The man who planted trees Alois Pinos at eighty.

In the context of Czech music the composer Alois Pinos occupies a quite exceptional position. His creative type is remote from what is known as "Czech music making", and his output is more easily set in the context of rational or systems art, which in the Czech Republic is something represented more in fine art or poetry than in music. On the other hand Pinos has never been concerned with strict order in itself, but with play with logical principles, often taken to the point of absurdity and so striking sparks of distinctive humour (especially in the literary texts that Pinos also writes). Pinos belongs to the founding generation of Czech New Music of the sixties, when he was one of its most striking protagonists. His work as a theorist and teacher has also been very important, and he has left a major mark on the history of Czech contemporary music. But of course his career as a composer is hardly over--Pinos's music shows both unending development and remarkable consistency, because it essentially springs from the same premise as at the beginning. The external expressions of his music constantly change, however, for if at the beginning what characterised it was a rough, dissonant sound, the grotesque, the bizarre and black humour, in later years subtle and fine grained levels have appeared, simplicity of sound, a new melodic quality, existential and spiritual themes.

The Heritage of Proud Spaniards

The old family of Pinos came to Eastern Moravia from Barcelona after the Thirty Years War, when the Archbishop of Olomouc tried to settle his depopulated estates with hard-working Catholics from foreign countries--Spain, France and Italy.

Alois Pinos was born on the 2nd of October 1925 in Vyskov in Moravia, into the family of a middle-school teacher Alois Pinos, a doctor of classical philology who was also a skilful violinist and a keen devotee of music, especially choral singing. His mother Marie (nee Jedlickova) likewise came from a musical family, sang well and played the piano, while her cousin was the famous opera singer Maria Jeritza (Janacek's Jenufa in Vienna). He therefore inherited musicality from both sides of the family, and from his distant forebears vitality, unyieldingness, pride, a love of the sun and a fondness for Mediterranean culture.

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Although Alois Pinos showed a marked talent for music (perfect pitch, an exceptional musical memory) in early childhood, his interests were much broader and music remained only one of many. In his school years he was just as attracted by the exact and natural sciences, languages, literature and sport ... He obtained a solid training in classic musical disciplines from his uncle Prokop Oberthor (a pupil of Antonin Dvorak), who was a military bandmaster and in fact the official composer of the Ministry of Defence in the First Republic. From childhood Alois Pinos learned to play the piano and also experimented with composing. When he finished school his great affinity for nature led him to choose to study at the Forestry University. Family tradition played a role here as well, since his grandfather and uncle were forestry engineers. At the same time, however, his inclination towards music became stronger and so after getting his degree as a forestry engineer in 1949 he applied to the newly founded Janacek Academy of Performing Arts, where he embarked on composition studies with Jaroslav Kvapil. But the rather schematic teaching focused on Late Romantic style and the very conservative aesthetics did not satisfy him, and neither did the pressure of the time for "Socialist Realism". Pinos shared this attitude with his contemporaries Josef Berg (1927-1971) and Miloslav Istvan (1927-1990). It was clear to all three of them that this was not the road they wanted to take. Fortunately in the later fifties information about modern music in the West began to filter through into Czechoslovakia. People in Brno had the advantage of being able to hear the Vienna Radio well, and recordings, scores and books came in by other routes as well. Berg, Istvan and Pinos formed a kind of study group and told each other about their external and internal discoveries, competing with each other in their ideas. It was a revolutionary period for them, when each of them was creating his own distinctive idiom as a composer. For Alois Pinos the crucial factor was getting to know the principles and techniques of rational composition and principles as they appeared in the music of the Second Viennese School, Bela Bartok and the composers of the Darmstadt Circle. He was especially captivated by Josef Matthias Hauer's set of six-tone tropes, which inspired him to develop his own theory of tone groups. From our perspective today it is no exaggeration to say that in this respect Pinos is one of our most distinguished Czech theorists: the systematic theory of tone groups that he elaborated represents a concise and sufficiently general theory that is valid for all music that works with any kind of combination of tones. This means that the various very diverse historical styles are only special cases of the application of tone groups, but at the same time the theory provides the basis for the emergence of new musical expressions on a practically unlimited scale.

