Last year before Christmas (19 November) it was a hundred and forty years since the birth of Gracian Černušák, today easily forgotten, but in his time he was the most important musical historian, critic, teacher in Brno – as well as an internationally renowned lexicologist, whose legacy quietly and at the same time fully lives as the source of Czech musical historical information. Born in Ptení in Haná, he went through the dramatic first half of the twentieth century as a secondary school teacher, and was exposed to oppression and wrong from the Nazi and Communist authorities; the constant gravitation towards music made him one of the most important musical figures of that time in our country – and especially in Brno.
It is a long way from Prostějov to Ptení; at the end of the nineteenth century, when it was common to go by foot from place to place, it was nothing for a healthy person, but the tuberculosis suffering Černušák student managed it with difficulties and at the pond he had to sit down to catch his breath. Two old women went by and said: “Za teho jož te žabe take pijó letkop (For you the frogs drink on a deal)” (for the younger readers: litkup is a toast to signing a deal, usually when selling cattle to the butcher). Young Gracian became angry and decided: “Tebe, babo, přežijo! (I will live longer than you, you hag!)”. And from that moment he got better – he lived until he was seventy-nine.
With a university diploma he became the youngest secondary school teacher in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy and he came to the academy of commerce in Hradec Králové as professor of history and geography. When I stood at the age of twenty-three in front of a class of almost adult girls, my heart became heavy and I said to myself – if I become even slightly affected, I would be lost… At that time the Hradec intellectual elite would get together in the Pod věží tavern, which was called Mrťafa. One June evening a certain Professor Absolon’s discoveries in the Moravian Kars, which were recently opened to public, were being discussed and gentlemen speculated that they should visit them some time in summer. At that moment the Moravian Černušák stood up and reproached their parochial attitude. Moravia is so close and they consider it absolutely unknown territory, which they can visit only with great courage and proper preparations. And thus he announced a proposition: each of them would drink one more beer, pay for it and everyone there would walk to the station through the mild night – to catch a train to Pardubice and from there they would take the Prague – Brno express train. In that train they would sleep to their health, in Blansko the conductor would wake them to a fresh morning; after a march through the colourful valley they would have a hearty breakfast in Skalní mlýn. After breakfast they would have the entire morning to tour the Macocha and Punkva caves – and after an excellent lunch in Skalní they would safely return to Hradec long before sunset.
And so it happened: Mrťafa finished its last beer, got up as one person and along with the innkeeper they made the educational trip as he said. Unfortunately Hradec was not so large at that time and the disappearance of a large number of important gentlemen spread around the city in the morning. And when the gentlemen returned in the afternoon, they were greeted as if they were returning from Thermopylae, the police chief being the most delighted, because he had been besieged by a crowd of desperate wives for hours in his office…
To Brno, the place of work for the rest of his life, Černušák came shortly before the overthrow, at the beginning of September 1918 – and already in November he took up the job of musical reporter in the Lidové noviny newspaper. The idea that the venerable, formerly Brno newspaper would show more interest in musical life is out of question; Černušák published there 3,139 articles in the period between the wars; and when the Lidové noviny was restored as Svobodné noviny after the liberation, he published another 446 articles – until the Victorious February; Černušák was one of the first journalists into which the Communists sunk their teeth. When we read the titles of his three and a half thousand articles, it gives us the impression that musical life in Brno between the wars was rich and interesting, even though there was only one orchestra (theatre orchestra), one permanent quartet (Moravian quartet) and a somewhat ageing Beseda brněnská… However, Černušák managed to enjoy it and he commented on it as a part of the life of the dynamically developing metropolis, which, in all aspects, Brno was. From performances or concerts he went directly to the editorial office of Lidovky, so that he could finish the article before midnight, when the legendary make-up man Gracík came for it and who had always a place for it in the morning edition.
The magic of these articles is not in the content, but it is in the manner of how it is written, in the language. You have to write most accurately about music – because it cannot be captured tangibly by words, only metaphorically. It leads people to write vaguely, but that is a mistake; if you want to tell someone about the music, you must have the most accurate idea not only about music, but also what you want to tell – as well as to whom you want to tell it and why. Private lecture sessions of the Professor were more reminiscent of linguistic lessons than musicological ones: detailed lexical, grammatical, syntax and style analysis of every sentence with reflections on synonyms, diverse meanings of grammatical connections and syntax connections – a simple text about Dvořák’s Novosvětská (From the New World) suddenly changed, it acquired new rich meaning, it found connections to previous references, and it foretold this that should be yet mentioned…
Černušák polished his language mastery using his lifelong activities as a lexicologist – let us be reminded that thanks to him we have the Czech musical encyclopaedia, it is either called Pazdírkův hudební slovník naučný or Československý hudební slovník osob a institucí: the dictionary text is governed by strict rules, it must be maximally objective, brief and without any emotional bias or poetic description. From Černušák’s entries we often feel – with respect to his requirements – the evaluation of the described object: the impersonal tedious dictionary text somehow hints on the author’s opinion on the object.
Although we also see this in Černušák’s textbooks and especially in reviews: a critic, who describes the course of concert with programme and cast and in the end he hints if it pleased him or not, is a dilettante; reviews are written in a way that your evaluation permeates the entire text. Strive to answer three questions: first – what did the artist want to express by his performance, second – to what extent was he successful, and third – if the things he said were worth saying. However, understand that he put his head above the parapet, even his best abilities, and he tries to – in the majority of cases – truthfully perform. It must be said that he was considered a strict critic for years due to his principles and – as he liked to remind one - that he was once shot at by one of the criticized artists (at that time it was considered chivalrous, nowadays it would be only a smack in the face – if there was someone to hit).
With his refined diction he managed to perform anytime and to express any long speech on anything he understood (I have to pay attention to my unfortunate er); however, he could also fluently present a musical scientific analysis of a piece of work in his native Haná dialect – it was related to the opera O Landeborkovi from Haná and the audience was so entertained that the Moravian chamber orchestra could not begin with the overture for a long time. By the way, it happened in the worn-out Staré divadlo in Veveří street, which played a respectable role in the musical life – similar to Gracian Černušák, who wrote a review of the performances shown there. But unlike the poignant building, where the Bílý dům has been for quite some time now, the Professor lives in the current musical Brno via his textbooks and dictionaries, although hundreds of his students do not realize it.
