2.1 Origins, Childhood, and Musical Education

Julie Emilie Aloisie Marie Kühnlová [Kühnelová] was born at 14/296 Konviktská Street, in the old Prague parish of Saint Gilles, on October 9, 1888, and was baptized nine days later on October 18.Footnote ²³ Her father, the official Vojtěch [Adalbert] Kühnl [Kühnel] (1859–1905), was an important figure in the cultural life of the city. Son of the shoemaker Eduard Kühnl [Kühnel] and Magdalena Hölzer, Vojtěch joined the Měšťanská Beseda (“Townpeople’s Society”) when he was sixteen. The Měšťanská Beseda was founded in Prague in 1845 and consisted of bourgeois, businessmen, civil servants, and intellectuals with a national consciousness. This society was accessible to all classes in the city and to educated people from other states for social entertainment and education. During the 1850s, this type of association emerged in various cities as a reaction of the Czech-speaking population to the activities of similar cultural associations of German-speaking fellow citizens. Vojtěch Kühnl became a member of the Entertainment Committee in 1876, and eventually served as its chairman for ten years, before resigning in early 1890. He also served on its Administrative Committee from 1880. Then in 1901, he was appointed deputy mayor by a special vote of the members. His directorship of the Entertainment Committee was very successful and increased the society’s membership.Footnote ²⁴

Julie’s mother, Marie Majdalena Neander (born in 1862), came from an old and wealthy family of Prague merchants, who owned the house “U mouřenína” at the corner of Mostecká (5/282) and Lazenská Streets in Malá Strana. She was the daughter of Antonín Neander and of Emilie Kleinberg who was related to several noble families. While Vojtěch Kühnl was an optimistic and cheerful man with a warm nature, an excellent musician, and lover of music, Marie Majdalena was a gentle and peaceful woman who loved classical literature and who played the piano superbly.

Vojtěch Karel Antonín, Julie’s older brother, was born on April 30, 1886. He married Barbara Bendová on April 10, 1918, in Prague, and died in Potštejn (district of Rychnov nad Kněžnou) on February 9, 1942.Footnote ²⁵ He worked as an engineer, but distinguished himself above all for having translated the libretto of Wagner’s Siegfried into Czech for the first series of performances of the opera at the Brno National Theater in April and June 1931.Footnote ²⁶

Coming from a Catholic family of high social rank, the two children benefited from a thorough intellectual and musical education. Vojtěch studied piano with Karel Slavkovský, a pupil of Smetana and a friend of Dvořák, who had founded a piano school in the early 1870s. Vojtěch was assiduous in practicing his instrument, and frequently asked his more gifted sister to play the piano with him. During their school years, both organized concerts at home that were attended by their cousins, classmates, and students. During these youthful events Julie took up the habit of improvising freely at the piano, which prompted her parents to send her to the Dvořákeum. The Dvořákeum was a private musical institution established in Prague around 1904–1906 by the organist and conductor Eduard Tregler and Antonín Herman. It was there that she received her first music lessons with Václav Talich (five years her senior), between 1906 and 1908, that is, between the return of Talich from Tbilisi and his stay in Ljubljana. (We do not know the content of these lessons.) It is, however, very likely that young Julie was introduced to the basics of music at a much earlier age, as it is hard to believe that she practiced the keyboard at an early stage without a minimum of instruction: Was she taught by Slavkovský at the same time as her brother? Then, she studied piano with Adolf Mikeš at his own school founded in 1903, and prepared for the state examination under his guidance. From about 1914 she trained as a dramatic soprano with the tenor Richard Figar (Fikar, alias Hofer) at the singing school he had opened in Prague in 1908. Because Figar had held the title roles of Tannhäuser, Lohengrin, and that of Walther von Stolzing (The Master Singers of Nuremberg) in particular, she focused chiefly on Wagnerian characters, but she had to abandon the idea to become an opera singer due to vocal overexertion. This made her decide to pursue her deepest dream: to become a composer. Josef Bohuslav Foerster accepted her as a private composition student in 1919. He taught her harmony, counterpoint, and musical forms. In his memoirs, he acknowledges that Julie Kühnlová was one of his best and most diligent pupils: her music evidenced originality, intelligence, and immense sensitivity.Footnote ²⁷ Foerster’s lessons lasted until Julie’s marriage in 1921. In the end, Julie never attended the Prague Conservatory, but took only private lessons to master the arcana of music.Footnote ²⁸

Almost nothing is known about her general instruction. At nine years old, she is said to have been lively and very gifted. She enjoyed learning in a playful way, and only what interested her. Her grades were excellent.Footnote ²⁹ It can be surmised that she was first educated privately or in one of the city’s institutions for young women. Then, as a teenager, she attended high school. Shortly after her father’s death, she studied languages at Charles University, which enabled her to eventually teach English and French, and to be financially independent. Around 1911,Footnote ³⁰ she frequented the Hudební klub (Music Club) which was firmly linked to Charles University. This circle of intellectuals, active from 1911 to 1927, was founded by the musicologist and Smetana scholar Zdeněk Nejedlý, who would later become the first Minister of Culture and Education of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, and his university students and listeners. One purpose of the Club was to promote Smetana’s Czech identity as opposed to the Lisztian and Wagnerian image, constructed by members of the Umělecká Beseda (“Artistic Society”) founded in January 1863 by Bedřich Smetana, Foerster, and Josef Mánes, among several leading artists, to give Czech culture an European dimension that was lacking at the time.Footnote ³¹ Another was to attend scholarly lectures, to see dramatic performances, and to discuss contemporary music, mainly that of Wagner and Mahler. The Club proved to be of the utmost importance in Julie’s life. There, she met – among others – the scholar Vladimír Helfert, the composer and conductor Karel Boleslav Jirák, and above all, Jan Reisser, three years her junior and a student of Nejedlý at Charles University.

Jan Václav Reisser was born in the parish of the Church of the Holy Spirit (Staré Město) on September 12, 1891, and was baptized twelve days later on September 24.Footnote ³² His father, Jan Reisser [II], was employed by the Czech Post Office in Prague, first as secretary, and then from January 1902 as chief commissioner assigned to the Inspection Service.Footnote ³³ His grandfather, Jan Reisser [I], was guard inspector at the Prague penitentiary.Footnote ³⁴ His mother, Anna, née Hedviková, was the daughter of the master of mines Jan Hedvik. Like Julie, he benefited from the music lessons of Mikeš and Figar, as well as from Bohumila Rosenkrancová and Albín Ším. While studying law at Charles University, he participated in the creation of the Music Club to which he contributed several articles on Smetana. He subsequently wrote a handful of papers on various composers (notably Ravel and Roussel), and essays on opera, such as the polemical pamphlet The Singing Culture of Our Theater.Footnote ³⁵ He even collected some of Smetana’s writings in a book published in 1920.Footnote ³⁶ He earned his doctorate in law from Charles University in November 1915, and entered the diplomatic service four years later in December 1919.

2.2 A Life Abroad

Julie Kühnlová married Jan Reisser on December 15, 1921.Footnote ³⁷ Shortly afterward, the couple moved to Geneva for a few months, where Jan Reisser had been appointed on October 4, 1921, as secretary of the Czechoslovak Embassy to the League of Nations, and to Bern on March 30, 1922, where he held the position of counselor to the Czechoslovak legation.Footnote ³⁸ During their stay in Switzerland between 1921 and 1929, Reisserová was able to perfect her musical training. Thus, in 1923–1924, she deepened her harmonic knowledge and Germanic instrumentation by analyzing neoromantic scores – such as those by Ludwig Thuille – under the guidance of Ernst Hohlfeld, a former pupil of Hans Pfitzner and then the Kapellmeister of the Bern Stadttheater.Footnote ³⁹ She once stated that while in Bern she had the opportunity to conduct a choir and an orchestra:Footnote ⁴⁰ Did Hohlfeld give her additional training in this art? According to the obituary published in the Swiss newspaper Der Bund, she also benefited from the lessons of an obscure Bernese music pedagogue named Spenzer, but no other source corroborates this information.Footnote ⁴¹ In any case, it was at Bern that she overcame – at thirty-five-years old – her doubts about her abilities to compose seriously, and penned three of the four songs of the cycle Březen, the orchestral piece La Bise, and Allégresse that was to become the third movement of the Esquisses for piano. It was also from 1927 onward that her music began to be performed in public, and her fame to grow all over Europe. How she managed to gain access to the stage is unknown; perhaps Jan Reisser and his acquaintances at the embassy played a role in this.Footnote ⁴² He and his wife were indeed often invited to official dinners, such as the one given by Jean Hennessy, French ambassador in Bern, on December 22, 1927.Footnote ⁴³

By the turn of 1924–1925, Reisserová went to Paris to seek advice from Albert Roussel. While she received her first musical education through family connections, she may have discovered Roussel’s music in December 1920 when his First Symphony was played by the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra directed by Václav Talich, and ten months later at a concert under the auspices of the French Minister of Foreign Affairs Aristide Briand, in which the orchestra gave Le Festin de l’araignée conducted by René-Emmanuel Baton.Footnote ⁴⁴ She submitted to Roussel La Bise and a now lost piano piece whose thematic content was reused in the first movement of the Suita. The French composer perused them,Footnote ⁴⁵ and concluded that they were “very fresh.” Reisserová would have answered that she was of the opinion that “music should follow the beats of the heart,” to which Roussel would have replied: “Then your heart beats very irregularly.”Footnote ⁴⁶ Roussel, who seldom accepted private students, agreed to instruct her in rigorous contrapuntal writing, and the subtlety, richness, and colors of French orchestration. She began with four-voice harmonization of chorales and counterpoint exercises. All in all, the French master gave her 241 lessons between January 18, 1925, and February 20, 1937, but only ten or so to Bohuslav Martinů.Footnote ⁴⁷ In the lecture she gave in Vienna, Reisserová said that she had studied with Roussel for only five years and that he had stopped teaching her after the first performance of one of her orchestral works in Paris (i.e., La Bise on April 23, 1929). Would this suggest that she had in fact studied with him for only four years and that they met informally afterward?Footnote ⁴⁸ Her lessons with Roussel marked a long-lasting and sincere friendship that made her travel back and forth between her home and Paris, and a friendship that ended with the death of her mentor.Footnote ⁴⁹ The latter appreciated her as a composer and as a person, and it was “irresistible for everyone when he slowly pronounce[d] her first name in Czech: Ju-lin-ka.”Footnote ⁵⁰ Reisserová was often invited to visit Le Vasterival, Roussel’s house at Varengeville-sur-Mer (Normandy), where she notably composed her Pastorale maritimo dedicated to Roussel’s wife, Blanche Preisach.Footnote ⁵¹ She also spontaneously translated into Czech the libretto of his opéra bouffe, Le Testament de la tante Caroline, for its creation at the opera house in Olomouc on November 14, 1936.Footnote ⁵² (This suggests that she probably had good contacts with Adolf Heller, then director of the Olomouc institution.)

