These were the years of Schreker's greatest success and it may come as a surprise that his students, such as Krenek,
Alois Haba, Felix Petryek, and Karol Rathaus, were offered UE contracts well before those of Schoenberg, including Anton Webern and Alban Berg.
The same year saw the launch of separate English, German and Russian six-page pamphlets dedicated to contemporary Czech and Slovak composers, the first one dealing with Jan Cikker, followed over the next few years by titles devoted to
Alois Haba, Pavel Borkovec, Jan Kapr, Vladimir Sommer, Eugen Suchon, Petr Eben, Jan Hanus, Miloslav Kabelac, with more pamphlets, some of them updated, with the total print run of 5-10 thousand copies, ensiling annually.
In 1912 Schreker was appointed to the Vienna Academy where he had a distinguished class of composition students and performers, among whom were
Alois Haba, Jascha Horenstein, Egon Kornauth, Ernst Krenek, Artur Rodzinski, and Josef Rosenstock.
Whether as a compendious interpretation of ancient Greek theory of intonation and intervals, as a signal contribution to contemporary music theory, as an approach to the systematic study of tuning systems (taking its place alongside the twentieth-century classics of Julian Carrillo,
Alois Haba, and Partch), or as a stepping-stone from music's past to its possible futures, Divisions of the Tetrachord is an indispensable resource for the serious student of music.
Five years later, in 1935, he completed his studies at the department of quarter-tone music with the composer and theoretician
Alois Haba, the creator of the concept of the microtonal and "athematic" music style, who also gave Pone private lessons and was his mentor at the time preceding his studies at the Prague Conservatory.
A student of
Alois Haba, he lectured in 1927 on the Czech avant-garde to Arnold Schoenberg's composition students at the Preussische Akademie der Kunste, and through Scherchen achieved a certain notoriety for a chamber suite drawn from music for Jean Cocteau's Les Maries de la Tour Eiffel.
It is familiar to the international professional and semi-professional public largely thanks to the microtonal system developed by the composer and theorist
Alois Haba.
Rascher (1907-2001), the initiator of a range of pieces including some by composers from Bohemia (Viktor Ullmann,
Alois Haba, Karel Reiner).
The biggest mistake is the cover-photo, a portrait of
Alois Haba in some kind of holographic or other version (it is based on a detail from the photo on the Supraphon Haba-Centenary set of 1993), which is more intimidating and off-putting than eye-catching.
How and why did the then chairman of Pritomnost,
Alois Haba, turned to you and Jan Hanus?
The very first issue carried an essay by
Alois Haba (see CM 3/2005) on The Development of Music Composition and Theory with Respect to Diatonic, Chromatic and the Quarter-Tone System and an article by Egon Wellesz on Music of Our Time.
Alois Haba certainly deserves the amount of space we have devoted to him in this issue.
