Institutional Research Project (IVZ), Department of Composition, 2024 – 2027

The main topics studied by the faculty of the Composition Department relate primarily to the following areas:
•    Contemporary music in the context of media 
•    Musical perception as a method of composition 
•    Music technology in the context of the compositional process and performative aspects of music presentation
•    Musical analysis as a tool for the compositional proces

Papers in 2024

Michal Rataj: Radioatelier: Czech radio space for acoustic art 2003–2022         

Abstract
In 2003, a new radio programme called Radioatelier was launched as part of the Czech Radio 3 – Vltava broadcast, the national public service art channel. It was aimed at presenting experimental radio forms, something completely unprecedented at that time. With 213 new commissions by December 2022, the programme entered its third decade of existence, having won a number of major radio art awards, while facing threats of impending programme cancellation in 2023. The present article is quite personal, offering generational insights of the producer, who was privileged enough to set goals and scope of the programme in its initial stages and who went on to co-exist with it for the following two decades. It also presents the complete list of sound compositions commissioned by Radioatelier between 2003 and 2022.

Slavomír Hořínka, Haštal Hapka, Tobiáš Horváth, Jan Jirucha, Darja Kukal Moiseeva:
Acoustic plein air: the sound-space listening experience as a starting point for musical composition (Arte Acta 2025)

Abstract
Five composers - a teacher, three students and one female student - travelled to listen to the soundscape of the Polish piedmont of the Giant Mountains to explore the influence of subjective perception on the final form of a musical composition. They first documented their soundscape listening experiences graphically in sketchbooks. Subsequently, they formulated creative intentions of compositions for chamber ensemble based on these experiences. During the following four months, they composed studies knowing that they were intended for studio realization. They then recorded the compositional studies themselves and reflected together on the whole process. The submitted text is placed in the context of acoustic ecology, instrumental synthesis and computer-aided composition. It builds on continuous artistic research at the HAMU Composition Department in the field of sound and space and creative applications of the results. It aims to explore the relationships between subjective sound-space experience, the choice of compositional strategies, and the resulting musical composition. 

Papers in 2025

Martin Smolka: Feldman and dynamics (Živá hudba 2025)

Jan Dobiáš: The Limits and Meaning of Musical Structure: deterministic compositional techniques in the works of selected 20th and 21st century composers. NAMU 2026

The thesis is concerned with musical works that have a clearly defined compositional structure. Although for the most part the study consists of the analyses of the pieces, their immanent structure is not the only point of interest. The structures are also explored from the angle of the creative process, with a special focus on the tension between different components of the deterministic structures, their mutual interconnectedness, their hierarchy and their mutual limitations. The analytical parts are loosely followed with sections that examine the structures in the light of musical semiology, which investigate the associative possibilities of a musical work with a special emphasis on their limitations. The reference frame for the analyses is the tripartite division into three levels of analysis: poietic, neutral and estesic. The semiological part of the work operates with the peirceian classification of the sing: icon, index and symbol.