Publication details
Sports, sexuality, collectivism: Vilém Petrželka’s string quartet The Relay (1927)
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| Year of publication | 2015 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
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| Description | The paper deals with semantic (semio-pragmatic) analysis of one of the most significant works of the Czech interwar avant-garde music – Štafeta [The Relay], a Schoenbergian string quartet by Leoš Janáček’s pupil Vilém Petrželka. The composition is likely to be included in the temporary wave of compositions reflecting and representing sports, such as Honegger’s Rugby, Half-time, La Bagarre by Bohuslav Martinů, Start and Stadion by Pavel Bořkovec and others. The temporary ontological status of The Relay was basically determined by three main imaginative factors – sports, collectivism and unbounded sexuality – which were strongly bounded in temporary social discourses. Just like in other temporary "sport compositions" (Bateman 2009), mainly the motional aspect of sport is represented here, using motorial music structures and other convenient methods of the late 19th century programmatic music. Structure of this composition contains intensive and extensive semantic impulses: The intensive one relates to structural regularization by the dominant of "running model" and principle of rhythmic ostinato; the extensive one refers to public relay races, carnival feasts (Bakhtin – Gurevich) of recycling of the collective national body of the First Czechoslovak Republic. According to these factors, the composition tended to be read as an ideological impetus to faith in collective "new men". |