Heretical Quodlibets
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Heretical Quodlibets is an exercise in thinking that takes its reader on a wild journey through cultural and philosophical history, spanning the classical writings of ancient Greece and Rome, through the scholarship of the Middle Ages and the revolution in arts and thinking that was the Renaissance, up to works of the twentieth century. The author makes no pretensions to being correct in his often radical conclusions (which he bases on far-ranging connections between events, concepts, and hypotheses, irreverently playing with ideas, undermining the commonly received and rediscovering the forgotten). "If the reader, after perusing some of the texts in this book, says that he's never read a bigger bunch of nonsense in his life, that would be okay. And if, despite this, he were to pick up this book again, that would mean that in fact I didn't write it only for myself."
About this Author
Vladimír Godár (born,1956, in Bratislava, Slovakia) is an internationally acclained composer of vocal-instrumental (oratories Orbis sensualium pictus, Mater, Querela pacis), symphonic (a trilogy DariachanghiÔÇÖs Orchard, a myth; 2nd Symphony, a ritual; Via lucis, a meditation) and chamber pieces, and dozens of film scores. His musicological works deal with music poetics (Bow and Lyre) and semiotics (Alla Battaglia, The Birth of Opera from the Spirit of Rhetorics, De Musica), and history of art. David McLean is an American expat who has worked as a translator from the Slovak language for more than 20 years.
Reviews
"Vladimír Godár is a Slovak composer who describes his work as "a sort of musical archeology," building on older forms like church and traditional music." -Dan Davis, 2007 Golden Ear Music Awards
"Godár's music is a renunciation of piety and a restoration, a worship, of the anguish needed to awaken our souls. [...] The aesthetics of music survive with ease the present shift from the church into theater, the concert hall, films such as those for which Godár writes scores. It is the music, the tones, that are enduring, not the beliefs that they are regarded as serving at a particular place and time." -Lawrence Sutin, Music & Literature
"The sound of his music is frequently closer to Górecki's in its adherence to a more conventionally Western sense of dramatic momentum, but the forces for which he writes - in this case, soloist, choir, and chamber ensemble - are more like Pärt's, so his music at times sounds like an amalgam of the two, but his most effective pieces strike an original path." -Stephen Eddins, All Music Guide, on "Mater"
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