All these stimuli released in Pinos a wave of creativity, in which he could apply his rational and systematic temperament and his inexhaustible playfulness. Soon he managed to create his own system of composition based on the application of universal laws to musical material and he became one of the most prominent and pioneering composers of the generation that came on the scene at the beginning of the sixties. Alois Pinos attracted attention with his fiercely dynamic compositions and distinctive signature, unafraid of harsh sound (Karikatury [Caricatures], Zkratky [Abbreviations], Konflikty [Conflicts], Koncert pro orchestr a magnetofonovy pasek [Concerto for Orchestra and Tape], Ars amatoria) or critical social content (Dicta antiquorum, Gesta Machabeorum). His uncompromising approach earned him respect as a leading representative of his generation. His sphere of activities was not limited to Brno, and he kept up contacts with composers in Bratislava (Roman Berger, Ladislav Kupkovic, Peter Kolman and others) and in Prague (the composers Miloslav Kabelac, Marek Kopelent, Zbynek Vostrak, Jan Klusak and especially the musicologists Eduard Herzog and Vladimir Lebl were his close friends).

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The "Golden Age" of New Music and its End

The Brno of the Sixties was an important cultural centre characterised by its living creative ferment in many fields, in theatre, poetry, art and music. Seen from today's perspective its output may appear small, but given the arid years of the seventies that were to follow it was genuinely the "Golden Age" of Brno New Music.

To understand the situation in the Czechoslovakia of the time you need to realise that all musical life was fully in the hands of the bureaucratized Union of Czechoslovak Composers and that music was perhaps the most conservative area of culture. This made the founding of the Brno "Tvurci skupina A" ["Creative Group A"] quite a courageous step. Together with Pinos its members were the composers Josef Berg, Miloslav Istvan, Jan Novak and Zdenek Pololanik and the theoreticians Milena Cernohorska and Frantisek Hrabal. The activities of "Group A" and its ensemble "Studio Autoru" [Composeris Ensemble], however restricted, were among the most important expressions of the New Music in the Czech Lands. The high points of its activities were above all two legendary festivals of domestic and foreign contemporary work entitled Expozice experimentalni hudby [The Exposition of Experimental Music] (1969, 1970). These festivals also provided a chance for the performance of important composition teamwork pieces created by Pinos together with others (Divertissement, Ecce homo, Peripetie [Peripeteias], Hlasova vernisaz [Vocal Private View]) and by Alois Pinos alone--the first Czech audiovisual compositions Mrize [Grille], Geneze [Genesis], Staticka kompozice [Static Composition] (co-operation with artist Dalibor Chatrny) or the stage event on a bizarre text by Josef Berg Vyvolavaci [Touts], in a prophetic vision parodying the malignant burgeoning of advertising.

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In addition to its artistic initiative, Group A strove for changes in the organisation of musical life. In July 1968 Alois Pinos was elected chairman of the Brno branch of the Union of Composers, but there was to be no time to push changes through. In August of the same year Soviet forces occupied Czechoslovakia and the long and dismal period of political and cultural repression began known as "normalisation" and characterised by the "tightening of the screws" of the communist regime. The impact of this period on cultural life was crushing, although the repression was mainly covert and often indirect, operating through the suspension of funds, the restriction of opportunities. Many artists succumbed to the atmosphere of fear and not a few chose to leave the country. New Music practically disappeared from concerts and radio broadcasts, and scores and recordings were no longer published. Contemporary musical trends were entirely wiped out of musical education (which was not hard, because they had never been an object of interest in the schools anyway).

The totalitarian regime unerringly identified composers who represented non-conformist musical thinking and tried to sweep them from the scene. They therefore provided massive support for musical conformism represented by what were called "genres accessible to listeners", such as brass band music, inane pop music and "eternal" classics manoeuvred into the function of kitsch. For most of the public music became a form of escape from the unbearable political claptrap accompanying the president Husak era.

This inevitably changed the general function of music, which started to be regarded by the majority public as a mere means of "forgetting" and "letting off tension". Clear preference for the function of music as diversion led to a weakening of its other functions, especially its function as real exploration of life and its meaning, and finally to the replacement of artistic criteria by the perspectives of "showbusiness" (i.e. "utility"). Today we are still struggling with this distortion of values ...

Alois Pinos, who honoured the sacrifice of Jan Palach with a piece named 16.1. 1969 (1) and never made a secret of his political views, was among the most proscribed composers and for many years his teaching work at JAMU was under threat. In the seventies his pieces only rarely reached the concert podium, were hardly ever on the radio, and were never recorded for gramophone.