In an autobiographical record – a questionnaire (“Dotazník”) sent to Reisserová in 1931 by the editors of the music dictionary Pazdírkův Hudební slovník naučný – she claimed to have attended “Lily” (recte Nadia) Boulanger’s classes at the École Normale de Musique without giving any further detail.Footnote ⁵³ (Boulanger and the Czech artist were perhaps not on particularly good terms, since the latter got Boulanger’s first name wrong, and never mentioned her studies at the École Normale in interviews.) Reisserová may have also frequented the Schola Cantorum irregularly, because she alluded to Vincent d’Indy and one of their discussions in the lecture she delivered in Vienna. In any case, she was evidently acquainted with many artists, musicians, and intellectuals while in Paris. In 1927 alone, the year of her first documented public concerts, she had the good fortune to benefit from a cycle of evenings dedicated to the promotion of Czech composers. Thus, she ran into Julien Tiersot at the “Festival of Czechoslovak music” (“Festival de musique Tchécoslovaque”) hosted by Alexandre Mercereau at his home (241, Boulevard Raspail) on February 24,Footnote ⁵⁴ and Jane Mortier who accompanied Jeanne Bathori and Zdeňka Krausová in three of her songs (two of which were probably excerpted from Březen)Footnote ⁵⁵ at the March concerts given successively at La Sorbonne, and at the Salle Pleyel. Besides, she opened her mind to new trends, such as French impressionism and the ballets of Stravinsky under whose influence she composed Jaro v ulici. All in all, Paris remained a place where the Reissers often visited and sojourned between 1924 and 1937.Footnote ⁵⁶

After leaving Switzerland in 1929, the couple lived one year in Prague, before settling in Belgrade, where Jan Reisser was assigned as head of the Czechoslovak legation on August 25, 1930 (he was transferred there on December 1, 1930). As an official member of the legation, Julie Reisserová organized, or took part in the organization of many musical events in which Czech composers, such as Martinů and herself, were at the forefront. Thus, pieces by the two composers – along with ones by Foerster, Novák, Suk, and Janáček, to name but a few – were performed on April 23, 1932, during a concert of Czech modern music attended by members of the Czechoslovak diplomatic corps and notables of Belgrade.Footnote ⁵⁷ A year later, Reisserová’s Pastorale maritimo was premiered there by the Philharmonic Orchestra.Footnote ⁵⁸ In Serbia, she met the well-known piano teacher and director of the Stanković Musical School, Emil Hájek, who prepared the vocal score of Březen, and played the three Esquisses many times.Footnote ⁵⁹ Unfortunately, the Reissers’ desire to arrange a concert of Roussel’s music under the auspices of the Embassy met with the disapproval of Ambassador Robert Flieder and his wife. Although the two couples had known each other since Bern, personal relations deteriorated in February and March 1933, leading to a reshuffle of the legation.Footnote ⁶⁰ As the Reissers had quickly become the center of Belgrade’s intellectual, literary, and artistic microcosm, a group of friends, writers, musicians, painters, sculptors, and actors planned a farewell banquet on the following September 23, just after the world premiere of the Pastorale maritimo.Footnote ⁶¹ Among these artists, Vladimír Žedrinsky, the set dresser, painter, and contributor to the Politika newspaper, should be singled out for his caricature drawing of Julie’s portrait.Footnote ⁶²

Between October 1, 1933, and August 31, 1936, the Reissers were in Copenhagen.Footnote ⁶³ The stay in Denmark was particularly fruitful, since it was there that Reisserová had the occasion to publish some of her scores and to forge a reputation as a musician during parties held at various Embassies.Footnote ⁶⁴ Thus, she was able to rub shoulders with ministers and other political figures at social dinners, and to have her works sung there. One of the most important cultural events that took place in Copenhagen during Jan and Julie Reisser’s residency was undoubtedly the “Czech month in Denmark,” which included book and painting exhibitions, as well as concerts. Jan Reisser and the Danish Minister of Trade and Industry, Christen Nielsen Hauge, launched this “month” – which lasted until March 7 – at the Museum of Art and Industry on February 10, 1934. According to various press clippings, it was on the same February 10 at the Koncertpalaet that Julie Reisserová’s name first appeared to the Copenhagen public: the French opera singer Alice Raveau sang À l’Aube (Za svítání), which was enthusiastically received by the audience and the Czech and Danish authorities.Footnote ⁶⁵ Seven days later,

That the columnist used the phrase “young composer” confirms that Reisserová’s reputation was not yet well established outside a small circle of musicians, even though Březen and the Suita had already met with great success in Prague in October 1931. On March 2, Danish soprano Inger Raasløff gave a recital accompanied on the piano by Christian Christiansen, in which she performed several Czech folk songs, as well as Za svítání and Světlo (from Březen). On the same evening, the Danish Radio broadcast a recital by Emil Hájek, who played Reisserová’s Allégresse as well as pieces by other Czech composers. The highlight of the month was the gala evening organized by the Danish-Czechoslovak Society at the Hornung & Møller Concert Hall. Jan Reisser opened the evening with a lecture on modern Czech music, followed by a concert. Hájek played piano pieces by Czech composers old and new, while soprano Else Schøtt sang pieces by Smetana and Dvořák, and “clearly shaped and sonically beautiful compositions” by Reisserová, the hostess of the event.Footnote ⁶⁷ Finally, a second gala evening took place on March 7, offered by the “All People Association,” in the course of which Jan Reisser paid tribute to President Masaryk and Hájek played, among others, the first of the three Esquisses.

At the margins of this “Czech month,” the social life of the Reissers was particularly rich, and left traces in the press. Thus, it is known that late in April or early in May 1935, they were invited to attend a lunch offered by the French chargé d’affaires in Denmark, Paul Petit, where they met the USSR Minister Nikolai Tikhmeneff.Footnote ⁶⁸ Conversely, the Reissers also loved to receive Danish and visiting foreign musicians in the villa of the Czechoslovakian Embassy. The obituaries printed in Danish newspapers after Reisserová’s death unanimously praised her for being a radiant and hospitable hostess and for the warmth with which she and her husband had received visitors.Footnote ⁶⁹ The couple indeed took care of all the artists who passed through the capital where they lived, building contacts and organizing receptions and concerts for them: “In Copenhagen, as elsewhere, the home of Dr. Jan Reisser and his wife has become a gathering place for everything to do with art.”Footnote ⁷⁰ In that respect, conductor Jaroslav Krombholc later recalled that for his concert tour in Brazil in 1947, Reisser “took care of the matter and in conjunction with our authorities,” so that the tour “became an official venture to promote our [Czech] music.”Footnote ⁷¹ In February 1936, Reisserová managed to have Roussel invited to Copenhagen where his Third Symphony and his Sinfonietta were given by the Denmark Radio Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Nikolai Malko.Footnote ⁷² Wherever they were, the Reissers indeed succeeded in promoting the culture of their native country and more generally contemporary European music, sometimes contributing reviews of musical events to various newspapers and magazines, such as České slovo, Lod, Moderní revue, Právo Lidu, Přítomnost, Tempo, Zvuk, or Revue de Genève.Footnote ⁷³

Reisserová’s growing reputation as a composer obviously led to her music being increasingly programmed by renowned artists and broadcast on various European national radio stations, including in Latvia, Finland, Sweden, and Romania. The countries where her music was heard most often between 1927 and 1941 were Czechoslovakia (34 known concerts), Denmark (34), France (25), and Switzerland (13).Footnote ⁷⁴ Interestingly enough, no concert of her music was recorded in Italy, Spain, or England, where Jan Reisser was never on duty. As shown in Figure 2, the years 1934–1937 were the most successful in terms of number of public performances, which is partly explained by the publication of Březen and the Esquisses in Copenhagen. Hence, between 1927 and 1941 the songs of Březen – either in their symphonic or piano version – were very popular (around fifty-nine performances of Světlo, forty-nine of Za svítání, and thirty-nine of Nostalgie and Jaro v ulici); Esquisses no. 1 and 2 were played in public twenty-six and twenty-two times respectively, and Allégresse (Esquisses no. 3) thirty-three times. The Pastorale maritimo and La Bise (Suita no. 3) remained far behind with eighteen (perhaps even more) and fourteen performances respectively.

Figure 2 Documented number of public and radio performances per year between 1927 and 1941 (Appendix C). Newspapers and magazines allude to other performances without providing usable data.

The festival accompanying the International Congress of Music Composers, organized in Vichy from September 2 to 9, 1935, accelerated Reisserová’s career as an international composer. Under the presidency of Richard Strauss and vice-presidency of Albert Roussel, this congress brought together a large number of French and foreign composers.Footnote ⁷⁵ It was at the bandstand of the Parc des Sources, a stone’s throw from the Palais des Congrès, that the Pastorale maritimo, conducted by Louis Fourestier, aroused the interest of the journalists and musicians present, such as Darius Milhaud who classified the Czech artist among the authors of “good music.”Footnote ⁷⁶ Gustave Samazeuilh did not take the trouble to list the names of all the composers played each afternoon at this bandstand but did mention “Mrs. Reisserová (whose delicate pastorale represented the Czechoslovak school).”Footnote ⁷⁷ It is undoubtedly in Vichy that she first met the director of the Nancy Conservatory, Alfred Bachelet, to whom we owe the conservation of the autograph manuscript and the photostatic edition of the score.Footnote ⁷⁸ The Pastorale maritimo quickly became the most often played and/or broadcast orchestral work of the composer, and lastingly remained in the memories of musicians: in 1960, René Dumesnil still considered this piece to be one the most representative of Czech music of the first half of the twentieth century, along with works by František Bartoš.Footnote ⁷⁹

Appointed head of the Transport Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on September 1, 1936,Footnote ⁸⁰ Jan Reisser and his wife returned to their apartment in Prague (33/378 Podskalská Street; Nové Mesto), which would be their base until the composer’s death. In 1937, they spent some time in Paris and Brussels. On January 20 that year, Jan Reisser – likely accompanied by his wife – and a large number of politicians and personalities attended the lunch hosted by Marcel-Henri Jaspar, the Belgian Minister of Transport in his ministry in Brussels on the occasion of the Belgian-Czech aeronautical conference.Footnote ⁸¹ Eight days later, Reisserová was present at the Salle Pleyel for the Paris premiere of the Pastorale maritimo under the baton of Charles Munch (Figure 5), before returning to Brussels on March 17, where she was invited by Aline van Bärentzen:

Finally, she was in Dieppe – along with Jacques Ibert, Arthur Honegger, Roland-Manuel, and René Dumesnil – for the funeral of Albert Roussel on August 27, 1937.Footnote ⁸³

2.3 Death and Aftermath

In 1937 (or a little earlier?), Julie Reisserová was struck down by an insidious and incurable ailment whose nature is not documented. She ultimately had to undergo surgery, which took place around February 10, 1938 at the Podolsk Sanatorium in Prague (Pražské Sanatorium v Podoli). Unable to recover, Julie Reisserová passed away there on the afternoon of Friday February 25, 1938. The news spread abroad quickly relayed by the main national newspapers.Footnote ⁸⁴ Vítězslava Kaprálová mentioned it in an undated letter to her parents where she said that she felt very sorry and “spent the whole evening reminiscing with Martinů.”Footnote ⁸⁵ (When and where Reisserová and Kaprálová first met is unknown.)

