in three acts. The libretto is by Eugen Suchoň, Ivan Stodola and Jela Krčméry-Vrteľová and is loosely based on Stodola's play Kráľ Svätopluk, which was in turn based on events in the life of King Svatopluk I. Suchoň...
(“King Svätopluk”), completed in 1959. This historic opera represents the monumental dramatic fresco from the period of the Great Moravian Empire. It is a large-scale work with noble aspirations, displaying Slavic
Slavic mythology
Slavic mythology is the mythological aspect of the polytheistic religion that was practised by the Slavs before Christianisation.The religion possesses many common traits with other religions descended from the Proto-Indo-European religion....
motifs and culminating in the victory of good over evil. The work was premiered in Bratislava in 1960, and performed the same year in Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
and Košice
Košice
Košice is a city in eastern Slovakia. It is situated on the river Hornád at the eastern reaches of the Slovak Ore Mountains, near the border with Hungary...
.
Later years
From 1959 to 1974 he was professor of music theory at Bratislava UniversityComenius University in Bratislava
Comenius University in Bratislava is the largest university in Slovakia, with most of its faculties located in Bratislava. It was founded in 1919, shortly after the creation of Czechoslovakia. It is named after Jan Amos Comenius, a 17th century Czech teacher and philosopher.In 2006, Comenius...
. His style changed as he incorporated serialism
Serialism
In music, serialism is a method or technique of composition that uses a series of values to manipulate different musical elements. Serialism began primarily with Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, though his contemporaries were also working to establish serialism as one example of...
into his compositions. Harmonies emphasizing 2nds, 4ths and 7ths led to polymodality
Polymodality
Polymodality is the feature of having multiple stimulus modalities. Examples includes free nerve endings....
. His later output consists predominantly of chamber and orchestral works, e.g. the song cycle Ad astra (1961), based on poems by Štefan Žáry
Štefan Žáry
Štefan Žáry was a Slovak poet, prosaist, translator and essayist; author of erotic lyric poetry, patriotic and anti-war poems, reminiscential prose. In his patriotic poems, he expressed his disappointment of a civilization progress...
, the mixed choir cycle O človeku (“On Man”), the Poème macabre for violin and piano, Contemplations for narrator and piano, Six Compositions for Strings, the Rhapsodic Suite for piano and orchestra and the Symfonická fantasia na BACH (1971). His piano cycle Kaleidoscope also exists in a version for piano, string orchestra and percussion. His last works include a Concertino for Clarinet and Orchestra, Elegy, Toccata, and the song cycle
Song cycle
A song cycle is a group of songs designed to be performed in a sequence as a single entity. As a rule, all of the songs are by the same composer and often use words from the same poet or lyricist. Unification can be achieved by a narrative or a persona common to the songs, or even, as in Schumann's...
s Glimpse into the Unknown and Three Songs for Bass.
Dramatic works
- Music to Stodola's drama King Svätopluk (1935–1936)
- Music to Gerzo's play Barbara of Celje (1937)
Operas
- KrútňavaKrútnavaKrútňava is an opera in six scenes by Eugen Suchoň written in the 1940s to a libretto by the composer and Štefan Hoza, based on a novella, Za vyšným mlynom by Milo Urban...
(The Whirlpool, libretto by Suchoň and Štefan HozaŠtefan HozaŠtefan Hoza was a Slovak operatic tenor, actor, librettist, educator, music publicist and historian....
, 1941–1949) - SvätoplukSvätopluk (opera)Svätopluk is a Slovak opera by Eugen Suchoň with the subtitle Musical drama in three acts. The libretto is by Eugen Suchoň, Ivan Stodola and Jela Krčméry-Vrteľová and is loosely based on Stodola's play Kráľ Svätopluk, which was in turn based on events in the life of King Svatopluk I. Suchoň...
(libretto by Suchoň, Jela Krčméry-Vrteľová and Ivan StodolaIvan StodolaIvan Stodola was Slovak dramatist and writer.-Biography:He was born in Liptovský Svätý Mikuláš into a family of professional tanners and teachers. He was educated in his hometown, Prešov and Kežmarok, and later, he studied medicine at college in Budapest and Berlin, earning a degree in 1912...
, 1952–1959)
Symphonic works
- The little Suite with Passacaglia (1967)
- Overture to Stodola's drama King Svatopluk (1934)
- Balladic Suite (1934–1936)
- Psalm of the Carpathian land (1937–1938)
- The fight will be finished tomorrow (1950)
- Metamorphoses (1951–1953)
- Symfonietta Rustica (1954–1955)
- The Breakthrough (1977)
- Three Songs for Bass (1984–1985)
Orchestral works with soloist
- Burlesque (1933)
- Fantasia (1948)
- Rhapsodic Suite (1964)
- Symphonic Fantasia on B-A-C-H (1971)
- Concertino (1977)
Chamber works
- Sonata in A flat Major (1929–1930)
- String Quartet (1930–1931, reworked 1939)
- Little Suite with Passacaglia (1931–1932)
- Serenade (1932–1933)
- Piano Quartet (1932–1933)
- Balladic Suite (1935)
- Academic Fanfare of Comenius University (1937)
- Sonatina (1937)
- Wedding Dance from opera The Whirlpool (1971)
- Metamorphoses (1951–1953)
- Poeme Macabre (1963)
- Six Pieces for Strings (1955–1964)
- Kaleidoscope (1967)
- Toccata (1973)
Vocal works
- Nox et Solitudo (1932)
- Ad astra (1961)
- Contemplations (1964)
- Glimpse into the unknown (1977)
Choral works
- How Beautiful You Are (1932–1933)
- From the Mountain (1934–1942)
Music on the Web
- Little Suite and Passacaglia for piano (YouTube)
- Sonatina for piano (YouTube)
External links and references
- Suchon compositions
- The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians ed. Stanley Sadie (1980) vol 18.
- New Perspectives on Eugen Suchoñ by Petra Prievoznikovà in Two Countries: One Heart Bedford High School 2005