Алоис Габа: Чешский композитор и теоретик микротональной музыки

Czech music educator and composer

Alois Hába (21 June 1893 – 18 November 1973) was a Czech composer, music theorist and teacher. He belongs to the important discoverers in modern classical music, and major composers of microtonal music, especially using the quarter tone scale, though he used others such as sixth tones (e. g., in the 5th, 10th and 11th String Quartets), fifth tones (Sixteenth String Quartet), and twelfth tones. From the other microtonal conceptions, he discussed a "three quarter tone" system (see three quarter tone flat and the neutral second) in his theoretical works but he used scales in this tuning in sections of some of his compositions. In his prolific career, Hába composed three operas, an enormous collection of chamber music including 16 string quartets, piano, organ and choral pieces, some orchestral works and songs. He also had special keyboard and woodwind instruments constructed that were capable of playing quarter tone scales.

Alois Hába was born in the small town of Vizovice in Moravian Wallachia, into a family of 10 children. When he was five years old it was discovered that he had absolute pitch. He and his family often played and sang their native Wallachian folk songs, actively participated in church singing and folk music performances. In school, Alois became very interested in the musical aspects of the Czech language, above all in pitch, rhythm, accent, dynamics, and timbre of the speech. In 1908 he entered the teachers' training college in Kroměříž, where he began to develop an interest in Czech national music, analyzing the works of Bedřich Smetana. Already at that time he found out from his textbooks that the European system of music was not the only one in the world and that even some European music had in the past used different scales than the ones used in his time. He therefore started to develop his own point of view in this issue. After finishing his studies, he got a job as teacher in Bílovice, a small town near the Hungarian (now Slovak) border. Simultaneously, he continued his own musical studies and in 1913 wrote his first compositions, displaying an unwillingness to "follow the rules", which he maintained all his life. Hába was dissatisfied by small town life, and in 1914, he moved to Prague and became a pupil of neoromantic composer Vítězslav Novák. Here he was interested in analysing the works of Claude Debussy, Max Reger, Alexander Scriabin, and Richard Strauss, and in harmonization of Moravian folk music.

During World War I, he served in the Austrian Army on the Russian and Italian front from 1915 until early 1918, when he was moved to Vienna, where he worked in the music department of the Austrian Hungarian Ministry of War. There he almost immediately became a student of Franz Schreker, who brought out his more radical tendencies. At that time, Hába wrote his first quarter tone piece, Suite, consisting of three fugues in the quarter tone system, composed for two pianos tuned a quarter tone apart. Remaining in Vienna after the war, Hába attended the concerts produced by Arnold Schönberg's Verein für musikalische Privataufführungen, and became particularly influenced by the "athematic" style used by Schönberg in his Erwartung. First publications of his compositions included the String Quartet No. 2, his first major quarter tone work which was composed in 1920. At that time, his lifelong friendship with Hanns Eisler – with whom he shared political beliefs (Hába became an ardent communist at this time) as well as musical opinions – began.

Hába found his first success as a composer in Berlin, where he followed his teacher Schreker in late 1920. He published his first theoretical treatise (in Czech), the small booklet Harmonické základy čtvrttónové soustavy (Harmonic Essentials of the Quarter tone System). In 1923, he met Ferruccio Busoni, who had advocated the sixth tone system and encouraged Hába to continue his work in microtonality. The same year, Hába began to attempt the establishment of a school of microtonal music, but as the Nazis started to gain power in Germany, he came under attack and was driven out of Berlin. He returned to Prague and managed to get a job teaching workshops at the Prague Conservatory.

[[Image:Šestinotónové harmonium. jpg|thumb|250px|Sixth tone harmonium (1937) designed by Hába, built by Förster firm; it features triple reed, three manuals, two knee levers, and six registers. (exhibited at Czech Museum of Music) In all three operas, Hába expressed his bold socialist viewpoint, that caused controversies already at the time. For instance, the production of Nová Země (the plot of which deals with the Holodomor in Ukraine and how the Holodomor in a Ukrainian village is defeated by socialisation of production) and founding the kolkhoz Nová Země (The New Earth) by National Theatre in Prague in 1936 had to be cancelled by intervention from the Ministry of Culture as communist and pro soviet propaganda. In 1933, when Josef Suk became director of the Prague Conservatory, Hába was made a full professor and established the Department of Quarter tone and Sixth tone Music. Here he had much influence over his many students. It was also the early 1930s that saw the writing of what is probably Hába's most important orchestral work, the symphonic fantasy Cesta života (The Path of Life). The 1930s also shaped Hába's political stance and philosophy of life. His strong sense of social commitment found an intellectual basis in the anthroposophical teachings of Rudolf Steiner. In 1939 the German Nazis occupied Czechoslovakia and banned performance of Hába's work. They closed down the Prague Conservatory in 1941 and prevented him from teaching. During the war Hába wrote a continuation of his Theory of Harmony, completed, as already mentioned, a sixth tone opera (which was never produced), and considered constructing a twelfth tone harmonium. After World War II, he resumed teaching and held several administrative positions. At the turn of forties and fifties, the work of Alois Hába was affected by the communist regime in Czechoslovakia, becoming transitionally simplified, much more "thematic" and tonal, and also setting texts projecting communist ideology. He was nevertheless unable to rid himself of the label of “formalist” stuck onto him by Marxist aesthetics. In 1953 he was sent into retirement, but in his own words it was only at that point that he achieved real creative freedom. In 1957 he was named an honorary member of the ISCM. When Hába returned to his style, he continued in his experimental musical studies, which culminated in the 1960s with the use of fifth tones in his Sixteenth String Quartet in 1967. This work was premiered in the same year at the ISCM festival in Prague, performing by Novák Quartet. Hába was a prolific composer and continued to compose almost to the end of his life. He taught and influenced many musicians. Besides followers in his own country, Hába attracted students from South Slavic countries (Slovenia, Serbia, Bulgaria), Lithuania, Turkey, and elsewhere. The Prague Conservatory in general enjoyed an international reputation, and a great deal of credit for that goes to the contacts and pioneering efforts of Alois Hába. Despite these facts, he died in relative obscurity in Prague in 1973.

Alois Hába's works total 103 opuses, the majority of which are various kinds of chamber music. Among the most important are his string quartets, which document and demonstrate the development of his style. In addition to quarter tones, Hába used sixth tones in his String Quartets nos. in the 5, 10, and 11, as well as in Six Pieces for Sixth tone Harmonium or String Quartet (1928), Duo for Sixth tone Violins (1937), Thy Kingdom Come, a Sixth tone Musical Drama in Seven Scenes (1937–42), Suite in Sixth tones for Solo Violin (1955), and Suite in Sixth tones for Solo Cello (1955). For a detailed survey, see complete list of compositions.