Miroslav Venhoda

Miroslav Venhoda

Miroslav Venhoda (August 4, 1915 - Prague, May 10, 1987) was a Czech choral conductor who specialized in the performance of Renaissance and Baroque music, via his ensemble The Prague Madrigalists (Prazsti Madrigaliste in the original language), which he founded in 1956.

Trained during the 1930s at Prague's Charles University, Venhoda spent the war years as choral director and organist at the city's Strahov (Dominican) monastery; a book he published in 1946, called Method of Studying Gregorian Chant, drew on this experience. He first achieved an international reputation for his LP discs with the Madrigalists, which began appearing in the early 1960s and continued till the mid-1970s. These discs, mostly for the Supraphon label, included a great many world premiere recordings of composers such as Dufay, Ockeghem, Obrecht, and Jacobus Gallus, as well as of more frequently performed masters such as Palestrina, Lassus, Monteverdi, Dowland, Tallis, and Orlando Gibbons. Sometimes they included Venhoda himself at the organ. He concentrated – a singular feat, given the Czech Communist regime's ideology – upon sacred works.

Venhoda's approach indicated his German artistic influences: choral singing which emphasized rich chest-voice production; invariably Teutonic renderings of Latin (quoniam would become kvoniam, and Agnus would become Agg-nus, for example); tempi which inclined to the leisured and majestic; above all, profuse doubling of the vocal parts by instruments, such as became unfashionable with the advent of a cleaner, "whiter" sound from later, English or English-influenced, early-music groups like the Tallis Scholars. Nevertheless Venhoda's legacy remains a valuable one, as can be discerned from the power and intensity of those all too few Venhoda performances which have been transferred to compact disc.

The Prague Madrigalists continue to this day, and are now led by Italian-born Damiano Binetti.

Further reading

Holmes, John L. (1982). Conductors on Record. London: Gollancz. ISBN 0-575-02781-9.


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Нужна курсовая?

Look at other dictionaries:

  • René Clemencic — Naissance 27 février 1928 Vienne …   Wikipédia en Français

  • Otto Albert Tichý — (* 14. August 1890 in Martínkov; † 21. Oktober 1973 in Prag) war ein tschechischer Komponist und Kirchenmusiker. Leben Otto Albert Tichý besuchte in Brünn das Gymnasium und studierte danach Prag bei Vítězslav Novák Komposition. 1919 setzte er… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Grupos de música antigua — Anexo:Grupos de música antigua Saltar a navegación, búsqueda Se conocen con el nombre de grupos o ensembles de música antigua a las formaciones musicales que interpretan música clásica europea hasta finales del Barroco, es decir, música anterior… …   Wikipedia Español

  • Michel Bernstein — (Paris 1931 Paris October 31, 2006) was a French musical producer and founder of several record labels.[1] Bernstein s first contact with classical music was hearing the school music teacher play Beethoven on an out of tune piano at the age of 15 …   Wikipedia

  • Anexo:Grupos de música antigua — Se conocen con el nombre de grupos o ensembles de música antigua a las formaciones musicales que interpretan música clásica europea hasta finales del Barroco, es decir, música anterior a 1750. La música interpretada por estas formaciones… …   Wikipedia Español

  • Miloš Štědroň — (* 9. Februar 1942 in Brünn) ist ein tschechischer Komponist und Musikwissenschaftler. Štědroň studierte von 1959 bis 1964 an der Jan Evangelista Purkyně Universität in Brünn Bohemistik und Musikwissenschaft bei Jan Racek und Bohumír Štědroň und… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”