Although the seventies were a time of trial for Pinos-the composer, they at least brought him happiness in his private life. In 1971 he met Ludmila Simandlova, whom he soon married and with whom he started a new family. For some years he even used the name Alois Simandl Pinos.

While forced to struggle with all kinds of difficulties, he took them philosophically. For example, from the desperate situation when for some time he and Ludmila had no apartment and had to live in Pinos's car, he managed to extract an electro-acoustic piece called Domov, aneb Dum cp. 3426 [Home, or House no. 3426] created out of the sounds of the car. It was not until after 1989 that he gained proper recognition (a readership that had been refused for years and a professorship) and honours (he was twice awarded the prestigious "Classic Prize"), and was invited as a lector to various international courses and onto the juries of composition competitions.

Thanks to the support he found in his concise and sufficiently general theory (partly summarised in the publication Tonove skupiny, Editio Supraphon, Prague 1971; in English Tone Groups, JAMU, Brno 2002) he was able to overcome the stylistic limitations of the music of the sixties and venture through new phases (which brought music of a different style) without repudiating his original premises. The continuity of his work, which has never experienced crisis or stylistic or intellectual somersaults, is (with all the diversity of his external expressions) genuinely extraordinary.

Brno Teamwork

An objectivising approach to composition led Pinos to the idea of compositional "teamwork", in which a group of composers under his direction would contribute to larger projects. Although group composition had occasionally turned up in the history of music earlier, Pinos' conception, based on previously defined material and clearly defined compositional rules, made it possible for several composers to work together on a piece without a loss of consistency and coherence. Team composition is in fact a transfer of the idea of the "brains trust" as we know it from scientific research, to art. The expansion of the creative process beyond the boundaries of the individual subject has the advantage of multiplying critical capability (in the planning phase, in discussions of the concept) and creative capabilities (everyone can contribute something of his own). It is an effective method that makes it possible to complete relatively large-scale projects in a short period. This was the case for instance with two chamber operas by the team Alois Pinos--Milos Stedron--Ivo Medek (Analy avantgardy dokoran aneb Vec Cage [Annals of the Avant Garde Flung Open or the Cage Affair], 1995 and Analy predchudcu avantgardy aneb Setkani slovanskych velikanu [Annals of the Forerunners of the Avant Garde or the Meeting of Slav Giants], 1997) or the "symphonic kaleidoscope" written as a goodbye to the passing millennium, Byly casy, byly ... [They were times, they were ...] (1999).

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Although the original teamwork constellation (Alois Pinos, Arnost Parsch, Rudolf Ruzicka, Milos Stedron, and on single occasions Josef Berg and Miloslav Istvan) was for external reasons quite short-term in its activities, the idea of team composition put down roots in Brno and became relatively common with other composers as well.

Teaching

Alois Pinos is not only a composer but has dedicated a large part of his life to teaching. He has trained several generations of composers who later influenced the development of Czech contemporary music. His pupils have included, for example, Milos Stedron, Jiri Kollert, Petr Kofron, Peter Graham (Jaroslav Pokorny-Stastny), Ivo Medek, Zdenek Plachy, Daniel Forro (Karel Horky), Martin Dohnal, Dan Dlouhy ... Josef Adamik and Vit Zouhar have studied under him as postgraduates. And to these we must of course add quite a throng of foreign students who have attended Pinos's courses in Darmstadt and Reichenau. Finally Pinos's youngest son Mikulas and the latter's wife Katerina Ruzickova both compose and are keeping the musical traditions of the Pinos family. In addition, from the end of the eighties Pinos has done a great deal of lecturing, taken part in many symposia abroad and produced a series of programmes about Czech music for German radio.

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Pinos's teaching method has been based above all on the individuality of the student, which he always respected and at the same time tried to develop. He tolerated different stylistic orientations and materials, but always managed to clarify and streamline the student's musical thinking and lead him or her towards a more concise expression. He founded his teaching on a friendly and collegial relationship supported by the natural authority of the teacher. In retrospect we can say that each one of his students took from the rich complex of Pinos's stimuli a particular aspect that he or she then developed further in his or her own way. And perhaps we can say that in comparison with other teachers of composition, a circle of very diverse individualities has emerged from the Pinos hatchery of composers.

