Miroslav Venhoda (4 August 1915 in

Moravské Budějovice Moravské Budějovice (; german: Mährisch Budwitz) is a town in Třebíč District in the Vysočina Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 7,200 inhabitants. The historic town centre is well preserved and is protected by law as an urban monum ...

– 10 May 1987 in

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...

) was a Czech choral conductor who specialized in the performance of Renaissance and Baroque music, via his ensemble The

Prague Madrigalists The Prague Madrigalists (or Prague Madrigal Singers; in Czech: Pražští madrigalisté) is a Czech chamber music ensemble founded in 1956 as ''Noví pěvci madrigalů a komorní hudby'' (in English: New Madrigal and Chamber Music Singers) by the ...

(''Pražští madrigalisté'' in the original language), which he founded in 1956. Trained during the 1930s at Prague's

Charles University ) , image_name = Carolinum_Logo.svg , image_size = 200px , established = , type = Public, Ancient , budget = 8.9 billion CZK , rector = Milena Králíčková , faculty = 4,057 , administrative_staff = 4,026 , students = 51,438 , undergr ...

, 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 Obrecht is a patronymic surname. Obrecht was a Germanic given name derived from Od-brecht, meaning "famed for his heritageNotable people with the surname include: *Jacob Obrecht (c. 1457/58 – 1505), Flemish Renaissance composer *Hermann Obrecht ( ...

, and

Jacobus Gallus Jacobus Gallus (a.k.a. Jacob(us) Handl, Jacob(us) Händl, Jacob(us) Gallus; sl, Jakob Petelin Kranjski; between 15 April and 31 July 155018 July 1591) was a late-Renaissance composer of presumed Slovene ethnicity.Skei/Pokorn, Grove online Born ...

, as well as of more frequently performed masters such as

Palestrina Palestrina (ancient ''Praeneste''; grc, Πραίνεστος, ''Prainestos'') is a modern Italian city and ''comune'' (municipality) with a population of about 22,000, in Lazio, about east of Rome. It is connected to the latter by the Via Pren ...

Lassus Orlande de Lassus ( various other names; probably – 14 June 1594) was a composer of the late Renaissance. The chief representative of the mature polyphonic style in the Franco-Flemish school, Lassus stands with Giovanni Pierluigi da Palest ...

Monteverdi Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi (baptized 15 May 1567 – 29 November 1643) was an Italian composer, choirmaster and string player. A composer of both secular and sacred music, and a pioneer in the development of opera, he is considered ...

, Dowland, Tallis, and

Orlando Gibbons Orlando Gibbons ( bapt. 25 December 1583 – 5 June 1625) was an English composer and keyboard player who was one of the last masters of the English Virginalist School and English Madrigal School. The best known member of a musical famil ...

. 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 compact disc (CD) is a Digital media, digital optical disc data storage format that was co-developed by Philips and Sony to store and play digital audio recordings. In August 1982, the first compact disc was manufactured. It was then rele ...

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

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Venhoda, Miroslav Czech conductors (music) Male conductors (music) Czech classical organists Male classical organists 1915 births 1987 deaths 20th-century conductors (music) 20th-century organists 20th-century Czech male musicians People from Moravské Budějovice Czechoslovak musicians Charles University alumni

Further reading

References