Great Masters Prague

These workshops bring together up to 3 choirs from different countries with a Prague orchestra and soloists to an intensive workshop. The final highlight is the common performance of a mass of Dvořák, Fibich, Michna or Mozart in Prague.

A workshop of these types presupposes an ambitious choir which is willing to face other mentalities, languages and musical traditions with a high discipline. Target for the choir shall be an own qualitative development with a corresponding motivation and the knowledge from a choir work in an international environment. As experiences show, also many personal long term contacts take place during workshops. The conductors of the choirs will be involved into the complete development and share the conduction of the final performance.

Why Prague: As a cultural centre in Europe Prague always has inspired composers and musicians and a unique cultural scene until today. The available infrastructure of concert halls and professional musicians allow organizing high-quality workshops for a reasonable price.

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You can select the different compositions in the menu bar. There you find the descriptions and the scheduled dates of the workshops in the next years. To bring several choirs from different countries together requires a long pre-planning -- the first step is a non-committal reservation. A definite decision must be made only after finding of suitable partner choirs. You can find a detailed description of the services at the information page.

If you are not able to bring in enough singers for the planned mass, we can publish your favourite date and try to find a partner choir somewhere in the world.

Why music&friends? Our long-term connections in Prague to choirs, artists and institutions are the frame to offer these workshops on a high level. Former participation choirs have been surprised by this quality. If a choir spends the time and the money for a workshop like this, the result must be a long-time motivation and a strong impression. This can be offered for your choir too by music&friends!

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Dates on request

For ambitious choirs

Organized since 2004


		By coach Coming to Prague by an own coach, the coach must be available for all transfers and tours. By flight: There are offered many flights to Prague. Coming by flight, music&friends will organize all necessary ground transport. Just check the following links for flight information: www.bmibaby.com, www.clickair.com, www.easyjet.com, www.flysnowflake.com, www.jet2.com, www.smartwings.com By train: Coming by train to Prague, music&friends can organize all local ground transport, if necessary. We recommend a hotel near-by to the rehearsal hall to save time.

Choice of music I

Antonín Dvořák: Stabat Mater

50-100 singers

40 musicians + 4 soloists

Language: Latin

Duration: 6 days

Antonín Dvorák's "Stabat Mater" refers the personal destiny of the composer. His musical notes from the year 1876 can be understood as a reaction to the death of his daughter Josefa. The unfinished composition left some time until another two strokes of fate met him within one month: The death of his children Ruzena and Ottokar. Dvořák completed the ten parts of the cantata within two months. After the Prague Première on September 23rd, 1880 many performances took place in European and American concert halls and granted the composer world-wide recognition.

Stabat Mater is one of the most important oratorios with a dramatic, individual design and an unmistakable Bohemian colouring.

Zděnek Fíbich: Missa brevis

30-60 singers

25 musicians + 3 soloists

Language: Latin

Duration: 5 days

Zděnek Fibich (1850 - 1900) has been behind Smetana and Dvořák the third of the leading Czech composers in the last half of the 19^th century. His music is strongly romantically and often very intimate. His late compositions have been less national pointed and are modern.

In 1865 he attended the conservatory at Leipzig together with Ignaz Moscheles and others. In 1870 he returned to Bohemia and lived with his parents until his 21^st birthday when he moved to Prague. There he started to compose during all the day and to write the opera Bukovin. In 1873 he married Růžena Hanuš and became a choir director in Vilnius, Lithuania. In this year he set his poem Zaboj, Slavoj and Ludek to music, deeply influenced by Smetana’s „My Country”.

He wrote the successful opera Blanik and got one of the most successful melodramatic composers. Fibich finished his church activities in 1881 and concentrated himself to composing and to give music lessons. Soon he fell in love with a pupil, the singer Anežka Schulz and left his wife and his son for her. Ms Schulz gave Fibich the idea of a better understanding of feminist texts. She also wrote the texts for three of his four last operas. Because of the patriotic topic the opera Šarka (1897) about a female Czech armed forces leader has been his most successful work.