Several events paid tribute to the deceased, notably in Denmark, France, and Czechoslovakia. On April 11, 1938, the Danish radio broadcast a commemorative concert in which Inger Raasløff sang Pod sněhem and Světlo accompanied by Folmer Jensen on the piano, and Erik Tuxen conducted the Suita and the Pastorale maritimo.Footnote ⁸⁶ Two other concerts were programmed in Paris. The first – given in honor of the Czech composer “of great talent … who, in many circumstances, gave precious proof of her attachment to France and our musicians” – took place at the Revue musicale (70, avenue Kléber) on April 26, 1938. Accompanied on the piano by Maroussia Orloff, Gilberte Arvez-Vernet sang the song cycles Pod sněhem and Březen.Footnote ⁸⁷ The second was organized by the “Friends of Julie Reisserová” (“Amis de Julie Reisserova”), in the concert hall of the École Normale de Musique two days later on Thursday April 28, in the presence of several Czech representatives, including the plenipotentiary Štefan Osuský and his wife. Victor Tapié, a professor of history at the University of Lille, opened the concert with an address in which he recounted the too short career of the musician. Stan Golestan, then professor of composition at the École Normale, penned a moving account of the evening:

According to Élisabeth de Mondésir, Marie Tymichová, from the Paris Opera, danced that evening to La Bise – played on the piano – with a rich inventiveness of turns, and Mrs. O. Guerfort sang Février (Předjaří).Footnote ⁸⁹ René Dumesnil, who attended this last concert, echoed the general opinion on the works of the departed: they “express a nobility of spirit and a remarkable distinction as well as a deep sincerity. And it is these qualities, indeed, that all those who knew her and who today deplore her end appreciated in her.”Footnote ⁹⁰

In Prague, the Women’s National Council in cooperation with the Society for Musical Education and the Institute of Scandinavian and Dutch Education held an evening on April 26, 1938 in the hall of the Women’s Club (26 Ve Smečkách Street). Josefa Hrdinová presented the event; compositions by Reisserová were performed by Zdeňka Ziková (soprano), Hans Walter Süsskind (piano), and the Singing Association of Prague Female Teachers, while some of her poems were recited by Karel P. Jelínek and Marguerite Houllé Renoir.Footnote ⁹¹ Other concerts of Reisserová’s music took place in Prague during the following months and years. The Society for Contemporary Music, “The Present” (“Přítomnost”), opened its 1938–1939 season with a concert given in October where Pod sněhem was sung and praised for its lyricism.Footnote ⁹² On February 23, 1940, a tribute concert marking the second anniversary of the composer’s death was held in the Umělecká Beseda Hall. The event was introduced by Jiřina Vacková, who presented the life and work of the musician with – according to the chronicler of the Národní politika – an overly biased view.Footnote ⁹³ Marie Zupancová then sang the cycles Pod sněhem and Březen, accompanied by Otakar Vondrovic, who also played the Esquisses.Footnote ⁹⁴ The last tribute concerts recorded were given in Prague on February 25 and May 12, 1941, at the instigation of “The Circle of Friends of Julie Reisserová” and the Czech Women’s Club.Footnote ⁹⁵

The soprano Marie Zupancová [Zupanecová] – née Bodláková – had already sung Březen in the symphonic and piano accompaniment versions at least three times (on November 16, 1927, November 21, 1930, and February 7, 1932), and was thus in close contact with the Reissers. Jan married Zupancová on April 29, 1939 (Figure 3), but almost nothing is known about her. The Czech press recorded some of her public appearances between the late 1920s and early 1940s.Footnote ⁹⁶ Daughter of Rudolf Bodlák and born on April 26, 1906,Footnote ⁹⁷ she had an honorable career as an opera singer, notably at the Velká opereta (Great Operetta Theater) in Prague, and at the Operas of České Budějovice and Plzeň.Footnote ⁹⁸ Ranked among the artists with exceptional qualities by Brazilian critics,Footnote ⁹⁹ she resumed her singing activity in 1949 when she was released from diplomatic protocol.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ In her recitals, she liked to program – among other pieces by Smetana, Dvořák, Mahler, Richard Strauss, Wolf, and Mussorgsky – mélodies by Roussel, Martinů, and Reisserová’s Jaro v ulici.Footnote ¹⁰¹ In Rio de Janeiro, the couple lived in a sumptuous apartment on Avenue Atlântica,Footnote ¹⁰² where they had parties during which Marie sang old Czech songs and Jan told of the old days and customs of his country. The former diplomat remained active as President of the Brazilian Red Cross Refugee Aid Organization and Executive Vice-President of the Brazilian Center for a Free Europe. In 1968, Reisser was still fighting from Brazil for freedom in his home country.Footnote ¹⁰³ They finally moved – permanently? – to the north, to Teresópolis. Marie Bodláková-Reisserová died around November 11, 1973,Footnote ¹⁰⁴ and Jan Reisser on January 24, 1975, in Rio de Janeiro.Footnote ¹⁰⁵

Figure 3 From left to right: Marie Pauková (secretary of the Czech legation), Marie Bodláková (mother-in-law of Jan Reisser), Marie Bodláková-Reisserová (Jan Reisser’s second wife) and Jan Reisser at their arrival in Rio de Janeiro, with Minister Carlos Martins Thompson Flores, and Jiri Reiszman (1946).

Image courtesy of the National Library of Brazil; call-number: FM-1–9–020. A copy is available at the Archives of the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Personal files 1945–92, Box 816, “Reisser, Jan, JURDr.” Originally published in Tribuna Popular (May 26, 1946), 8.

From this biographical study, it can be concluded that Julie Reisserová was a gifted musician who, thanks to her marriage to a member of the Czech diplomatic staff, had the good fortune to live in various European capitals and have her music programmed there. This brought her international recognition that even crossed the Atlantic Ocean, a recognition that was not granted to many women composers of her time. As a matter of fact, she was the first Czech woman musician whose works were known outside her native country. Until 1938, her name and works were mentioned or discussed in around 200 different newspapers and magazines printed in Austria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, England, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, the United States, and Yugoslavia. Yet, her musical compositions are not numerous, not only because of her self-censorship and social duties, but also because like her mentor and friend Roussel, she began the study of composition rather late in life (around the age of thirty), thus confirming Nadia Boulanger’s belief that great artists are not always child prodigies.Footnote ¹⁰⁶

3.1 Reisserová as Feminist

After the death of her father on July 4, 1905,Footnote ¹¹⁷ Reisserová decided to study foreign languages seriously, and passed the state exam to teach French and English. This may have prompted her to be a feminist activist. Indeed, before the founding of the Czechoslovak Republic in October 1918, a celibacy law – which remained officially in force until 1919 – forbade women instructors to marry and have children. This law not only impacted directly her future career as a teacher, but also that of her childhood friend, Josefa Hrdinová, who pursued the same objective.

To date, it is not known how Reisserová – and for that matter HrdinováFootnote ¹¹⁸ – came into contact with the feminist milieu, but it can be surmised that Jan Reisser acted as an intermediary. Both Reisser and Jan Masaryk entered the ministry of foreign affairs in 1919 where they became close friends.Footnote ¹¹⁹ The latter was the son of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, the first president of the new Republic. Under the impulse of President Masaryk, deep changes occurred in the constitution and the regulation of women’s rights. Masaryk had a sophisticated understanding of Western culture, and of liberal French culture in particular. His wife, Charlotte Garrigue Masaryk, an American with Huguenot ancestry, had a strong influence on him.Footnote ¹²⁰ Starting 1905, she became very active in the enfranchisement of women, became a member of various associations, such as the Central Association of Czech Women (Ústřední spolek českých žen), and worked hand in hand with one of the most prominent figures of the Czech feminist movement, the future senator Františka Plamínková.Footnote ¹²¹ She even played a key role in the writing of Article 106 of the Czechoslovak Constitution of 1920 enshrining equality between men and women.Footnote ¹²² The connection between Reisser and Masaryk may even have helped introduce Reisserová to Plamínková, the founder of the Women’s National Council (Ženská národní rada) in 1923. This Council proved to be “the most influential lobbying group of women in Czechoslovakia … and also became the voice of Czechoslovakia in a number of prominent international feminist organizations, including the International Council of Women.”Footnote ¹²³ It turned out that all these people were not only heavily involved in women’s rights advocacy, but also very good amateur musicians and connoisseurs. Thus, the Ženská národní rada and its network were at the origin of at least seven concerts at which works by Reisserová were performed: in Belgrade on May 14, 1931; in Prague on October 23, 1931 (under the patronage of President MasarykFootnote ¹²⁴), April 29, 1934, November 30, 1936, and December 3, 1937; in Vienna on April 23, 1937; and in Bratislava on March 3, 1937 (the latter event was organized by the association of college-educated women during which Březen was sung by Milada Jirásková).

Another hypothesis, which does not exclude the previous one, is that Jan Reisser introduced his wife to the feminist milieu through Bohumila Rosenkrancová with whom he studied singing. Plamínková and Rosenkrancová, who also taught Zdeňka Ziková and Marie Bodláková, knew each other. On the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of Rosenkrancová’s artistic activities, the Prague publishing house Sfinx issued a collection of articles and drawings to which Plamínková, Reisserová, Ziková, Hana Benešová, and Vincent d’Indy among others, contributed.Footnote ¹²⁵ Moreover, an audition of Rosenkrancová’s students took place on November 16, 1927, during which Bodláková sang two songs from Březen.

It is probably through this feminist network that Reisserová got to know Anna (Aťa) Klecandová-Martenová – née Kopalová – with whom she had much in common. The latter graduated from the Minerva school, the first gymnasium for young Czech women in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, founded in Prague by Eliška Krásnohorská – the librettist of four of Smetana’s operas – where female pupils were prepared to enter the university as full-time students. She continued her studies at Charles University focusing on ancient Indian philology, comparative linguistics, Arabic, and literature. She earned a doctorate in 1919, becoming the first female orientalist scholar. Kopalová first married the literary critic and writer Miloš Marten who died during World War I. Her second husband was General Vojtěch Vladimír Klecanda whose death in 1947 remains as mysterious as that of Jan Masaryk in 1948.Footnote ¹²⁶ She traveled extensively with her husbands, especially to France and Italy, where General Klecanda served as military attaché at the Czech Embassy in Rome and Paris. Persuaded, as Reisserová seems to have been, that the success of an embassy depends on the ability of diplomats’ wives to work together to promote their homeland, she held diplomatic salons, where she gave lectures on Czechoslovak culture, and more particularly on the Czech women’s movement.Footnote ¹²⁷ Thus, she organized a concert in Paris in November 1930, where music by Reisserová was performed.Footnote ¹²⁸ It can also be surmised that Klecandová-Martenová introduced Reisserová to Paul Claudel’s play Partage de midi, if not to Paul Claudel himself. Miloš Marten was acquainted with Claudel in Paris in 1907–1908, met him regularly when he was French consul in Prague between 1909 and 1911, and even asked him to be his best man at his wedding to Anna. In an interview, Reisserová confessed that one of her first attempts as a composer (around 1919) was a setting of part of Claudel’s Partage de midi (actually an orchestral overture to the play), and that this trial opened the doors to Josef Bohuslav Foerster.Footnote ¹²⁹ If this anecdote is correct, Anna Klecandová-Martenová would have indirectly played a key role in Reisserová’s musical career.

