Czech Film Music in Hudební rozhledy During the 1960s
Film music in the pages of Hudební rozhledy during the 1960s
Czech cinema experienced a remarkable flourishing in the 1960s, a period often described as “the golden era of the Czech film.” The political and social thaw sweeping through Czechoslovakia allowed the country’s film production to break free from years of isolation and once again measure itself against world cinema. Many more foreign films entered the country than in earlier or later decades, and their selection was considerably more liberal. Alongside older and middle-generation directors, recent graduates of the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU) made their mark. This “second generation of FAMU” included Miloš Forman, Jaromil Jireš, Jan Schmidt, Jiří Menzel, Věra Chytilová, Pavel Juráček, Ivan Passer, Jaroslav Papoušek, Antonín Máša, Evald Schorm, Jan Němec, Juraj Herz, and Hynek Bočan. From their ranks emerged the most progressive current in Czech cinematography, known as the Česká nová vlna — the Czech New Wave. The films these directors created count among the finest achievements of Czechoslovak cinema in that decade.
A similar evolution was underway in film music. Artistic factors began to reshape how music functioned in film. Contact with Western European music was reestablished, and new compositional techniques started to make themselves heard even on the soundtrack. Aleatoric music, timbre-focused composition, and advances in recording and reproduction radically changed the concept of sound, both in concert halls and in film. The shadow of socialist realism receded. Young directors, who frequently tackled contemporary subjects, naturally turned to contemporary musicians. Composers associated with the New Music movement — Jan Klusák, Luboš Fišer, Jan Novák — began to collaborate on films, alongside jazz musicians like Karel Velebný and Luděk Hulan. With popular music influenced by rock growing in public appeal, songwriters such as Jiří Šlitr, Jiří Malásek, Petr Hapka, Ladislav Štaidl, and Karel Svoboda also found opportunities to address modern themes on-screen. How these developments in film music were perceived by music specialists in Czech professional journals forms the subject of this article.
The field of enquiry narrows to three periodicals: Hudební věda [Musicology], Opus musicum, and Hudební rozhledy [Music Review]. Hudební věda, which has appeared regularly since 1964, paid no attention to film music during this period. The same is true for the first two volumes of Opus musicum, from 1969 and 1970. Thus, in the 1960s, the only music periodical to offer substantial reporting on music in Czech, Slovak, and imported foreign films was Hudební rozhledy (published continuously since 1948). The authors of most of these contributions were two Czech musicologists and journalists: Milan Kuna and Jiří Pilka. Kuna published two books on film music in the 1960s: Hudba v krátkém filmu (1960) and Zvuk a hudba ve filmu: K analýze zvukové dramaturgie filmu (1969). Pilka began researching film music while still a student at the Charles University Faculty of Philosophy, where his master’s thesis examined the film music of Jiří Srnka. In 1960 he published a popular-science book on the subject titled Tajemství filmové hudby. He was also a member of the Film and Television Union (FITES) and served on its presidium from 1966 to 1970. Occasional writers on film music for Hudební rozhledy in the 1960s included Jan F. Fischer, Vladimír Bor, Lubomír Dorůžka, Pavel Skála, Vratislav Dejmek, Vladimír Šefl, and a handful of others.
The pieces on film music published in Hudební rozhledy can be broken down into three categories. The first and most common consisted of short reviews or succinct analyses of the music in one or several films, each running roughly 2,500 to 4,500 characters, collected under a regular column called Film. The second group included longer essays and papers dealing in a more general fashion with questions of film music aesthetics and practice. The third category captured the remainder: miscellaneous articles and reports with no fixed theme or type, covering film music competitions, accounts from film festivals, and book reviews on film-music topics. Each group is examined below.
The Film column and its reviews
In 1960 Hudební rozhledy launched a new rubric called Film. Articles on music for motion pictures had appeared before then, but only sporadically and without unified form or policy. Mostly they were informational, and often their focus was not music but the film as a whole. From 1960 to 1964, during the Film column’s active life, a total of 39 articles came out, covering the music of 52 films. Of these, 47 were Czech, four Slovak, and two Soviet Russian. In 1960 Jiří Pilka authored seven columns in which he treated several films quite briefly per installment. From 1961 through 1964, Milan Kuna wrote 32 reviews of a more detailed nature, each concentrating on just one film (with one article by Vladimír Bor as an exception). The articles do not disclose precisely how the films under discussion were selected — whether the writers proceeded systematically or simply reacted to whatever they had seen, more or less by chance, in cinemas. Nonetheless, the works they reviewed formed, with a few exceptions, a fairly representative sample of film music production during those years, both in terms of the films made and the composers involved. According to the book Československé filmy 1960–1965, the most prolific film composer in that period was Zdeněk Liška, who scored 30 films between 1960 and 1964. His music received appropriate attention in the Film column, where it featured in eight analyses. The following composers wrote music for more than ten films in the same five years (figures show total films scored, followed by the number assessed by Pilka or Kuna): Svatopluk Havelka (16 / 3), Jiří Srnka (15 / 4), Evžen Illín (15 / 3), Štěpán Lucký (14 / 2), Miloš Vacek (12 / 4), and William Bukový (12 / 3). For most of these composers, Hudební rozhledy discussed between 20% and 30% of their film work. Composers who scored fewer than ten films in the period appear only once or twice in the column. That group includes figures from the New Music sphere — Jan Novák, Jan Klusák, and Luboš Fišer — who began working in film in the early 1960s.