Adam Michna: Missa S. Wenceslai

30-50 singers

30 musicians + 4 soloists

Language: Latin

Duration: 6 days

Adam Michna from Otradovice (1600-1676) is one of the most prominent artists of the Czech music art of the 17th century. Approximately the half of his complete works is known, primarily spiritual works. The best known works are "Czech Maria Music" "Music of the Saint's Year" and the "Sacred Lute". The Saint Vaclav Mass is dedicated to the Bohemian national saint. It is part of the most impressive compositions of Michna, is rich melodic and contrast and impresses interpreter and listener. The concerto elements, two exposed trumpets and the change between solos and choir are remarkable. The early baroque structure underlines the beauty of this music.

Adam Michna was born in Jindřichuv Hradec nearby Budweis in Southern Bohemia, where he also started working. He belongs to the greatest poets and musicians of the 17^th century in Bohemia. Michna was from a nobility family, good educated and had best contacts to Vienna.

He compositionally was influenced by the Italian music of this time. Several of his songs became folk songs after some time.

Choice of music II

W.A. Mozart: Coronation Mass

30-60 singers

25 musicians + 4 soloists

Language: Latin

Duration: 5 days

Three journeys with longer stays brought Mozart to Prague: During the first stay at the beginning of 1787 he conducted personally his opera "Wedding of the Figaro", which has been played the first time in Prague by Pasquale Bardini. During the second stay at the end of 1787, the première of the "Don Giovanni" is carried out in the Estate Theatre. Mozart composed the overture for this opera the night before. Musicians got the music at the very last moment before the première, which Mozart directed himself. His third stay in 1791 was the highlight. On the occasion of the coronation celebration of Leopold II. Mozart completed the coronation opera "La clemenza di Tito" in the Villa Bertramka of the couple Dušek. He personally conducted this opera on September 6th, 1791 himself, after he has been accompanying the coronation with the Coronation Mass No. 14 or the Piccolomini-Mass in the Cathedral of St. Vitus.

The Coronation Mass is a remarkable composition with symphonic elements and a high noblesse.

The Pomfret School Chorus from the USA performed the Coronation Mass in the concert hall of the Academy of Music HAMU in Prague during the Mozart Jubilee Year 2006. This concert hall is used by music & friends since many years for the Advent Choral Festival and further choir events.

W.A. Mozart: Requiem

30-60 singers

30 musicians + 4 soloists

Language: Latin

Duration: 6 days

This Mass is one of the well known and most performed compositions from Mozart. Mozart had presumably worked with some interruptions at this Requiem until December 4th, 1791, the day before his early death. However, this composition remained unfinished. As the customer had already done a considerable deposit and Constanze Mozart didn't want to lose the first and second deposit, she asked in December 1791 the church musician J. Eybler to complete the composition.

Eyblers work remained a fragment. So a student of Mozart, Franz Xaver Süssmayr, was engaged at last. Süssmayr worked quickly and Constanze Mozart has been able to offer already in March 1792 the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III. a score copy of the Requiem for sale.

In his initial regulation to the funeral ceremony Mozart's requiem already resounded at the beginning of the 19th century to numerous burials: Klopstock, Beethoven and Chopin are lifted out by name. W. A. Mozart's requiem left for the following generations as an unchallenged outstanding reference point.


	Services:
		The fee is depending to the complete number of participants of a workshop, the required concert halls and the seasonal rates for accommodation.As we want to offer an optimal price structure, we can make an obligatory calculation after the reservations of interested choirs. The workshop f include the following services: Co-ordination of the interested choirs Rental rehearsing rooms and concert hall Presentation for the final concert Fees for musicians and soloists Fee for Supervisor Recording of a master-CD of the final concert Poster advertising for the final concert 4 or 5 nights in a 3-star Prague hotel with bath or shower/WC, telephone, TV Buffet breakfast Welcome drink Dinner on the arrival day (3-course-menu without drinks) 2x lunch during the rehearsing days (3-course-menu without beverages) Guide for all days 1 free place for each 21st participant in a double room Costs are without flights and transportation in Prague. The costs for the above services are with 50 singers about € 360 to € 460 per person in double/twin. A binding calculation can be done, when the date and the appr. numbers of singers iare available.