Vítězslava Kaprálová’s Military Sinfonietta
Notes by TŌN bassist Jud Mitchell
Vítězslava Kaprálová was a talented Czech composer and conductor of great ability whose life was cut short in her 25th year in a tragedy. She was a student of composers Vítězslav Novák and Bohuslav Martinů, and was an innovative female conductor who was the first woman to lead the Czech Philharmonic and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. As a woman it was very difficult for her to break into the Czech music scene, but her talent and ability on the podium drew attention from prominent composers such as Martinů, who influenced her to write music in a Czech idiom.
Her graduation piece from the Prague Conservatory, completed in 1937, was the Military Sinfonietta, Op. 11, which she dedicated to Edvard Beneš, president of the Czechoslovak Republic. The work was composed in a time of mounting apprehension and nationalism in interwar Europe, when war was hanging over the horizon. Kaprálová died in exile in France in 1940 soon after the German invasion, and so her life is shadowed by impending war. In this piece, I hear the marching of armies and the drums of war. Today’s political climate contains troubling echoes of those years, making this piece all the more relevant in the face of rising nationalist sentiment in Europe and Russian expansionism. Kaprálová herself described the work as not a “battle cry”, but rather a musical expression of “the psychological need to defend that which is most sacred to the nation.”
A mix of national pride and somber awareness of impending war permeates the work. In a time when Russia seems poised to invade the Baltic States and push through to Kyiv, a piece that galvanizes resistance against an aggressive power with imperial aspirations is so crucial. I am grateful that I play in an orchestra that programs pieces that are relevant to contemporary geopolitics. Classical musicians should always try to relate the art of the past to subjects that are relevant to modern audiences.