A Composer for Every Country: Slovakia

I forgot this blog existed, but now it's back for now? For a while at least. The "Composer for Every Country" idea started on Facebook as a gesture of solidarity during the COVID-19 pandemic. I'd already made a number of posts on my profile, so there's quite a back log (North Africa and most of Europe), but I might as well keep going where I left off, which is Slovakia.

Only recently separated from Czechia by the dissolution of Czechoslovakia, even the idea of "Slovakia" as its own nation is really new. Over the course of history, the Slovakian region has been controlled by the Great Moravian Empire, the Kingdom of Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire. Also the Avars and... some guy named Samo? He united the Slavic tribes in the area, and seceded from the Avar for a time. That said, ethnic Slavs arrived in the area around the 5th century.

Like so many other nations, a lot of our contemporary understanding of local culture started up in the 19th century. Their traditional clothing is quite colorful, and while I'm no expert on the history of textiles and fashion, it looks kind of like a collision between Eastern European/Ukraine and German styles. No lederhosen, though. One of the distinguishing features of the region is their wooden architecture. The buildings have a deceptive simplicity about them. They're not super decorated, but their construction, particularly of the roofs, creates a certain texture that is quite nice to the eye.

Finding details about traditional Slovak music, however, has been frustrating, but I can tell you that the folk songs I've listened to sound like a dialect of Austrian songs. A well preserved dance is the odzemok, which involves a good deal of jumping, fancy footwork, and axes. The axes don't do anything in particular, but it does look impressive. And then, there's the fujara.

The fujara is an instrument that is really only found in the Slovak culture. Putting it into words is tricky... imagine a wooden flute. Now make it five feet long. Now attach another, smaller flute to the flute and put a mouthpiece on it, like a recorder. That's a fujara. It sounds like a flutey digiridoo, and you play it standing up because there's no other reasonable way to do it.

So our composer today is Ján Levoslav Bella (1843-1936). His career started in Levoča, where he composed a number of small form church tunes and folk arrangements. Then, in 1873, he visited Vienna and was exposed to the music of Schumann, Wagner, and Smetana, and he was never the same again. Upon his return, he wrote a large form symphonic poem called Osud a ideál (Fate and the Ideal) and began a general project of fusing traditional Slovak music with classical forms. The string quartet I'm posting is a result of that fusion.



To hear something more directly inspired by Slovak music, he has two sets of piano variations on different folk songs: “In Pressburg by the Danube” and "A Swarm, a Swarm is Flying."

Coming up is Czechia! If you have any suggestions for Czech composers (other than Antonín Leopold Dvořák, because everybody already knows about him) comment below!