Fantasia on South Bohemian Folk Songs (2021)
piano solo
piano solo
Program Note
When Dr. Cecilia Rokůsek of the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library (NCSML) approached me about writing a solo piano piece in December 2020, she had one stipulation: I would be the one to premiere it. Not having played much of my own music previously, I was honored and delighted at the challenge to write something that fit my piano technique and fit the occasion of the premiere, the 25th anniversary of the NCSML.
First, I had to decide what kind of piece I would compose. I settled on a fantasia, a term which comes from the Greek phantasia, meaning “imagination.” As such, a fantasia is a musical form without guidelines: composers’ imaginations are free to roam wheresoever they like. But don’t be fooled—this piece is not an improvisation! A fantasia’s lack of guidelines is simply permission for its composer to devise a unique form that is tailored to the piece’s own musical materials.
That, of course, was the next step in my compositional process: musical material. Being specifically of South Bohemian heritage, and knowing only two other pieces of classical music that deal exclusively with South Bohemian themes, I wanted to pay homage to my roots by using folk songs from that particular region as a jumping-off point for my musical invention. I turned to the sixth volume of Karel Weis’s exceptional folk song collection, Český jíh a Šumava v písní (1929), and chose three South Bohemian tunes: Konvalinka, jarní kvíti (No. 3), a wedding song; Tuhle, tuhle, tuhle jsem (No. 25), a lively polka; and V černým lese ptáček zpívá (No. 23), a longing ballad.
Not wanting to simply present a song, variate it, present the next, variate it, and so on, I decided to take sections of each of the three songs and meld them together to form one composite theme (mm. 34–69). After that, I investigate the individual songs separately (or even all at once in three-part counterpoint, as in mm. 249–260). That way, different parts of the three folk songs are revealed as the piece goes along, but all the material is related from the start, since elements of each song are present in the first theme.
Of course, this being a fantasia, the piece is just as much a portrait of its composer as it is of its themes. The musical destinations my imagination visits throughout this piece may seem remote, but they all are, in my mind, intimately connected to the essence of those three folk songs. Ragtime, polytonality, Romantic bravado, non-imitative counterpoint, even doses of Americana—can all of these inflections sprout from three little South Bohemian tunes?
I suppose that is the aspect of this piece of which I am most proud: even though it is rooted in a very specific geographical location, the musical associations of the fantasia create a sound-world melting-pot. Maybe it just reminds me of myself, a man of multiple ethnicities always celebrating that part of him which is Czech and connecting it to everything else.
—Jacob Beránek
When Dr. Cecilia Rokůsek of the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library (NCSML) approached me about writing a solo piano piece in December 2020, she had one stipulation: I would be the one to premiere it. Not having played much of my own music previously, I was honored and delighted at the challenge to write something that fit my piano technique and fit the occasion of the premiere, the 25th anniversary of the NCSML.
First, I had to decide what kind of piece I would compose. I settled on a fantasia, a term which comes from the Greek phantasia, meaning “imagination.” As such, a fantasia is a musical form without guidelines: composers’ imaginations are free to roam wheresoever they like. But don’t be fooled—this piece is not an improvisation! A fantasia’s lack of guidelines is simply permission for its composer to devise a unique form that is tailored to the piece’s own musical materials.
That, of course, was the next step in my compositional process: musical material. Being specifically of South Bohemian heritage, and knowing only two other pieces of classical music that deal exclusively with South Bohemian themes, I wanted to pay homage to my roots by using folk songs from that particular region as a jumping-off point for my musical invention. I turned to the sixth volume of Karel Weis’s exceptional folk song collection, Český jíh a Šumava v písní (1929), and chose three South Bohemian tunes: Konvalinka, jarní kvíti (No. 3), a wedding song; Tuhle, tuhle, tuhle jsem (No. 25), a lively polka; and V černým lese ptáček zpívá (No. 23), a longing ballad.
Not wanting to simply present a song, variate it, present the next, variate it, and so on, I decided to take sections of each of the three songs and meld them together to form one composite theme (mm. 34–69). After that, I investigate the individual songs separately (or even all at once in three-part counterpoint, as in mm. 249–260). That way, different parts of the three folk songs are revealed as the piece goes along, but all the material is related from the start, since elements of each song are present in the first theme.
Of course, this being a fantasia, the piece is just as much a portrait of its composer as it is of its themes. The musical destinations my imagination visits throughout this piece may seem remote, but they all are, in my mind, intimately connected to the essence of those three folk songs. Ragtime, polytonality, Romantic bravado, non-imitative counterpoint, even doses of Americana—can all of these inflections sprout from three little South Bohemian tunes?
I suppose that is the aspect of this piece of which I am most proud: even though it is rooted in a very specific geographical location, the musical associations of the fantasia create a sound-world melting-pot. Maybe it just reminds me of myself, a man of multiple ethnicities always celebrating that part of him which is Czech and connecting it to everything else.
—Jacob Beránek