It was again thanks to the feminist milieu that Reisserová’s music crossed the Atlantic Ocean. To celebrate Františka Plamínková’s sixtieth birthday in 1936, she composed Slavnostní den, a work for women’s chorus that was publicly premiered in Prague on December 3, 1937, by the Singing Association of Prague Female Teachers (Pěvecké sdružení pražských učitelek) under the direction of Metod Vymetal.Footnote ¹³⁰ This vocal ensemble, founded in 1912 when women’s singing was denigrated, had just won the Grand Prix at the 1937 World Exhibition in Paris. Following the concert, the score was accepted by Sophie Drinker to be given again in Philadelphia. It seems that the intermediary between Reisserová and Drinker was one of the choristers who sang Slavnostní den. Drinker was among the first people in the United States to research and promote the role of women in the history of music. In her seminal book published in 1948, Music and Women: The Story of Women in Their Relation to Music,Footnote ¹³¹ she sought to understand why women were condemned to be mere performers of men’s music instead of using the language of music themselves to express their own ideas and feelings. (Reisserová also tackled this particular point in her 1937 lecture.) Like the Association of Prague mentioned previously, Drinker also encouraged choral singing by women by sponsoring the Montgomery Singers, a women’s choir often directed by Lela Vauclain, which met every Wednesday morning in the large music room of her house.Footnote ¹³² Slavnostní den received its American premiere there in 1938. Interestingly enough, Julie Reisserová and Sophie Drinker were both married to jurists and amateur musicologists; Henry Sandwith Drinker is still known for translating German texts of vocal compositions by Schubert and Bach into English.Footnote ¹³³

3.2 Reisserová’s Thoughts on Being a Woman Composer

On April 23, 1937, the Federation of Austrian Women’s Associations (Bund Österreichischer Frauenvereine) – a member of the International Council of Women – arranged a lecture and concert evening on the theme “Women Musicians of the Present” (“Musikschaffende Frauen der Gegenwart”) in the House of Industry in Vienna to promote women as composers. In front of a large audience Julie Reisserová, the keynote speaker of the event, delivered a much-appreciated lecture on the subject “The Woman as Composer” (“Die Frau als Komponistin;” Appendix A). The event – widely announcedFootnote ¹³⁴ – received significant coverage, and reports were published in Die Österreicherin, Der Wiener Tag, Die Stunde, and even in Musical America.Footnote ¹³⁵

Reisserová began her talk with the common romantic statement that “Music is the most immaterial of all arts, its world moves in dreamland… . Music is therefore the art that requires the greatest sensitivity from the author.” Considering that the average woman possesses greater sensitivity than the average man (a personal point of view shaped by contemporany gender norms), she then posited that sensitivity is a major asset for women in the creation of music, and thus that women should be better composers than men. Tactfully (or shyly?), Reisserová did not insist upon this assertion, probably because it went against the opinion still widespread at the time – conspicuously publicized by Eduard Hanslik in On the Musically Beautiful and George Upton in his successful book Woman in MusicFootnote ¹³⁶ – that sensitivity is a weakness for women that prevents them from the concentration necessary for musical composition.Footnote ¹³⁷ Nonetheless, she admitted – perhaps a little too quickly – that there were few well-known women composers by the 1930s (she failed to name them). In her opinion, shared by others, this was not due to a lack of abilities, but rather to historical development and social conditions.

Thanks to the women’s movement that had grown in strength during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, women managed to assert themselves in a wide variety of professions. Yet, Reisserová acknowledged that if important women writers and painters are not uncommon, there are few women composers. She related this observation to the fact that education in literature, drawing, and painting has always been part of good society, and that it was enough to stimulate creative work to women with talent. On the contrary, if music lessons have also been part of a good education, they remained limited to learning how to play either violin or piano, or how to sing. That is why there are eminent female virtuosos and singers. But, as Reisserová put it, “In literature and painting, women had always learned the basics for the productive, but in music only for the reproductive.” This statement is in keeping with some gendered characteristics anchored in the popular belief that “femininity is defined as passive and reproductive.”Footnote ¹³⁸ For instance, George Eggleston already considered in 1883 that “the study of music, and especially the acquirement of practical skill in making music, is … well recognized as a necessary part of a girl’s education,” and “as a means of adding to the attractiveness of her home.”Footnote ¹³⁹ Upton went even farther by claiming that a woman “will always be the recipient and interpreter, but there is little hope she will be the creator.”Footnote ¹⁴⁰

In the second, more factual, pragmatic and autobiographical part of her lecture, Reisserová discussed her own career path, her years of study, and the “tremendous difficulties which a woman in particular has to overcome in order to prevail in the competition of today.”Footnote ¹⁴¹ Fortunately, as Foerster recalls in his memoirs (in accordance with the gender stereotypes of his time), Reisserová combined the heightened sensitivity of a woman with a strong will and masculine strength.Footnote ¹⁴² The basic musical instruction mentioned in this section was obviously not enough for women to compose, because composing is inconceivable without a thorough study of theory. Music theory is a strict science, akin to mathematics and physics; and it was not until women began to learn other exact sciences that they started to devote themselves to composition. Women had indeed to wait until 1850 to be allowed to study theory and even composition at the Paris Conservatory, and 1877 at the Leipzig Conservatory.Footnote ¹⁴³ Reisserová then acknowledged that in the late 1930s many women studied composition, and assumed that in the near future their number would steadily increase.Footnote ¹⁴⁴ Nonetheless, she advised them to pen music without the ambition to compete with men, as Camille Saint-Saëns had already cautioned, quite disparagingly:

On the contrary, she urged them to create only out of inner necessity with sincerity and humility, because “art, in deep humility before all the wonders of creation, mercilessly condemns everything that is inauthentic.”Footnote ¹⁴⁶ This warning may have been the result of the critical reception of her own Esquisses, completed in the same year that Martinů published his Esquisses de danses. While it is possible that this timing was a coincidence, the similarity of the titles raises questions. Consequently, in his – biased? – review of the scores, Robert Bernard could not help comparing the two pupils of Roussel at her expense.Footnote ¹⁴⁷

Reisserová went on to say that inventive aptitude alone is not enough to be able to compose, and that the act of composing requires some professionalism and a long period of study.Footnote ¹⁴⁸ What she really meant by “Métier” remains unclear, but this word may have concealed her own weakness: she was very gifted and (according to Jan Reisser’s memoirs) had a hard time understanding and accepting that theoretical studies are necessary,Footnote ¹⁴⁹ as if such studies were “difficult” (i.e., boring?) for a gifted person. This is perhaps what Bernard alluded to in reviewing Reisserová’s three Esquisses, when he blamed her for the lack of elegance of their musical craftsmanship (“facture”), but his assessment is weakened by the fact that he also reproched Martinů for his excessive use of rhetorical (i.e., mechanical?) developments. No matter what, musical ideas must indeed be arranged so as to make them comprehensible to others. Perhaps Reisserová, who loved to improvise, learned the hard way that “The greatest difficulty in creating music consists in writing it down” so that “the real sound corresponds to the inner sound conception of the creator.” To achieve this, many years of study are needed to master harmony, counterpoint, formal theory, and instrumentation. (On this last point, it should be noted that Reisserová never used the trombone in her scores, because she thought it was not suitable for a woman.Footnote ¹⁵⁰)

During her studies with Roussel, she wondered if she would always have the necessary strength to reach her dream. She conceded that to be a composer and conductor demands a great deal of abnegation, above all for women. She probably recounted her debut as a conductor in Switzerland when she evoked a woman standing “in front of an orchestra for the first time at the rehearsal of her own work.” She felt how people looked at her “with a mixture of politeness, mistrust, and ridicule.” For Reisserová only competence counts at the podium, regardless of gender. Of course “even women can only impress with their musicality,” but to impose their authority, composers – and women composers in particular – need something else besides talent and mastery of technique, that is, a great deal of “vitality.” By “vitality,” Reisserová meant that being a composer “consumes the whole soul and the whole person,” and that “the love of art … keeps one high, but at the same time consumes one.” In other words, “Only a great love of art can offer a substitute for the many things that a woman in particular has to sacrifice.”Footnote ¹⁵¹ Implicitly, this suggests that to be a professional composer, a woman has to choose between her artistic aspiration and being a good mother and a good wife, a choice that was the fate of all aristocratic and middle-class women of the time. For example, when Cécile Chaminade was asked in 1908 whether she preferred to be a composer or a woman, she answered “a composer. Between being a mother and being an artist, I prefer being an artist.”Footnote ¹⁵² Reisserová was confronted with the same dilemma, because even though she did not have children, she did have many social constraints as a diplomat’s wife.

To conclude her talk, she confessed that:

Such a testimony calls to mind Goethe’s concept of dämonisch that refers to the godlike power to pass on divine things to men,Footnote ¹⁵³ and a concept that inspired Nietzsche, and even Richard Wagner,Footnote ¹⁵⁴ since the latter once told his wife, Cosima, that “a musician, while composing, actually falls into a mad somnambulistic state.”Footnote ¹⁵⁵ Reisserová’s confidence implies that women composers can also experience flashes of genius at a time when genius was denied to them.Footnote ¹⁵⁶ For the latter, the notion of genius was quite an issue at the turn of the century. Thus, when Vincent d’Indy encouraged Marguerite-Marie de Fraguier to continue her studies in composition, she became “haunted by the idea that a woman cannot have, at least in music, the creative genius.”Footnote ¹⁵⁷ It is not known if Reisserová ever asked herself this question, but she undoubtedly experienced the throes of creation and saw in it a kind of divine inspiration.Footnote ¹⁵⁸ Her reference to the sixth scene of Act I of Hans Pfitzner’s opera Palestrina, in which angels dictate the Missa Papæ Marcelli to the old master is revealing. According to Jan Reisser, she had an utterly romantic conception of genius, in which natural inspiration alone prevailed over technique and hard work; she preferred to delay the completion of a score in case of lack of ideas rather than to finish it mechanically by using theoretical rules.Footnote ¹⁵⁹ Finally, Reisserová maintained that whether the artist is a man or a woman, only the quality of the talent is decisive for the resulting work of art. In short, it is that kind of heartfelt account of her activity as a composer that may have incited the female chronicler of L’Écho de Paris to describe her as “the great Czech female composer” as early as 1936.Footnote ¹⁶⁰

Reisserová’s lecture, whose subject was delivered in “a particularly interesting and thoroughly personal way,”Footnote ¹⁶¹ was followed by a concert during which the illustrious pianist Aline van Bärentzen played her Esquisses, and Maria Hussa sang three of her songs. The three Esquisses were notably acclaimed that day for the plasticity of their themes and for their energy. All these “impressive and inspired compositions” were said to convincingly exemplify Reisserová’s talent and maturity: her technique was considered as “exceptional, her style of composition modern, but without any inclination to scorn form or sacrifice tonality.”Footnote ¹⁶² Works by some of the most famous contemporary Austrian women creators were also performed that evening, particularly pieces by Johanna Müller-Hermann, Mathilde von Kralik, and Lio Hans.