Relatively little information, however, reached readers about the music accompanying the advanced Czech New Wave films. Kuna commented on two such movies, offering divergent judgments. The films in question were Věra Chytilová’s O něčem jiném (music by Jiří Šlitr) and Jaromil Jireš’s Křik (music by Jan Klusák), both from 1963. In the review of O něčem jiném the critic argued that the sound dramaturgy and Šlitr’s score were “not an equal partner in expression to the visual component” and often remained merely a sonic backdrop. An entirely different impression emerged from Klusák’s work for Křik, where Kuna noted an interesting interweaving of music, dialogue, and image, with each element possessing its own mode of communication for the audience. He described a “rare relative independence of music within the film” for that period. The main reason why Kuna did not analyze more films from this movement was simple: the vast majority of them were made after the Film column in Hudební rozhledy had been discontinued – after 1964.
The column kept a stable format from its founding. It appeared on the outer margin of one or two pages, occupying about a third of the space, with its own logo. Content varied according to the nature of the film and in particular of the score. The plot might or might not be summarized briefly; the director’s intentions and name might or might not be noted. Other collaborators — scriptwriters, cinematographers, and so forth — entered discussion only if they somehow related to the music. Naturally, the film music itself had pride of place. Reviews addressed several dimensions: whether the music played a passive backdrop role or operated as an independent component delivering its own message to the audience; whether it defined a character, environment, or historical period; what instruments the composer chose; the genre selected; the use of silence and various extramusical sounds; and whether the composer relied exclusively on original material or turned to pre-existing music. Many types of evaluation appear across the columns, along with a rich range of perspectives. Occasional analyses opened out into wider reflections on the overall quality of Czech film music and on how directors and composers collaborated—or failed to. Kuna and Pilka often regretted the lopsided choices some directors made when selecting composers or lamented the very tight deadlines allowed for composition. Examining the balance of positive and negative remarks, the reviewers seem quite objective; though favorable reactions outweigh unfavorable ones, no shortage of specific criticisms remains. No “blind” enthusiasm for any particular composer shows up; the criteria are diverse and the writers judge accordingly.
Texts with a structure and reach similar to that of the Film column also appeared outside the rubric. These were pieces focused in more general terms on specific film-music issues but backed by copious examples from individual works, and some came from other writers, such as Antonín Matzner and Pavel Skála. The category also includes translations of reviews of foreign films and contributions printed after the Film column had ended.
Longer, broader, and more general studies
The second group — the full-scale studies and essays — dealt mostly in general fashion with background, working conditions, and theory. The most frequently debated themes included where film music was heading (a turn away from symphonic writing and toward chamber ensembles, the growing presence of jazz and popular music, and the technique of using everyday sounds or noises). Milan Kuna devoted a separate essay to the use of pre-existing music in film, treating typology from the perspective of how music cooperates with the image. New technical methods for presenting sound film captivated attention as well: in his 1960 article “Music Embraced by Technology,” Jiří Pilka examined stereophonic cinema, polyécran, Circorama, and Laterna Magica, defining each variant’s specific character and drawing implications for the musical dramaturgy of film.
The influence of foreign cinematography — particularly Italian neo‑realism, which was reducing the share of music in films – and fresh contemporary themes appeared regularly as subjects. Hudební rozhledy insisted repeatedly that composers faced poor conditions (above all due to short deadlines), that insufficient communication at the outset between director and composer harmed the sound component, that the training of film directors needed to include a stronger sonic-dramaturgical awareness, and that (some) composers lacked dramatic instincts. The journal also deplored the scant scholarly or critical attention to film music and repeatedly called for more aesthetic and theoretical work. Many of these same topics arose from multiple viewpoints in an open discussion organized jointly by the journal and the Film Section of the Union of Czechoslovak Theatre and Film Artists, held in the Film Club, Prague, in 1962. Directors, dramaturgs, heads of production groups, composers, and critics all took part; a transcript of the discussion was later printed in Hudební rozhledy.
Among the longer publications were inquiries into cinema adaptations of operas, film musicals and revues, and music film on television. A singular and notable contribution in 1970 was Vratislav Dejmek’s detailed analysis of musical dramaturgy in the Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Accattone (1961); no other study at that length examined a non‑Soviet foreign film.
