Lukáš Matoušek
From Unearthing The Music
Lukáš Matoušek is a Czech clarinetist, conductor and composer of contemporary classical music (born 1943 in Prague).
He was influenced at first by twelve-tone and "new music", later by aleatoric music. Amongst his most important compositions are the Cantata (written in response to the occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968), Metamorphoses of Silence and The Aztecs.
Biography
Lukáš Matoušek studied conducting with Václav Smetáček at the Prague Conservatory, the clarinet with Milan Kostohryz and composition with Zdeněk Hůla. After graduating from the conservatory, he attended a course in electronic and concrete music at the Czechoslovak Radio in Prague (1967-1969) and continued to study composition, first privately with Miloslav Kabeláč (1969-1975) and later at the Janáček Academy of Performing Arts in Brno (1975-1981) with Ctirada Kohoutka.
He taught clarinet at the Deyl Conservatory in Prague (196-1977) and was a music director and editor of the Czechoslovak Radio in Prague (1977-1989). In 1989 he became the dramaturg and music director of Studio Matouš and in the years 2000 - 2006 he worked as the dramaturg of the Prague Symphony Orchestra. Since 2001, he has been teaching at the Department of Music Theory of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague.
In 1969 he composed the Cantata for soloists, mixed choir and four brass instruments, in response to the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. The cantata was a great success and won the Festival Musica Sacra Nürnberg. However, this success resulted in him facing discrimination by the authorities responsible for "normalization", and his work was practically not performed in Czechoslovakia for almost 20 years.
In his work he used modern compositional techniques: dodecaphony, aleatorics and timbre music. In addition, however, he was interested in parallels between modern and medieval music. In 1963, he founded the ensemble Ars cameralis, which specialized in bringing together medieval music played on historical musical instruments and contemporary music played on modern instruments. He is the ensemble's artistic director and also performs with it as a clarinet and historical wind instrument player. In the 1970s, he also collaborated with the Prague Madrigal Ensemble. He also studied medieval music during his internship in London as a British Council scholar. He has lectured on historical instruments at the Department of Musicology, Faculty of Arts, Charles University and the Týn School in Prague, as well as at various international musicological conferences. He is also engaged in the reconstruction of medieval compositions and presents them in modern premieres.