A critical reading of Reisserová’s lecture makes it clear that it is almost impossible to distinguish between a score penned by a male composer and one written by a female composer. To substantiate this, it is perhaps interesting to report the opinion of Élisabeth de Mondésir after listening to Reisserová’s Březen and Pod sněhem in 1938. For the French female critic, these “poetic” song cycles convey the “dramatic and varied feeling of a female soul” animated by a “romantic torment.”Footnote ¹⁶³ Unfortunately, she failed to provide any technical evidence to underpin her judgment. That her view was biased by a kind of woman’s solidarity, however, remains debatable. Indeed, Paul Le Flem did not enjoy Březen, going as far as to affirm that Nostalgie and Jaro v ulici were two “musical uselessness[es].”Footnote ¹⁶⁴ Yet, this hiatus was clearly a matter of taste, and may not have been due to gender discrimination, particularly in France where male critics did not select their adjectives based on the sex of the composer being reviewed.Footnote ¹⁶⁵ In a report of the concert given in Prague on April 29, 1934, to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Prague Vocational Schools for Women’s Professions (Odborné školy pro ženská povolání v Praze), Jelena Holečková-Heidenreichová likewise highlighted the issue of male versus female composers, and wrote in Lada, a periodical “for the interests of Czech women and girls”:

Julie Reisserová probably entered Prague feminist circles shortly before World War I, where she met the leading Czech women activists of the time. The success of her musical compositions and her continual comings and goings in Europe propelled her to the forefront of the international feminist scene, of which she became one of the standard-bearers. In this respect, the lecture she gave in Vienna proved to be an important milestone in her promotion of women as composers. If the ideas she developed are far from being all original – they were already the subject of heated debates in Europe and the United States at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuryFootnote ¹⁶⁷ – they testify to her knowledge and involvement in them. The evocation of her personal experience, however, offers another perspective: it gives a touching and unique glimpse into her innermost artistic feelings, and provides some information on her working method, in which a demonic inspiration – often denied to women composers – has its part. Finally, her point that “music [i]s enhanced sensibility and that actually women, therefore, as the more sensitive would have to be even better composers than men”Footnote ¹⁶⁸ did not go unnoticed and evidently struck the male correspondent of Musical America, as well as that of Der Stunde and of Der Wiener Tag.

4.1 Březen

Březen [Giboulées de Mars; März] (March) is the oldest preserved score by Julie Reisserová. This cycle was composed and orchestrated in Bern between 1923 and 1925. Three of its four songs were conceived while she was studying composition with Hohlfeld. The first to be written was Světlo [Lumière; Das Licht] (Light) on a poem originally penned in German by the composer herself and dedicated to her brother Vojtěch. This song was followed by Za svítání [À l’Aube; In der Frühe] (Early Morning) on verses by Eduard Mörike,Footnote ¹⁷³ dedicated to the soprano Marie Žaludová-Knittlová, and Nostalgie (Nostalgia) on a text by the Japanese poet Ōshikōchi no Mitsune (“Ochi,” 859–907) whose author of the translation remains unknown, dedicated to another celebrated opera artist, Zdeňka Ziková.Footnote ¹⁷⁴ The last song composed was Jaro v ulici [Printemps dans la rue; Frühling in der Strasse] (Spring in the Street) on a French poem by Reisserová. She drafted it shortly after beginning her studies with Roussel. The song, dedicated to Anna Klecandová-Martenová, is influenced by French impressionism, and the ballets of Igor Stravinsky in particular. Later, the composer herself translated all the texts into German, French, and Czech to ensure a better distribution of Březen throughout Europe. The Danish version translated by Else West Neuhard was most likely commissioned by the Danish publisher Skandinavisk og borups Musikforlag at the time of the publication of the vocal score in 1934.Footnote ¹⁷⁵ Three texts narrate the passage from the dark night of winter to the bright light of spring, and to the awakening of amorous desire, while Jaro v ulici describes the lover who frantically seeks his mate in the street.Footnote ¹⁷⁶

According to the surviving sources, Za svítání, Nostalgie, and Světlo were sung in public – in a version with piano accompaniment – as early as 1927, notably in Paris on February 24 and March 17 as part of concerts of Czech music, and then at the Mozarteum in Prague on November 16. Three other performances took place in 1928 in Paris, Geneva, and Bern. Worthy of note is the one held on April 28, 1928, during a dinner organized by the Cercle de la presse at the Club International de Genève, where Reisserová and Maria Jensen-Milliet sang Za svítání and Světlo, which were judged to be “original and engaging.”Footnote ¹⁷⁷ Jane Bathori, accompanied on the piano by Denyse Molié, gave the first documented public audition of Jaro v ulici on March 22, 1929, in Bern, along with Světlo and Nostalgie. The orchestral version of Nostalgie and Jaro v ulici was apparently given for the first time in Paris by Lydia de Rivera and the Orchestre du Conservatoire conducted by Marius-François Gaillard on April 23, 1929, but it did not appeal to the critic Paul Le Flem.Footnote ¹⁷⁸ This version was then performed again in Bern by Violette Andreosi under the direction of Albert Neff on April 2, 1930. The first complete performance of the cycle in its symphonic version – patronized by the Women’s National Council – took place in Prague on October 23, 1931, with Marie Žaludová-Knittlová and the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Pavel Dědeček. According to the columnist of the Národní listy of October 31: “The song cycle with orchestra, entitled Březen, is composed to her [Reisserová’s] own texts, but the composer definitely stands above the poetess in her choice of expression. With a beautifully sonorous, refined voice and a heartfelt delivery, Mrs. Žaludová gave her best to the four songs of the cycle.”Footnote ¹⁷⁹ Numerous other presentations of the cycle followed in both versions (with orchestra or with piano), especially in Copenhagen, which probably led the Danish publisher mentioned earlier in this section to distribute the vocal score.

In an interview, Reisserová confided that she had intended the cycle as a suite for orchestra with solo soprano (this statement is supported by the fact that Nostalgie begins with an orchestral prelude of twenty-two measures before the voice enters):

Reisserová suggests here that the order of the songs was originally different from that transmitted by the published scores, an order that corresponded better to the poetic-musical description of the passage from winter to spring: Za svítání, Světlo, Nostalgie, and Jaro v ulici. The new sequence of the songs in the scores responds to another program aiming to relate the cycle to a symphony with soprano. The four songs are indeed like four movements of contrasting character: Za svítání is dramatic and Nostalgie lyrical, Jaro v ulici is like a scherzo, and Světlo provides a hymn-like conclusion.Footnote ¹⁸¹

4.2 Suita

The Suita for orchestra, “dedicated to Albert Roussel in deepest gratitude” (“Dédié à Albert Roussel en profonde reconnaissance”), and originally titled Letní den (Summer’s Day), was composed between 1924 and 1931 and was “published” in Copenhagen probably around 1934. The third movement, Allegro con moto, is the earliest in the order of composition and was written in Bern in 1924, then revised between 1927 and 1929. It was performed several times under the title La Bise. A first version was played on January 31, 1927, as part of an evening of Slavic dance organized by Lydia Wisiaková at the Lucerne Theater,Footnote ¹⁸² thus suggesting that the piece was initially conceived as a choreographic work.Footnote ¹⁸³ La Bise was then given several times at the Montreux Casino in 1928 and in 1929.Footnote ¹⁸⁴ On the other hand, when it was produced for the first time in Paris, at the concert of Sunday April 23, 1929, at the Salle Gaveau under the direction of Marius-François Gaillard, Paul Le Flem considered that “La Bise, by M[rs.] Reisserová, is hardly distinguished by any salient qualities: banal ideas, harmonization and orchestra without flavor.”Footnote ¹⁸⁵ The piece was danced again to a piano version – played by Mrs. Blanchard de Chatillon – by Marie Tymichová on April 28, 1938, at the École Normale de Musique de Paris during the commemorative evening held by the French friends of Julie Reisserová.Footnote ¹⁸⁶ The other two movements of the Suita, Allegro giocoso and Andantino espressivo, were begun around 1930 and completed during the summer of 1931 in Varengeville-sur-Mer.Footnote ¹⁸⁷ It is not out of the question that the composer may also have taken advantage of this time to revise the score of La Bise one last time.

The Suita was performed in its entirety for the first time in public on October 23, 1931, at the Lucerna Palace in Prague by the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Pavel Dědeček, along with Březen, and Roussel’s Pour une fête de printemps, op. 22. The press was particularly complimentary. After pointing out that several of the Czech artist’s compositions had already been noted abroad and that Roussel had a decisive influence on Reisserová’s art, the journalist of the Národní listy continued: “The three-movement orchestral suite Letní den [Suita] shows that the composer really has something to say, that she is capable of expressing herself distinctively and tastefully, and that she has also successfully mastered the technical side of composition.”Footnote ¹⁸⁸ In an interview for the same newspaper, Roussel stated that his student’s compositions have “an undeniable charm and freshness, especially in the orchestral suite.”Footnote ¹⁸⁹ The Suita was given again successfully in Belgrade by the Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Stefan Hristić on April 23, 1933,Footnote ¹⁹⁰ then in Olomouc on April 12, 1935, in Prague on July 26, and in Karlovy Vary on November 7, 1936.Footnote ¹⁹¹ The Suita was also broadcast on Radio-Prague on February 7, 1932, and on November 19, 1935, under the direction of Otakar Jeremiáš,Footnote ¹⁹² and on the Danish radio during the commemorative concert of April 1938. It is not unlikely that the Suita was performed on other occasions for which information is lacking. Thus, it is known that the score was programmed in the capital of Serbia by the Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction Mihailo Vukdragović.Footnote ¹⁹³

The concert of October 23, 1931, was of great importance for Reisserová’s career, as it was the one that established her reputation in Czechoslovakia.Footnote ¹⁹⁴ A few days before the concert, she granted an interview to Vilém Závada, during which she invoked the Suita and presented it as a kind of symphonic poem or musical diary:

4.3 Esquisses

The gestation of the three Esquisses (Sketches) extends over several years. The third is the oldest. It was written in 1928 and premiered under the title Allégresse (Jubilation) during the recital that Denyse Molié gave at the Montreux Casino on July 14 of the same year.Footnote ¹⁹⁶ The piece was revived under this title on several occasions, notably by Molié and Emil Hájek in Bern, Belgrade, and Prague until 1932. That year, in Varengeville-sur-Mer, Reisserová added two other pages to it, Esquisses nos. 1 and 2, to constitute all that we know. This collection of piano pieces – i.e., the “Klavírní suit[a]” mentioned in Závada’s interview?Footnote ¹⁹⁷ – and its title are not insignificant, and obviously refer to the five Esquisses de danses that Martinů published in 1932. These works were naturally reviewed together in La Revue musicale. If the style of Reisserová was judged as “not as homogeneous and [her] invention as personal and ingenious” as those of her compatriot, her Esquisses were nevertheless viewed as “pleasant, welcome pages, and on the whole sympathetic and of an authentic musicality.”Footnote ¹⁹⁸ For Élisabeth de Mondésir, the musical ideas contained in the Esquisses were fresh and poetic,Footnote ¹⁹⁹ whereas the chronicler of the Národní politika saw in them traditional ideas clothed in modern harmonies.Footnote ²⁰⁰ As for the reporter of Der Wiener Tag, the Esquisses were “characterized by an exemplary piano writing, flexible thematic and a lively pulsating motoric sensibility. Especially the powerful third piece must be called a valuable enrichment of the modern pianistic literature.”Footnote ²⁰¹ These pieces are thus in keeping with Vítr, whose harmonic boldness, rhythmic subtlety, and original melodic invention were hailed by the Swiss press.Footnote ²⁰² The three Esquisses are respectively dedicated to the pianists who played them all over Europe: Aline van Bärentzen, Emil Hájek, and Denyse Molié.