Shorter items, competitions, and reviews
The third group – less cohesive in form and content – consists of the remaining shorter pieces and news. They keep readers up to date about film‑music competitions, bring dispatches from festivals, and offer book appraisals.
One important sub‑section is the coverage of competitions. In 1963 the Film Symphonic Orchestra–sponsored competition, run by the Czechoslovak Film organization in cooperation with the Composers Union, the Czech and Slovak Music Foundations, announced an annual contest for the best music written for Czechoslovak film in that year. The event ran yearly until 1967, aiming to provide a systematic overview of the country’s film music. Competitors vied in anywhere from three to six categories, depending on the nature of the film. The main judging criteria included whether the score with its artistic quality strengthened the film into a unified whole, how well it fulfilled its dramatic function, how appropriately it captured the film’s character and genre, and the degree of professional skill shown from the standpoint of compositional technique. The contests were publicized in Hudební rozhledy, and the journal brought the results. Deeper treatments occasionally featured, for instance a brief analysis of the award-winning film music explaining why those entries triumphed, or transcribed discussions involving the jury.
Among the book reviews offered in the 1960s, two examinations of works devoted wholly to film music stand out. In 1960 Jan F. Fischer wrote a positive appraisal of Trojan – filmová hudba (1958) by Vladimír Bor and Štěpán Lucký, expressing gratitude for a brief but clearly written monograph on a theme too often neglected at home. In 1964 the aesthetics scholar Zofi Lissa’s Aesthetics of Film Music (Kraków, 1964) earned a presentation in Hudební rozhledy the same year as its release.
How Hudební rozhledy mirrored—and missed—the rise of new film music
Having surveyed the types of film-music texts Hudební rozhledy ran during the 1960s, it is useful to trace the decade‑long development they followed, compare it with several prior years, and look ahead to the early 1970s. A further important step is to read the actual history of Czech film music side by side with this record and consider how accurately, or otherwise, the journal reflected the course of that history.
The dedicated Film column that closely analyzed well over a hundred film scores, principally the Czech ones, ran actively from 1960 to 1964. Pieces similar to the column in nature but organized and positioned differently appeared irregularly through the entire decade. A large proportion of the substantive essays clustered in the first half of the 1960s. Competition reports documented late‑decade events, by which time the peak of the film‑music renaissance was already ebbing. Overall, the picture that emerges is of a journal that followed the contemporary scene with steady, competent professionalism – applauding composers active in the neoclassical and cinematic traditions, registering the advent of jazz‑themed scores, and acknowledging the presence of the New Music composers. Yet from the timeline it is obvious that the growing edge of developments — music associated with the Czech New Wave, the relaxed political climate that from 1966 started to revert to repression, and the advances in soundtrack sophistication that marked later ’60s cinema — arrived while the regular column was no longer operating. The longer, more encompassing essays remained dense through the early and middle partsof the decade; by the end, they had largely given way to simple reports on contests and short squibs. In this respect, Hudební rozhledy charted the beginning of the decade’s evolution admirably but was not effectively chronicling its middle‑1960s creative peak, chiefly because the year of creative ferment, 1966–68, fell under thin press coverage compared with 1961–1964.
During its six-year run from 1963 to 1968, and with the two book reviews on music that appeared in 1960 and 1964, the column Film also included more substantial texts such as studies and reviews. It must be noted that the first half of the 1960s produced six times more articles on music than the second half—an average of eleven texts annually in the earlier period versus fewer than two per year after 1964.
Comparing article counts from several preceding and following years shows a pattern similar to the late 1960s: 1957–1959 and 1971–1973 both hover near the same low output. What implications does this have for the development of Czech film music? The abundance of studies and reviews in the early 1960s mirrors film music’s dynamic growth and a transformation within the film industry itself. Yet the abrupt decline early in the second half of the decade has no counterpart in the actual state of film music, which continued to evolve quite freely until the decade’s end; the mid-sixties represented no major watershed. The drop‑off in film‑music articles likely stems from editorial policy at the journal or a waning interest in theoretical, analytical, and informational pieces about film music, despite its continuing artistic vitality.
Translated by Jaroslav Peprník
Die Filmmusik in den tschechischen Musikperiodika in den 60er Jahren des 20. Jahrhunderts
Zusammenfassung
The contribution examines how this development was reflected in Czech music periodicals, primarily Hudební rozhledy. The texts on film music are divided into three groups based on scope, content, and form. Their evolution within this framework is tracked, presented in detail, and viewed from various perspectives. At the end of the article, the author contrasts the state of music‑film criticism with the situation in film music during the designated decade and in several years before and after.
Filmová hudba v českých hudebních periodikách v 60. letech 20. století
Shrnutí
Thanks to the political and social liberalisation in Czechoslovakia in the 1960s, film and film music experienced a significant creative flourishing. The renewal of contacts with Western European music enabled, among other things, the introduction of new compositional techniques, transformations of film music itself, a more functional use of real sounds and silence, and the penetration of jazz and popular music into film.