Anton Reicha as a Visionary II
in the Moravian Library Brno,
Czech Republic
Colloquium 9 th – 10 th April

On the occasion of Anton Reicha’s 250th birthday, scholarly, artistic and public events have
been held to commemorate the composer throughout the year 2020, emphasizing the novel and
visionary ideas Reicha brought about, being a music theoretician and pedagogue of international
acclaim. First, a convention was held on 4th February in BnF, where scholars from Germany, Great
Britain, France, and the Czech Republic met to discuss the innovative character of Reicha’s music
and theoretical work, as well as to present an up to date state of research on his collection in BnF.
A second colloquium will take place on 9th and 10th April, thus aiming to conclude the anniversary
year and assess where the current research on Anton Reicha stands at the moment and suggest
possibilities for further research and projects.
Even though Anton Reicha left his hometown Prague as early as at the age of eleven and claimed
to have lost the knowledge of his mother tongue, Czech musicologists have shown increasing
interest in his work. After the pioneer in musicology Maurice Emanuel1, it was Jiří Vysloužil (2)
and Olga Šotolová (3) in particular, whose publications on Reicha contributed to his international
acclaim and allowed subsequent research of his work; ever since the 1960s, the renewed interest
in the artist was manifested in a series of scholarly as well as practical editions of his music
in Czechoslovakia (4). The past decade saw the publishing of many scholarly works. These are
mainly critical bilingual editions of Reicha’s unpublished theoretical texts which include his
hitherto unknown compositions held in the BnF, edited by Hervé Audéon, Alban Ramaut, and
Herbert Schneider and published at Olms (5). Other scholarly achievements worth mentioning are
Louise Bernard de Raymond’s PhD dissertation on Reicha’s string quartets (6) and two international
conferences held in April 2013 in Paris and November 2017 in Lucca, whose proceedings bear
testament to the large scope of research on the composer (7). At the same time, Roman Dykast made
available Czech annotated translations of Reicha’s three major treatises (8) and a number of editions
and re-editions of his compositions were issued.

Thanks to the institutional collaboration between BnF and the Moravian Library, the new findings
in Reicha’s collection in BnF, made by its curator François-Pierre Goy, gave birth to an exhibition,
which will be staged in the Moravian Library. It is planned for the first months of 2021 and in
tow of the exhibition, a colloquium will be held 9th – 10th April, aiming to bring together scholars
excited about Anton Reicha and his work in order to assess the current state of research and
suggest future projects. The colloquium will be divided in two parts: the first day presentations
will be delivered and the following half a day a panel discussion will focus on projects to come.

1 Maurice EMMANUEL, Antonin Reicha : Biographie critique. (Paris, Librairie Renouard, 1937).
2 Jiří VYSLOUŽIL, Zápisky o Antonínu Rejchovi se jmenným soupisem díla / Notes sur Antoine Reicha avec une liste nominale de ses œuvres.
(Brno, Opus musicum, 1970).
3 Olga ŠOTOLOVÁ, Antonín Rejcha. (Praha, Editio Supraphon, 1977); Id., Antonín Rejcha : a biography and thematic catalogue. (Praha, Editio
Supraphon, 1990).
4 A. REICHA, L’Art de varier, op. 57 per il pianoforte, edited by Dana Šetková. (Praha, Státní hudební nakladatelství, 1961); A. REICHA, Tre
quartetti, op. 98 per flauto, violino, viola e violoncello, edited by Kurt Janetzky and Jan Racek. (Praha, Státní hudební nakladatelství, 1964); A.
REICHA, 36 fug pro klavír (36 fugues for piano), edited by Václav Jan Sýkora. (Praha, Supraphon, 1973), and others.
5 Hervé AUDÉON, Alban RAMAUT, Herbert SCHNEIDER (eds.), Antoine Reicha, Écrits inédits et oubliés / Unbekannte und unveröffentlichte
Schriften. (Hildesheim, Olms Verlag, 2011–2013, 4 volumes).
6 Louise BERNARD DE RAYMOND, Les Quatuors viennois et parisiens d’Antoine Reicha : éditions critiques et études stylistique. (Ph.D. Thesis,
Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2013).
7 Louise BERNARD DE RAYMOND, Jean-Pierre BARTOLI, Herbert SCHNEIDER (eds.), Antoine Reicha, compositeur et théoricien.
(Hildesheim, Olms Verlag, 2015) and Louise BERNARD DE RAYMOND, Fabio MORABITO (eds.), Antoine Reicha and the Making of the
Nineteenth-Century Composer. (Bologne, Ut Orpheus, in print).
8 A. REICHA, Hudba jako ryze citové umění, translated into Czech and annotated by Roman Dykast (Praha, Togga, 2009); Id., Pojednání o melodii
(Praha, Togga, 2012) ; Pojednání o harmonii (Paha, Togga, 2014) and Pojednání o kontrapunktu (Praha, Togga, 2016).

Apart from presentations regarding the general state of research on Anton Reicha, your own
suggestions from the following thematic fields are more than welcome:

• New findings among the works of Anton Reicha
• Reicha’s operas, compositions for solo voice, religious music, and chamber music
• Editions of Reicha’s compositions: their history, types, and distribution
• Present-day editions of Reicha’s music
• The reception of Reicha’s treatises, the history of their editions and the influence of original

editions as well as translations

• The reception of Reicha’s work during his lifetime (in press and in texts written by his

contemporaries)

• Reicha’s pupils (both women and men)
• Interpretation of Reicha’s music during his lifetime and nowadays

Please send the proposals for your papers (20 minutes) accompanied with a brief biography and
a reference list to Jana Franková (Tato e-mailová adresa je chráněna před spamboty. Pro její zobrazení musíte mít povolen Javascript.) by 20th January 2021. Your attendance
will be confirmed by 30th January 2021. The colloquium will be held in English, French and
German; interpreters will not be available. We are planning to publish the proceedings. Keeping
the pandemic situation in mind, it is possible that the colloquium may take place in online
environment.

Research committee:
Mathias Auclair,
Jean-Pierre Bartoli,
Louise Bernard de Raymond,
Jana Franková,
François-Pierre Goy,
Marc Niubo,
Herbert Schneider,
Miloš Štědroň,
Irena Veselá,
Barbara Maria Willi

Organising committee:
Jana Franková,
Soňa Šinclová
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Kontaktní osoba: Jana Franková (Tato e-mailová adresa je chráněna před spamboty. Pro její zobrazení musíte mít povolen Javascript.)