4.4 Pastorale maritimo

The Pastorale maritimo was Reisserová’s most critically acclaimed score, and her most popular orchestral work. If the title of the work may refer to Roussel’s involvement in the French Navy and to the seascapes of the English Channel, it is also in line with the many maritime pieces produced in France between La Mer by Debussy (1905) and L’Esquisse maritime by Antoine Mariotte (1932) and Marine by Emmanuel Bondeville (1933). Played at least eighteen times until April 1938, the Pastorale maritimo was composed (completed?) in 1933 in Varengeville-sur-Mer.Footnote ²⁰³ According to Heidenreich and Holečková-Heidenreichová, its premiere took place in Belgrade in 1933 (around September 17?), but no other evidence has been found to date.Footnote ²⁰⁴ The soprano Alice Raveau included it as an addition to the program of her Scandinavian tour with the Copenhagen Philharmonic Orchestra in February to March 1934.Footnote ²⁰⁵ The piece was performed again twice in 1934, first in Prague on April 29 under the direction of Pavel Dědeček,Footnote ²⁰⁶ and in Copenhagen on June 6, and then broadcast on Radio-Wien on May 27, 1935, under the baton of Josef Holzer.Footnote ²⁰⁷ Yet, it was with the enthusiastic – and apparently encored – performance of this orchestral work at the Vichy Congress on September 4, 1935, that Reisserová succeeded in winning over the critics and establishing herself on the European musical scene. The work, dedicated “To Madame Albert Roussel” (“À Madame Albert Roussel,” Blanche Preisach), was immediately given again in Bratislava by the Radio Orchestra and Adolf Heller on November 18 and December 10, 1935, and in Vienna on March 15, 1936, by the Wiener Symphoniker conducted by Bruno Pleier.Footnote ²⁰⁸ The Pastorale maritimo also seems to be the only piece by Reisserová to have been played in Hungary. In France, the piece was not first programmed in Paris, but in Nancy as part of the Concerts du Conservatoire. Alfred Bachelet, who succeeded Joseph-Guy Ropartz as director of the Conservatoire in 1919, and the Czech artist must have gotten acquainted during their stay in Vichy. Bachelet included the Pastorale maritimo in the concert of Sunday February 16, 1936, given in the Salle Victor Poirel, alongside La Légende de Sonia from his own musical drama Quand la cloche sonnera, excerpts of which had been heard in the spa town. The local press did not fail to insist on the fact that the Pastorale had “obtained a great success at the last international music festival in Vichy.”Footnote ²⁰⁹ The next day, the critic of L’Est républicain recognized that:

The columnist of L’Éclair de l’Est was “struck by the clarity of [the composer’s] writing. Harmonious phrases, very simple, which seek expression, find it easily and evoke a certain poetry. One listens to them with pleasure and without any fatigue.”Footnote ²¹¹ Given this success, Charles Munch decided to program the work at the concert of the Orchestre de la Société Philharmonique de Paris on Saturday January 28, 1937, at the Salle Pleyel (Figure 5). The overall impression of this first Parisian performance was generally positive. For Paul Dambly, “There is a lot of charm in the fluidity, the transparency, in this mobility of impressions that compose the Pastorale maritime of Mrs. Reisserova.”Footnote ²¹² René Dumesnil deemed the work “luminous like a seascape, with a colorful but transparent orchestration, and which reveals at the same time an original temperament and a solid craft.”Footnote ²¹³ For the journalist of the Excelsior, the author of the Pastorale “cultivates the kind [and] tasty genre, with a perfect happiness.”Footnote ²¹⁴ Robert Brussel described it as “delicate and expressive.”Footnote ²¹⁵ Hélène Jourdan-Morhange saw in it “a pretty ‘pastel’ with fresh and young colors” evoking Roussel.Footnote ²¹⁶ The correspondent of the Národní listy hailed the rich and refined nuances of a score warmly received by the public,Footnote ²¹⁷ J. M. Pellé was transported to “a real realm of delicate poetry,”Footnote ²¹⁸ and Edmund J. Pendleton enjoyed its “gentl[e] seductive lines.”Footnote ²¹⁹ In Germany, Eduard Levi praised “a new seascape on the theme ‘Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt,’” and the idyllic atmosphere of the score.Footnote ²²⁰ On the other hand, for the critic of the magazine Commune, the Pastorale maritimo “is very pleasant, but its composition does not seem to have been imposed by an inescapable impulse of inspiration,”Footnote ²²¹ while for Denyse Bertrand, it “evokes nature without aggressiveness as well as without brilliance, [and] hardly escapes from the beaten paths.”Footnote ²²² This mixed opinion was also that of Louis-Charles Bérard (alias Carol-Bérard) for whom “the Pastorale maritime of Mrs. Reis[s]erova could not pretend to have any other purpose than to charm us with its skillfully chiseled harmonies.”Footnote ²²³ Among the reviews published after the Paris premiere, two should be singled out for their gendered and somewhat misogynistic language. André Cœuroy caustically stated that the Parisian public found Julie Reisserová “too pretty” (“trop jolie”) in her Pastorale.Footnote ²²⁴ Irwing Schwerké praised the quality of the music while softening his compliment with a touch of condescending humor:

To sum up, the Pastorale maritimo, qualified as a “symphonic poem”Footnote ²²⁶ by a Swiss critic, was favorably received by the majority of commentators, and was the most discussed piece by the composer during her lifetime. Only four critics were more reserved – and more impartial? – about it, those of Le Ménestrel, L’Écho de Paris, the Commune, and Les Nouvelles littéraires which denounced a certain lack of originality. Following the Parisian premiere, the piece was broadcast on Radio-Strasbourg on March 19, 1937.

Figure 5 From left to right: Albert Roussel, Julie Reisserová, and Charles Munch in Paris, 1937.

Image courtesy of the Moravian Library in Brno; call-number: Gr1-1251.622. Originally published in Prager Presse (February 7, 1937), 4; Pestrý týden (February 13, 1937), 5.

4.5 Pod sněhem

The song cycle with piano Pod sněhem [Sous la neige] (Under the Snow) is said to be Reisserová’s last completed work and, according to Vacková, was composed in 1937.Footnote ²²⁷ However, the advertising insert printed at the end of the vocal score of Březen (1934) leads one to believe that a manuscript copy was available as early as 1934, or at least was announced as such. What is more, the words “klav[írní]. výtah” on the title page of the only known source suggest that the latter might be a piano reduction of a version with orchestral accompaniment, of which there is no trace or mention in the surviving documents. Pod sněhem gathers three songs on Chinese verses in a French adaptation by Franz Toussaint published in La Flûte de Jade.Footnote ²²⁸ These are dedicated to three famous female singers: Vzpomínka [Souvenir; Erinnerung] (Recollection) to Inger Raasløff, Bílá volavka [Le Héron blanc; Der weisse Reiher] (The White Heron) to Elšlégravá Puklová, and Příznivá bouřka [L’Orage favorable; Das gute Unwetter] (The Favorable Storm) to Else Schøtt. Reisserová’s poetic choices do not seem insignificant; they respond to the interest – widespread in Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century – for Chinese culture.Footnote ²²⁹ La Flûte de Jade was a popular collection that provided words for many mélodies, such as those of Armande de Polignac (1922), Marguerite Canal (1922), Raymond Moulaert (1922), and Jean Cartan (1928), sung in the interwar period.Footnote ²³⁰ Hence, the poems of Pod sněhem were also set to music by Cartan, Moulaert, and Polignac. Unlike Březen, Pod sněhem is about the coldness and stillness of winter, and then – as a counterpart to Jaro v ulici – the eroticized arrival of the beloved (Příznivá bouřka).

The cycle was most probably given for the first time in public by Gilberte Arvez-Vernet, accompanied by Aline van Bärentzen, on September 11, 1936, at the Social Club (Společenský klub) in Prague alongside the celebrations of the Interallied Federation of Veterans (Fédération Interalliée Des Anciens Combattants) partly organized by the fidac Women’s Union,Footnote ²³¹ then by various female singers (such as Raasløff), sometimes with the composer herself on the piano.

4.6 Slavnostní den

Slavnostní den (Festive Day) for female chorus, composed to a poem by Reisserová at Varengeville-sur-Mer, was – according to the published score – completed on September 24, 1935, to celebrate the sixtieth birthday of Františka Plamínková. Naturally dedicated to the latter, the work was publicly premiered in Prague on December 3, 1937, by members of the Singing Association of Prague Female Teachers and performed again in Philadelphia in January 1938 by Sophie Drinker’s female choir, the Montgomery Singers, probably under the direction of Lela Vauclain.Footnote ²³² The piece was also sung in Prague on April 26, 1938, and in 1948 by the Philharmonic Choir of Brno.Footnote ²³³ Slavnostní den, the reception of which is unknown, depicts the joy and exultation of a group of young girls at the arrival of the sweet and magical month of May (a month rich in popular traditions). Slavnostní den is Reisserová’s third known choir after Dva mužské sbory (Two Male Choirs), which she probably penned in Bern in 1929, following her choral conducting lessons.

