Collegium Musicum

In 2007, the Slovak daily newspaper “Nový Čas” asked a panel of twenty-five artists, producers, critics and other figures connected to the world of music to draw up a ranking of the greatest records in the nation's history (including the period preceding the dissolution of Czechoslovakia).

As a result, projects involving keyboardist Marián Varga took up three of the top ten spots: number 1 with “Zvoňte zvonky” by Prúdy, number 2 with “Konvergencie” by Collegium Musicum, and number 9 with “Zelená pošta”, credited jointly to Varga and his frequent collaborator Pavol Hammel.

Varga was born in Skalica in 1947, but moved to Bratislava as a child and began piano lessons in 1954. Classical music made up his entire universe for at least a decade, with studies focused in particular on Eastern European composers: Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Stravinsky and Bartók, as well as masters of the local scene such as Dezider Kardoš and Ján Cikker, little known internationally but fundamental in shaping the young pianist's aesthetic and grounding him in his own cultural roots.

His interests expanded beyond classical music when, in 1964, the Beatles phenomenon reached Czechoslovakia. In 1967 Varga left the conservatory, after five years of study, and took on the role of keyboardist for Prúdy, a psychedelic pop group founded by singer and guitarist Pavol Hammel.

He would remain in the lineup just long enough for a couple of singles and the band's landmark debut album, the aforementioned “Zvoňte zvonky” (1969), though he stayed on excellent terms with Hammel afterwards.

He decided to form a different kind of band after attending a couple of concerts in 1968: Brian Auger's Trinity, in Bratislava, and Keith Emerson's Nice, in Prague — names that give a sense of how far rock and Western culture had spread in that part of the world, as well as of the growing sense of freedom felt among the younger generation at the height of Alexander Dubček's political arc.

In April 1969, Gustáv Husák became the new secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, with the approval of the Soviet Union, and launched a harsh crackdown on all reformists, later known in history as “normalization”: the axe fell on the art world too, and on rock music in particular.

New bands were required to dress appropriately, avoid long hair and, where possible, the English language, submit their song lyrics and record artwork to dedicated censorship committees, and finally obtain a license to become professional musicians — failing which they were forbidden from recording albums or performing live. In essence, musicians either became state employees or were left with no way to make a living from their craft.

It was in this climate that Varga founded Collegium Musicum, who nevertheless found relatively clear passage thanks to a series of coincidences: first, Varga's remarkable skills as a virtuoso instrumentalist, well regarded by party officials keen to showcase local talent (also as a form of redress for Slovak artistic output, which had always suffered from a kind of inferiority complex compared to the more populous and thriving Czech scene); second, Varga's closeness to the world of classical music, which lent his output an academic aura and so softened the sense of rebellion usually associated with rock music; third, the fact that normalization was markedly harsher in Bohemia than in Slovakia (perhaps because the stirrings of social and cultural discontent against the regime were centred in Prague).

The new band consisted of Varga on Hammond organ (one of the few available in the country at the time), backed by Fedor Frešo on bass and Dušan Hájek on drums (both had played in a short-lived Bratislava beat group, Soulmen, which had also produced Dežo Ursiny, a singer and guitarist who would go on to a prolific career straddling jazz and progressive rock).

Collegium Musicum also featured a guitarist, though the role never quite settled into place: it was Pavel Váně for the single “Hommage à J. S. Bach” (1970), Rastislav Vacho for the debut album, self-titled and recorded between 26 and 28 October 1970, and František Griglák for “Konvergencie”, the double LP that is the subject of this article. The latter was recorded between September and October 1971, right as the debut album was hitting stores (worth a brief aside here on the enormous gaps between recording and release that plagued the music industry in Warsaw Pact countries, due to a combination of censorship controls, elephantine bureaucracy, and the sheer physical scarcity of materials needed to press records).

This was a particularly ambitious project, for which the band received strong backing from the local administrative apparatus. Once again, the implicit rivalry between the Czech and Slovak scenes comes into play: in 1968, Opus was founded, a record label based in Slovakia tasked with representing local musicians, who until then had depended on Supraphon, the state label run out of Prague, which had granted a subdivision in Bratislava but remained, all the same, a centralizing body of control.

With the birth of Opus, the Slovak apparatus finally had the chance to assert itself with real autonomy: given the talent involved, Collegium Musicum were seen as an opportunity not to be missed. Varga was thus given free rein to indulge all his ambitions, and he responded by putting together a monumental double LP (a rare feat indeed, given the supply difficulties already mentioned), with one suite per side, for 82 minutes of music.

What's more, dealing a serious blow to the rival label, Opus made every effort to release the record as close as possible to the recording sessions: as a result, "Konvergencie" reached stores before the end of 1971, just a few weeks after the debut album, distributed by Supraphon.

Of course, a few skirmishes with the censorship boards were inevitable, but by then any musician preparing to release something factored that in as a given: photographer Tibor Borský shot a cover image showing the band's four members inside a dilapidated house, but it was vetoed (presumably because it could be read as a symbol of poverty). As an alternative, he chose a shot depicting only Varga in the act of putting on a jacket: this one made it through, but only after the cigarette was airbrushed out of the musician's mouth. Furthermore, the name of director Juraj Jakubisko, who had handled the lettering, was struck from the list of credits printed on the sleeve: one of the great masters of Czechoslovak cinema, he was among the many purged during the normalization period, though he later managed to reinvent himself as a maker of short films.

