Jan Skácel would most resolutely protest against the presence of his person in the gallery of musical figures from Brno which this commemorative series is supposed to be. Although raised in a family of teachers in Moravian Slovakia, he had a clear idea of his (non)musicality. You cannot talk about music to me, I have no ear for music, I do not listen to music and I do not understand it. Already in kindergarten in Poštorná, he stubbornly refused to sing with the other children and looked as obstinate then as he did his whole life (Janek will have a hard life, Mrs. Skácelová used to say about her elder son, he will not know how to deal with people as well as Petr). And at the time when he was thinking about a university career as an assistant at the newly-established faculty of education, he talked about musicological education with much scornfulness.
Later, however, as a radio operator in the building at Beethovenova Street (remember that in the 1960s there were several excellent personalities in the department of literature, which he managed, and that their activities then meant an epoch in the history of Czech radio), he was surrounded by musicians. Many members of the Philharmonic used to go to the radio cafeteria on the fourth floor then and it sometimes seemed to me that Janek was a bit disappointed that he was not able to participate in their conversations about music like his musical colleagues-subordination from the department and that it contributed to his unyielding mask hiding a shy and amazingly sensitive person.
At that time, he began – mainly, however, thanks to his good wife Boženka – to regularly attend Philharmonic concerts at the Stadion. No matter what their marital love was like, I doubt that she herself would make him complete the entire concert series. But they were there every time, a likeable couple of smart and friendly people who did not talk much, but with whom you got along even without it. And beautiful musical ideas began to appear in Janek's poetry – piano as a black swan wing, sitting room with a white clarinet, who can fit the violin or even the fantastic broken white piano at the bottom of the quarry somewhere in the Andes.
Then music was reaching him almost constantly during his work as chief editor in Host do domu: the editor's office in Besední dům was separated from the rehearsal space of the Moravian Quartet with a plain door. It cannot be said that the analytic work of the chamber ensemble could particularly satisfy the ear of an impartial listener but Janek would greet the quartet members passing along his table in a quite friendly manner and when they started to invite him to their chamber evenings in the Skaličský mlýn, he came with Boženka almost every time. He had known the mill for a long time – when the war showed that the mill was no longer sufficient for the illegal operation that fed seven surrounding villages and eventually even the guerrilla Third platoon, and that it would be necessary to at least double its performance, Janek's father took on the task, who in addition to his job as a teacher, was also a trained miller and he worked with wood perfectly: he designed, managed and largely executed the rebuilding of the mill during holidays and weekends with his own hands. Skácel's boys then alternately went there for a long time afterwards; Petr used to wander around the area with a sketchbook, Janek said nothing, smoked and wrote poems. Even so, they were accepted graciously because aunt Anděla, who ran the mill at the time, was the former teacher who could not get Janek to sing a long time back in Poštorná.
The Moravian Quartet began to travel to the mill in the second half of the 1960s to study their new repertoire; in the normalization period their public rehearsals became, for their neighbours in Skalička, a tribune of non-recommended composers and unpublished writers visited by people from across the country while backed by the Association of Antifascist Fighters, which did not care about the content of these pious commemorative zones. There was some text by Skácel in them almost every time – and each time I was amazed how easy it was to find music, from which he was supposed to start and in which it should result; yet it seemed to me that (perhaps in the mouth of Iva Bittová) he himself is music but I could not have imagined that she would sing him. And it still seems to me (my friends-composers, who were led to musicalization by his beauty, may forgive me) that his sensitive musicalization makes him part of a higher unit but it also robs him of something, of the inner music that is hard to define or whatever it is.
I did not ask Janek his opinion; during discussions after the mill performances he used to sit silently as always, even though those who knew him better said that he liked it. After all, he came almost every time, he missed only once and apologised in a beautiful letter. However, he never forgot to wish the quartet a happy new year, usually in a versed joke, but once with something that initially unfolds as a poetic prose and gradually turns into a poem so unobtrusively that the reader does not realise until later...
Den rozpadá se jako páv a z jeho krásných per skládá se první hebká tma
Lustry jsou rozsvíceny, divadla září jak šperky a v koncertních síních
pánové ve fracích už naposledy ladí
a harfy jako kolmé splavy ční
V té tiché městské chvíli večerní
hudbě chcem naslouchat a ze srdce mít rádi
(Day comes apart like a peacock and the first soft darkness is made of his beautiful feathers,
Chandeliers are lit, theatres are shining like jewellery and in concert halls
Gentlemen in tail coats are tuning for the last time
And harps stand out as vertical sinuses
And in this quiet city moment of the evening
We want to listen to music and love with all of our hearts)