4.7 Předjaří

Předjaří [Février; Februar; Vorfrühling] (Early Spring) is the first of three songs that were to constitute a cycle for coloratura soprano and orchestra. The lyrics by the Swiss poet Werner Rudolf Beer were translated into French by René Chalupt, a friend of Roussel, and probably by Reisserová into Czech.Footnote ²³⁴ It greets the coming of spring and the birth of a little fly that will take flight and go far away. This piece, composed in 1936, is dedicated to the soprano Maria Jensen-Milliet, who sang the work for the first time on January 13, 1937, in Zurich, accompanied on the piano by Hedi Durrer.Footnote ²³⁵ It was sung again by O. Guerfort (with Mrs. Blanchard de Chatillon at the piano) during the concert held in Paris on April 28, 1938. No other performance is documented, and it cannot be ascertained whether the orchestral version – if it ever existed – was presented to the public. The sources of this mélodie, which likely remained in the possession of Jan Reisser after the death of his wife, are lost,Footnote ²³⁶ as are those used by the musicians for the Parisian concert just mentioned. According to Élisabeth de Mondésir the song was a “page remarkable for its sonic exuberance and melodic richness.”Footnote ²³⁷

4.8 Sources and Public Performances

Only two works found their way to the press and are fairly easily accessible: the piano-vocal version of Březen due to Emil Hájek and the Esquisses were issued in Copenhagen by Skandinavisk og borups Verlag in 1934 and 1935 respectively.Footnote ²³⁸ The orchestral works – Suita, Pastorale maritimo, and the symphonic version of Březen – as well as Slavnostní den were not officially published, but circulated confidentially in a photostatic edition prepared around 1934–1935 by the Atelier Elektra, a workshop located in Copenhagen (Kompagnistræde 22) and founded in 1900 by Aage Højring. These photostatic editions are available at the Royal Danish Library and at the Library of the Conservatoire régional du Grand-Nancy (France); the latter library also holds the autograph manuscript of the Pastorale maritimo (Figure 6; Appendix B). It is not clear how this autograph arrived in Nancy. It is possible – but very doubtful – that Reisserová attended the Nancy concert of the Pastorale and gave it to Bachelet. It can also be surmised that the autograph score was either handed over in Vichy, or passed on by a certain G. Roché to whom the composer dedicated one of the two printed copies of Březen (which contains some handwritten corrections) now preserved in Nancy along with a signed copy of the Esquisses.Footnote ²³⁹

Figure 6 First Page of the Autograph Manuscript of the Pastorale maritimo.

Image Courtesy of the Library of the Conservatoire régional du Grand-Nancy; no call-number.

Pod sněhem has come down to us in a non-autograph manuscript deposited in the Women Composers Collection of the University of Michigan Music Library. As for the sources of Předjaří, as already said, they disappeared following the February 1948 coup d’état and Jan Reisser’s decision to settle permanently in Brazil to escape the communist regime. Thus, our knowledge of the work is based only on Vacková’s description and her facsimile of the first page of an unidentified handwritten copy.Footnote ²⁴⁰

Reisserová’s seven completed scores were heard a creditable number of times (Figure 7), which is noteworthy for a composer who did not devote all her time to composition, and who – as she used to say – did not want to be a “curiosity” (“kuriosit[a]”).Footnote ²⁴¹ This latter claim may not imply that she had no interest in self-promotion, as it is possible that she declared this – deliberately or not – to emphasize her productivity and to position herself compared to male contemporaries. Besides, the fact that her new scores were regularly announced in Rytmus and Tempo testifies to her interest in promoting her work.Footnote ²⁴² The Březen songs (notably in their piano-vocal version) and Allégresse were unsurprisingly the most frequently performed in public, as they were the first pieces to be composed and their printed scores facilitated their dissemination. The orchestral works being more difficult and expensive to program, La Bise and the Pastorale maritimo were played a dozen times or so. Moreover, this body of work attracted the greatest artists of the period, a detail which speaks in favor of its quality.

Figure 7 Documented number of public and radio performances between 1927 and 1941 (Appendix C). Newspapers allude to other performances without providing usable data.

4.9 Poems

Besides composing, Reisserová enjoyed attending theatrical performances and playing with words. She had a facility to learn foreign languages and mastered not only French and English, but also German,Footnote ²⁴³ which she practiced at home as a child. Thus, she translated – or rather adapted – into Czech, German poems by Gustav Falke and Heinrich Heine respectively set to music by Foerster in his Noční violy, op. 43 (1913), and Jirák in his Lyrické Intermezzo, op. 4 (1925).Footnote ²⁴⁴ While attending the Music Club, she collaborated with her brother in the translation of the librettos of Der Ring des Nibelungen and of Parsifal.Footnote ²⁴⁵ Similarly, for the premiere of Roussel’s Le Testament de la tante Caroline, she translated into Czech the libretto by Nino (Michel Veber). She also supplied the French, German, and Czech versions of all the lyrics of her song cycles.

Ever since childhood, she could write with ease poems, epigrams, verses, and all kind of fables: lyric, epic, witty, serious. She made a selection of them in 1934 under the title In margine vitæ. Since the autograph copy of the latter disappeared after her death, we have to rely on Vacková’s description of the collection. It gathered texts in Czech, German, French, and English, distributed into two sections, one subjective and the other objective. “At Home” (“Doma”) dealt with her inner experience before her marriage; it addressed topics like love, wisdom about life, bitter experiences, and social and religious feelings. “Years Abroad” (“Léta v cizině”) described her longing for home, her love for Czech nature, and her impressions of the capitals in which she stayed.Footnote ²⁴⁶ This second section likely echoed the Andantino espressivo of the Suita that depicts “an expression of memories and homesickness, which I do not have time to indulge in at length.” Out of the several hundreds of texts she produced, only four survive (titles are given in their original language): Das Licht (ca. 1923) and Printemps dans la rue (1925) included in Březen, Slavnostní den set to music in 1935, and Mé myšlení (My Thinking) which Vacková reproduced in her book. The latter sees it as the manifestation of Reisserová’s lack of confidence in her creative work.Footnote ²⁴⁷ Yet, the poem could also be read as an expression of women’s efforts to assert themselves in a man’s world. All her life, the composer indeed plowed her musical land slowly and with much self-censorship:

Reisserová’s poetic muse usually announced her musical inspiration, and led her to say: “I’m getting verses in my pen again. I’ll be composing soon.”Footnote ²⁴⁸ Music and poetry were therefore tightly connected in her creative process.

Seen from the outside, Reisserová’s music shares some characteristics of Smetana’s output, whom Janáček questionably considered to represent “Czechness” in music: a love of nature, as evidenced by some titles of her scores and the contents of the poems she set to music, and an interest in everyday events, such as the Suita, which was inspired by the personal life of its composer, not to mention her love for her country.Footnote ²⁴⁹

5.1 Influences and Similarities

Reisserová’s musical pantheon was diverse – Dvořák, Mahler, Mozart (Le nozze di Figaro was her favorite opera), Ravel, Rimski-Korsakov (notably his Capriccio espagnol), Roussel, Smetana, Richard Strauss (she enjoyed Salome and Der Rosenkavalier), WagnerFootnote ²⁵² – but not all of them had an effect on her style. Like most if not all composers, she was unconsciously influenced by the music she had played or heard. Thus, some pianistic figurations in the Esquisses may call to mind Chopin’s Études and Bach’s two- and four-voice counterpoint, while the symphonic prelude to Nostalgie and Za svítání may respectively be a reminder of the beginning of the Moon Song and “Rusalko, znáš mne, znáš?” (Act II) from Dvořák’s Rusalka. Likewise, Mahler hovers above the final cadences of Za svítání (mm. 72–76) and Nostalgie (mm. 41–42). Vacková, whose hidden purpose was perhaps to prove that her heroine did “not deny her Slavic origin,”Footnote ²⁵³ noticed similarities between the Esquisses no. 3 and Novak’s Píseň noci karnevalové, op. 30 no. 4, and between the string accompaniment in measures one to nineteen of La Bise (Suita no. 3) and the opening measures of Smetana’s Vltava (The Moldau). She even went as far as to connect the four-note cell (d♭-c-g♭-b♭) of the Esquisses no. 2 (mm. 84–85) to the fugue subject of Novak’s string quartet, op. 35. She then compared – not without reason – the chromatic beginning of Nostalgie and the use of the English horn to Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde (did she allude to the prelude to Act III?). Finally, her comparison between the 3/4 section of the Pastorale maritimo (mm. 39–42) and the fourth piece (“***. Andante”) of Josef Suk’s Jaro, op. 22a, sounds convincing.Footnote ²⁵⁴ In both scores, the same melodic motif – a descending major second followed by a fourth and a minor second – is punctuated by an ascending arpeggio (Example 1). Still, it cannot be ruled out that this resemblance is the result of an unconscious coincidence. In any event, this kind of similitude may be the reason that prompted André Chastain to assert (about the Pastorale maritimo in particular?) that “Mrs. Reisserová drew on specifically Slavic sources of inspiration. Even though she did not try to transpose or harmonize popular music motifs, she found in a national repertoire admirable themes, the rudimentary frameworks of her learned and harmonious compositions.”Footnote ²⁵⁵

Example 1a Josef Suk, Jaro [Spring], op. 22a, “***. Andante,” mm. 1–6.

To the composers of influence already mentioned, at least two others should be added: Stravinsky, whose mechanical rhythms found a distant echo in Jaro v ulici, and Scriabin, whose style, according to the chronicler of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, would permeate the Esquisses no. 1. The same commentator also considered that Světlo and Předjaří leaned “toward early impressionism.”Footnote ²⁵⁶ From these samples and the reviews already cited earlier in this Element, it appears that Reisserová was receptive to the musical world around her and was able to digest new trends to express herself through sound.

Nonetheless, Roussel remained the one who had a decisive impact on her musical expression.Footnote ²⁵⁷ The melody in Example 1b – which is distinguished by its large leaps, a gesture often found in Roussel’s melodic writing – can also be compared to the first theme of his Fourth Symphony, op. 53 (Example 2). This detail allows us to surmise that since Reisserová worked on her Pastorale in Varengeville-sur-Mer while Roussel was composing his symphony, they probably discussed their scores in progress.

Example 1b Julie Reisserová, Pastorale maritimo, mm. 39–44 (horn and timpani omitted).

Example 2 Albert Roussel, Fourth Symphony, op. 53, first movement, mm. 18–21.