For Pinos, however, guiding young composers meant more than a mere teaching load--contact with young generations kept him in touch with new intellectual movements, different aesthetic attitudes and other opinions. It allowed him to absorb new inspirations, to react to them intellectually and with his own work. Unlike many of his contemporary Pinos never walled himself up with his own generation. He always expressed interest in the music of young composers and contemporary musical life and he has retained this openness and literally "youthful" curiosity to this day.

The Continuity and Transformation of the Work--Static Evolution

In Pinos's work there are no sharp stylistic breaks, but his music has nevertheless continually changed. "Static evolution" is a term of his own which he uses to define the process of gradual development when certain parameters undergo changes, but others stay the same. This term is at the same time a cipher, a simplified expression for the development of Pinos's work, in which we likewise find certain constants practically throughout his career. One such constant, for example, is his preference for a conceptual point of view--for Pinos composition is above all an abstract structure in which what is important are mutual proportions, while their materialisation can take various forms and is essentially secondary. This means that his style is characterised not by a particular sound, but by a mode of thinking, which allows him to integrate all kinds of different types of material and at the same time realise a single compositional idea in more than one form. Although it was in the course of the sixties that he elaborated this approach, its viability was proved in later periods. In fact--although naturally in a naive form--these tendencies were already present in his period of "juvenile composing" in the forties. Pinos did not, however, recognise the validity of his own compositions until the end of the fifties, by which time he had formulated his own individual musical language based on the use of interval structures.

In his first creative period, which covers roughly the decade of the sixties, his attention was focused mainly on absolute music and titles evoking its traditional forms: Wind Quintet (1959), Trio for Violin, Cello and Piano (1960), Sonata for Viola and Cello (1960), Suite for Violin, Viola and Cello (1961), 1st String Quartet (1961-62), Concerto for Orchestra and Tape (1964), Chamber Concerto for Strings (1967), Three Pieces for Piano (1968), Divertissement (team composition -1969). In these works it seems as if Pinos was accepting the challenge of the preceding musical tradition, getting to grips with it and seeking to review conventional concepts and give them a new content. It could perhaps be said that in this period Pinos's main interest was musical life as such and the attempt to stake his claims to it. But of course he also concerned himself with other areas that he explored by musical means, whether politics, on which he commented using the allegory of a biblical story in Gesta Machabeorum (1967) or a direct reaction to a topical important event in 16.1. 1969, or the love, as he presented it in his long cantata Ars amatoria (1967). This period culminated in lengthy pieces such as his Trojkoncert na jmeno BACH [Triple Concerto on the name BACH] for bass clarinet, cello, piano and orchestra of strings and percussion instruments (1968) or his Symphony "Apollo XI" (1970), celebrating the triumph of science and technology--the conquest of the Moon by the Americans.

The political developments of the seventies put the brakes on Pinos's promising career as a composer and diverted his creative efforts into a new direction. In the difficult conditions he devoted himself mainly to chamber and electro-acoustic music in which his fondness for timeless questions--spiritual themes and nature--was expressed more strongly. External pressures as it were activated interests that had always been present in the composer, but covered up by others. The essential temperament of the composer emerged in these interests and every since they have remained part of his range as an artist.

