Modern music with echoes of Hussitism

Though "the second life of Jan Hus and Hussitism in music" is predominantly a phenomenon of Czech culture, in the 19th century it does not lack a European dimension. The theme of reformation, revolution, and social and national conflict first inspired primarily writers, playwrights and visual artists, with composers following them. The deficit in the form of relatively recently discovered authentic medieval Hussite musical relics led to the whole tradition beginning to grow out of a forgery, the pseudo-Hussite song Těšme se blahounadějíby Josef Theodor Krov and Václav Hanka. Revivalist society so yearned for medieval music that it ignored doubts as to the authenticity of the song – its fighting spirit was enough for the song to be labelled as Husitská, the Hussite song, becoming one of the most popular social songs and even being worked with by the famous Ferenc Liszt. 

While the first half of the 19th century was dominated by interest in setting to music the siege of the Saxon town of Naumburg by the Hussites, after 1848 interest in the figure of Jan Hus and depicting real or fabricated stories from the Hussite Wars began to predominate. While this topic was long censored, in compositions the names of Jan Hus and Jan Žižka were replaced by the saints Wenceslas and Adalbert. What immediately catches the eye in looking at the hundreds of Hus/Hussite compositions is that the topic was considerably Czechified and the patriotic dimension gave way to Czech nationalism. 

The Hus/Hussite topic in music became firmly ensconced in the context of Czech music due to Bedřich Smetana. At the conclusion of his My Homeland, he created a certain recipe, which was followed up on with original approaches by no less famous composers (e.g. Antonín Dvořák, LeošJanáček, VítězslavNovák).  

For various anniversaries and events connects to Hussitism, compositions of all kinds of forms and content were produced, with moments associated with celebration of or threats to Czech statehood always being a strong impulse (1918, 1938, 1938, 1945, 1968). In terms of quantity, the set of compositions from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries is comparable to that we have on record for the Saint Wenceslas musical tradition (which is of course considerably longer). Both traditions exhibit a broad spectrum of production (classical music, popular music), both having enriched the socio-cultural development of Czech society. 

This project aims to present the modern Hus/Hussite repertoire to the public comprehensively and in more detail, rehabilitate its significance in the context of Czech musical culture, and to draw attention to its durability and accessibility.