Reisserová’s musical dependence on Roussel is particularly evident in her orchestral music, mainly in the Allegro giocoso and the Andante espressivo of the Suita, as well as in the Pastorale maritimo. Several obvious common features can be detected. Both composers have a taste for irresistible rhythmic impulses, as evidenced by the opening measures of the Allegro giocoso, which have the same impetus as the beginning of the Third Symphony, op. 42, and the introduction to Bacchus et Ariane, op. 43. Both share ample and well-chiseled melodies, characterized by a variety of rhythms, sometimes irregular, as shown in Example 1b. Both use a fluid and sometimes chromatic harmonic vocabulary, a tight counterpoint, and light French orchestration. On this last point, a mere comparison of the first two movements of the Suita and the Pastorale maritimo with La Bise and, to a lesser extent, Březen is revealing: the former bring out individual timbres (see Example 5 in 5.3), whereas the latter – scored under Hohlfeld’s supervision – require heavy instrumental doublings.Footnote ²⁵⁸

5.2 Form

Because of the conciseness of Reisserová’s scores, and in spite of her own statement that in the process of composing “the bubbling source of ideas [ought to be] put into a form that makes the ideas comprehensible to the outside world,”Footnote ²⁵⁹ form does not seem to have been her main concern. The structure of each song logically follows the poetic content of the poem. For instance, Bílá volavka is a short, gloomy arioso of unitary form. Conversely, Za svítání counts three sections: A (Impetuoso, mm. 1–33), in E flat minor, renders the narrator’s troubled mind and doubts through a sixteenth-note ostinato; B (Andante espressivo, cantabile, mm. 34–50), revolving around G flat major, depicts the recovery of inner calm through a continuum of triplets and an accompaniment provided primarily by the string quintet; C (Andante, mm. 51–63) is a short lullaby in A major that greets the sunrise and the morning bells; a symphonic conclusion (mm. 62–76) in D minor, which returns to the hectic atmosphere of A, and at the last moment (mm. 72–76) to the calm of B, brings the piece to an end. The chaotic tonal progression in two sequences spaced an augmented second apart is noteworthy and parallels the evolution of the narrator’s feelings: E flat minor/G flat major; A major/D minor. As for her instrumental music, it conforms principally to the ternary form ABA’ (rounded off by a brief introduction and/or conclusion), or to its cognate ABA’B’A” in the Pastorale maritimo. The first movement of the Suita must be singled out, as it betrays the influence of Roussel’s fondness for arch forms: section A introduces three fragments a (mm. 1–3), b (mm. 4–11) and c (mm. 12–20) which are recapitulated in an almost inverted order (b, c, and a).

Conversely, the forms of the Esquisses nos. 1 and 3, and that of La Bise are far from clear. In fact, these pieces are best described as a mosaic of short motifs – if not cells – intertwined with each other and developed alternately, but always with ease and fluidity. In this regard, these pieces might reflect Reisserová’s art of improvisation. For instance, in the Esquisses no. 1, cell a establishes the key of A minor through a strong dominant-tonic progression and a strong “Czech-like” first-beat accent, and is followed by at least five further sharply defined units that are expanded in the course of the piece: a chromatic ascent (b), a succession of accented chords (c), a light and airy motif in triplets (d), a descending pentatonic arpeggio (e), and a circular bitonal cell (f) in which the dominant and tonic chords of F sharp minor are combined (Example 3).

Example 3 Julie Reisserová, Esquisses no. 1: (a) m. 1; (b) m. 3; (c) m. 12; (d) m. 26; (e) m. 30; (f) m. 35.

Similarly, La Bise unfolds an endless flow – the north wind on Lake Geneva – derived from a four-measure motif (mm. 3–6) that is restated by augmentation toward the end of the piece (mm. 66–69), and a flow briefly interrupted by a stormy motif (mm. 20–25). This formal freedom, comparable to that of the Esquisses nos. 1 and 3, is due to the narrative character of the music, even though there is no extant literary program for the latter two pieces.

5.3 Harmony and Counterpoint

Reisserová did not stray far from tonality in her music. If chromatic progressions of neoromantic type are not rare (especially in Světlo, Nostalgie, Esquisses no. 2, and La Bise) and can be contrasted with pure diatonic episodes (as it is the case in Za svítání), she was nevertheless sensitive to modal colors, such as the “Gypsy” scale on G (an Aeolian mode with the fourth degree augmented: g, a, b♭, c♯, d, e♭, f) at the beginning of Vzpomínka,Footnote ²⁶⁰ and pentatonic scales (Esquisses no. 1, mm. 30–31, 40–41, 50–53).Footnote ²⁶¹ She also assimilated characteristics prevalent in France and in Roussel’s music in particular. Thus, Bílá volavka stands alone in her entire output for its remarkably rich and dissonant harmonic vocabulary. Yet, a careful analysis shows that the dissonant chords – which are the “symbol of the majesty of death” (Reisserová dixit)Footnote ²⁶² – are caused by the superimposition of various non-chordal tones, and notably of unresolved appoggiaturas. This technique was often used by Roussel from 1921 onward. Therefore, in spite of its dissonances, Bílá volavka is deeply rooted in D flat major (as is clarified by the tonic and dominant pedals in the bass, and the alternation of the fundamentals I, V, and II), and its first phrase goes effortlessly from the home key to that of G flat major (Example 4).

Example 4 Julie Reisserová, Bílá volavka, mm. 1–12, and harmonic reduction.

Most of the time, Reisserová’s harmony oscillates gently between minor and major colors and includes many altered and unaltered seventh and ninth chords. The Pastorale maritimo, Za svítání, Nostalgie, Vzpomínka, Příznivá bouřka, and Slavnostní den begin in one tonality and end in another, either in the relative key (Pastorale maritimo, Slavnostní den), on the dominant chord (Příznivá bouřka), or even one second apart (Za svítání: E flat minor/D minor). The last chord may include an added fourth (Za svítání), be a minor ninth chord without the third (Vzpomínka: c-g-b♭-d♭), or a stacking of fourths (Nostalgie: g-c-f-b♭).

Following the lead of Roussel, Reisserová paid great attention to counterpoint and to the melodic quality of her instrumental and/or vocal parts. As she avowed in 1931, “I started my musical career as a singer. The culture of singing is a valuable tool for me even when creating purely orchestral music. In this I follow the old masters a little, but with a difference: they sometimes treat the voice as an instrument, I, on the other hand, strive to treat every instrument as a voice, so that everyone can sing and make it ‘fit.’”Footnote ²⁶³ The Pastorale maritimo provides a magnificent sample of melodic and timbral counterpoint. In measures 8–21, a protean melody is articulated in turn by the oboe, flute, and/or violins, and combined with countermelodies in the other parts. The crescendo toward the climax (m. 16), itself underlined by the entrance of the harp, is reached by the doubling of the first violins by the flute and the clarinet, and by the beautiful contrary motion between the upper parts and the bassoon and cellos (Example 5). In the following measures (mm. 22–29), the timbral color of the Pastorale becomes even more airy and akin to chamber music: the oboe and bassoon initiate a loose imitative counterpoint on which the clarinet and the horn articulate more or less independent lines, the whole episode being underlined by the strings in pizzicato.

Example 5 Julie Reisserová, Pastorale maritimo, mm. 8–17.

Likewise, Slavnostní den for female chorus reveals a nice web of melodic lines that intertwine around the second soprano part. In measures 45–58, the composer notably builds a grand crescendo and swirling dance movement through imitative counterpoint to express the joyful bustle and ardor of youth. Here, Reisserová reminds us that she studied with Roussel, whom Francis Poulenc called a “wonderful teacher of energy.”Footnote ²⁶⁴

5.4 Words and Music

The 1931 avowal mentioned in Section 5.3 describes Reisserová’s vocal writing, which remains elegant and elastic at all times. High notes are always prepared naturally by an ascending curve, and the melodic line itself avoids large intervals: hence, ascending and descending sixths and sevenths are scarce and reserved for dramatic climaxes, as measures 49–52 of Jaro v ulici (“Mais le désir me pousse”; “But desire pushes me”) illustrate. The vocal soprano line is mainly syllabic (Example 4), with the possible exception of Předjaří, which was designed for a coloratura soprano. In other words, Reisserová is at her best in vocal music. Březen, and the first song she wrote in particular (Světlo), is pure romantic emotion, while her instrumental scores are less laden with pathos.

The instrumental accompaniment establishes the general atmosphere of the poem and renders its affect. Příznivá bouřka provides a nice case in point. In its first part (Allegro impetuoso, mm. 1–47), the circular sixteenth-note ostinato depicts the “bad and nasty wind” (“le mauvais et méchant vent”) that keeps the lover awake; in the second part (Andante amoroso, mm. 48–75), the vehement ostinato gives way to a still circular motif, but this time gentle, to emphasize the arrival of the beloved and the narrator’s growing desire. Similarly, and as shown in Example 4, the dark and morbid mood absent from the poem (Bílá volavka) is only suggested by the piano. As for Nostalgie, it must be singled out for its symphonic writing. The song begins with an extended orchestral prelude (mm. 1–22) whose fluctuating tempo is paralleled by the variety of the time signatures. The first six chromatic measures, which revolve around D minor and in which the English horn unfolds a beautiful but simple melody, paint the night (i.e., the winter). From the first inversion of the A flat major chord on the downbeat of measure 7, the harmonic color changes and oscillates between E flat major and C minor; the tempo becomes more and more animated; the orchestral texture grows thicker and thicker: the sun is now slowly rising. The stage being set, the voice can naturally utter its first verses: “Already the dark winter night has fled, / Here spring is reborn” (“Déjà la sombre nuit d’hiver a fui, / Voilà que renaît le printemps”). In the following measures, Reisserová relies on the flutes and the quintuplets articulated by the reeds to imitate the “wild bird” (“oiseau sauvage”), on the tremoli of the strings to suggest the “silver clouds” (“nues d’argent”), and on the ascending line of the violins and the English horn (mm. 29–30) to render the opening of the bird’s wings that should take the narrator to the beloved. The narrator’s longing is underlined by the high range of the voice doubled in turn by the oboes and the flutes. The dissonant final chord, delicately played by the strings, the horns, the bassoons, and the oboes, leaves one to think that the young man’s wish to be reunited with the person he loves has not yet been fulfilled. Although these imitative musical devices are centuries old, they are judiciously deployed and serve the lyrics effectively.

One last detail is worth noting. Reisserová set four Chinese poems, but contrary to the trend for exoticism at the turn of the century, she never attempted to mimic Far Eastern sonorities by incorporating “distinctive scales, harmonies, orchestral colors, and other features that had previously been associated with exotic realms.”Footnote ²⁶⁵ None of the mélodies in Pod sněhem or Nostalgie make use of such devices. Neither the “Gypsy” scale of Vzpomínka nor the instrumentation of Nostalgie, the harmony of Bílá volavka and the circular figurations of Příznivá bouřka have anything in common with Chinese culture. For that matter, Reisserová’s musical style remains deeply rooted in the European sphere, unlike (for instance) that of Marguerite Canal, whose setting of seven poems from Toussaint’s La Flûte de Jade “abounds with such … exotic musical features.”Footnote ²⁶⁶

Reisserová confronted herself with two different musical worlds. During her studies in Prague and Bern, she was exposed to Germanic neoromantic music tinted with Czech ingredients. Then, upon her arrival in Paris, she discovered the impressionist school and its search for sound colors – achieved through modality (such as whole tone, and/or pentatonic scales), and instrumental timbres (including a celesta in Jaro v ulici and various percussion instruments) – and its twisting melodies. Nonetheless, she managed to digest all these cultural and technical influences into a coherent whole, which may not be as idiosyncratic as Roussel’s, but which remains pleasant and emotional at all times. As the journalist of Der Bund wisely wrote, “in all her works there is a happy synthesis of the French spirit with Slavic melodicism,”Footnote ²⁶⁷ even though the concept of the “Slavic” still needs to be clearly defined.