He wrote a series of electro-acoustic compositions (Korespondence [Correspondences], Hudba pro dva [Music for Two], Adorace [Adoration], Domov, aneb Dum cp. 3426 [Home, or House no. 3426], Nekonecna melodie [Unending Melody], Konfluence [Confluences], Metatance [Metadances], Speleofonie [Speleophony], Kontrapunkty prirody [Counterpoints of Nature], Panta rhei?) and solo or chamber pieces (Kontexty [Contexts], Byt bit [To be Beaten], Trojhra [Triple Play], Zestovy kvartet [Brass Quartet]). Nonetheless it was at this period that he also wrote the symphonic diptych Pocta Praze [Tribute to Prague] (1973) / Ceske letokruhy [Czech Annals] (1975), in which the first part is created by "multivariations"--the multiple variation of a single numerical relationship and the second, on the contrary, by the "integration" of historical quotations of all kinds. A rather different approach found a representative in Seznameni [Lonely Hearts], duets for soprano and bass with guitar accompaniment on texts from genuine lonely heart ads (1975). Erotic themes wind through Pinos's work like a red thread: Ars amatoria (1967), Geneze [Genesis] (1970), Hudba pro dva [Music for Two] (1971), Canti intimi (1976), lyrical songs for bass baritone and string quartet on text from old love poems called Sila a moc lasky [The Strength and Power of Love] (1982), Euforie [Euphoria] I-V (five chamber pieces for different instrumental combinations of 1983-1998), Priblizeni [Gettin Closer] (1994). In fact, the erotic is virtually omnipresent in his work in the form of the conception of polarities and complementary pairs. In recent years the public has been discovering "another Pinos", whose pieces have moved into new areas of expression and employ a broader palette of sound. They also reflect entirely new experiences--a composer who had throughout his life enjoyed physical health, vitality and strength has been encountering the darker side of life: seven serious operations in the course of the last seven years! Yet even in the darkest moments he has not given up composing, which accompanies him even through "the valley of death". In the atmosphere of uncertainty around his first operation he wrote psalms (Carmina psalmisona, 1998). But biblical and spiritual themes in general have been a constant of his work (Gesta Machabeorum, 1967; In extremis, a triptych for mixed choir on words from the Gospel of St. Matthew, 1969; Ecce homo, team composition (Alois Pinos, Arnost Parsch, Rudolf Ruzicka, Milos Stedron) on a text by Josef Berg and Alois Pinos using extracts from the Bible and Franz Kafka, 1969; Ceske letokruhy [Czech Annals] (1975); Carmina lauretana (1997), Thanks for Every Day (1998), Stella matutina (1999), Music of Good Hope (2001) but also pieces touching on the dark side of life Zimni slunovrat [Winter Solstice] (2001), Finsternis (2001) and the fight against evil Nomen omen aneb Trinact portraits hada [Nomen Omen or Thirteen Portraits of the Serpent] (2002), Bestiarium (2002), Tlucte a bude vam otevreno [Knock and It Shall be Opened unto You] for soloist on percussion (2003), Precarious Situations (2004), Clamores for chamber ensemble (2005), Triple Fight or Tres faciunt collegium for three percussion players (2005), Dalkovy bezec [Long-Distance Runner] for solo percussionist (2005).

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Alois Pinos and Nature

Although Alois Pinos never actually took up the occupation of forestry engineer, nature has been an important source of inspiration for him throughout his life. Pinos has never lost his interest in trees and the forest, which for him symbolise creative power and organic growth. But other expressions of nature also attract him and provide him with impulses for his own work:

"Natural phenomena fascinate me: they are constant, cyclical and changeable, expected and surprising, sometimes monumental and yet again intimately known, as it were natural. They can be observed and grasped at their basic natural level and in their specificity and at the same time you can reflect on their other, symbolic meanings. Down the ages they have tempted people into trying to express them in art. This inspiration can never be exhausted."

It is characteristic of Pinos that in his case natural inspirations do not remain simply at the level of titles or textual references, but affect the deeper structure of the work and are particularly manifest in his instrumental and electro-acoustic music, representing an integral part of his poetics. It is models drawn from nature in the form of universalia that Pinos successfully applies in the creation of music. Universalia--the most universally expressed categories, phenomena, marks or processes--in fact form the links between the concrete world of nature and the abstract language of music. Although these attributes have always been used in music, Pinos's achievement consists primarily in the clear classification of universalia within the framework of musical expression and in his individual application of models that we rarely meet elsewhere.

Pinos's love for nature is not expressed only in abstract compositional techniques, however, but also in entirely concrete practical activity. Few people know that the mature grove that beautifies Borodinova Street in Brno-Kohoutovice is his own work--he himself bought the trees, planted them and moved them, and defended them from destructive boys ... Today they are massive trees, far higher than the surrounding blocks of flats. Without ostentatious speeches then, Alois Pinos as a simple citizen has also given a great deal to his city.

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His creative and teaching activities can also be compared to the planting of trees: his work has contributed to the growth of contemporary music in his country, and through his pupils it has flourished and branched. Without Alois Pinos Czech music culture would be fundamentally the poorer, and his extensive output remains a great challenge for future generations.

(1) On this day the student Jan Palach set fire to himself in protest against political developments following the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the armies of the Warsaw Pact in August 1968.