The recording sessions, held at the state radio studios in Bratislava, were directed by Varga and Frešo with the support of the young Vladimír Valovič, a trumpeter and conductor who would go on to become one of the leading producers on the local scene and a frequent collaborator of Varga's.

It's striking that the album came out in 1971, the same year that saw Britain produce Emerson Lake & Palmer's "Tarkus" and Italy give us "Collage" by Orme, to name two easy parallels that spring to mind while listening (all are progressive rock records driven by electric organ sounds).

The stylistic maturity and crystalline sound quality of the recording sweep away any stereotype about the backwardness of music from the other side of the Iron Curtain, though it should be noted that the album was produced with the utmost effort, for the reasons already mentioned (not all other Czechoslovak musicians of the time were so fortunate, even though both scenes managed to deliver several great classics in the prog field).

Side A is taken up entirely by "P. F. 1972" (the title is an acronym for "pour féliciter," a French borrowing still used in Czechia and Slovakia to wish someone a happy new year), composed by Varga.

A Hammond riff over jazzy rhythmic flourishes is followed by a stiffer-paced section, with digressions in which the instrument undergoes shifts in timbre and volume, broken only briefly by a guitar solo with heavy sustain. The organ alternates between clean and distorted tones, echoing and dry, delicate and violent, played far back in the mix and pushed up front, but always retaining a strong melodic sensibility. At 6'48" it settles into a theme that then serves as the basis for a children's choir, steering the mood toward the end-of-year festivities:

The snow arrives,

the snow blows away,

the tree plays us a Christmas carol,

the horse drags the stars along.

Sleepless golden stars

fall from Christmas dreams,

you pick one up and then lose sight of it,

by evening the house is full of them.

Pull the horse,

winter is calling,

the frost scatters glimmers,

pull the horse

over the houses,

time for a white Christmas

The lyrics were written by Kamil Peteraj (poet, playwright and one of the most prolific lyricists in the history of the country's music). The choice of the Christmas carol is no accident: Slovakia, like the Catholic countries of Eastern Europe in general, boasts a deeply felt tradition in this field, one revered even by classical composers, so it's only natural that an artist with Varga's background would want to engage with it. What's more, in a climate of particularly fierce censorship at the time, the choice also acted as a safeguard against any cuts imposed from above.

The choir lasts about a minute, then it's back to the instrumental gallop, still led by the Hammond's melodies, while guitar and bass, both distorted, churn away in the background. After an interlude of distant, muffled noises, the rhythm section kicks back in, making room among other things for guitar and prepared piano solos. A passage with the guitar locked into funk syncopations then introduces the return of the choir, singing the same verses as before, just as one of the earlier organ themes is brought back to close the circle, followed by the jingling of sleigh bells.

Side B is taken up by the setlist's only live recording: "Suita po tisíc a jednej noci", described by the same record label as a "free elaboration on the musical themes of N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov's ballet 'Scheherazade'" (to be fair, the composition was actually a symphonic suite, and the ballet was only conceived after the great Russian master's death, but there's little point in splitting hairs over a world like classical music, still riddled to this day with legends and historical inaccuracies believed true even by leading scholars in the field, especially considering we're talking about 1971).

The suite undergoes a treatment that mirrors the one Emerson Lake & Palmer gave Mussorgsky on "Pictures At An Exhibition" (released, incidentally, at the same time as "Konvergencie") – that is, an irreverent festival of distortions, virtuoso flourishes and contaminations with rock, jazz and even a touch of blues – and it's remarkable to note that, between the two recordings, it's the Slovak group's version that boasts the cleaner, more precise sound. [note 1]

Side C makes room for "Piesne z kolovrátku" ("Songs from the Spinning Wheel"). Credited to all members of the band, it's a collage of three songs linked by short instrumental interludes.

These are the only three moments on the album sung by solo voices: the first, featuring the aforementioned Pavol Hammel as vocalist, is the closest to purely symphonic prog, with Varga engaged in delicate piano figures; the second, sung by Griglák, is perhaps akin to the jazz-inflected rock of the Canterbury school, at least on its side closer to song form (Caravan and the like), and towards the end features a distinctive Subharchord solo, a subharmonic synthesis synthesizer developed in East Germany during the Sixties; the third finally has Hammel and Frešo singing an ethereal melody disturbed by the dissonances of Varga's church organ. Starting with the 2007 CD reissue, the three tracks also carry subtitles: "Piesne z kolovrátku", "Tvoj sneh" ("Your Snow") and "Chorál" ("Chant").

The lyrics are by Peteraj, who this time attempts more than one gamble: although they appear to be love songs, they speak of defeat, changing times, frozen landscapes, broken words and shattered dreams. With hindsight, these are fairly obvious political metaphors, which raises some questions about the censors' sharpness. Here are the translations, reported one after another:

I.

The wind broke that glass room a long time ago,

that glass room full of beauty.

If you want, let's go together under the gazebo,

two old carts will carry us there.

A night like this is covered all in gold

and it's reflected on the water, the water of the well.

Look, today I'll give you everything,

you barely hide a smile in the palm of your hand, a sad smile.

Whoever doesn't know where to go looks for blame in dreams,

at home they have only empty vases,

in the morning they write delicately on parchment

and draw with a finger on the windows.

Look, today I'll give you everything,

even a sweet rose, a sweet rose.

I'll take the heart of the old clock

and I'll sing you spinning-wheel songs.

The wind breaks the words in vain, in vain,

I no longer know where to find you,

and the blue arc of our love grows old,

even the trees want to grow together.

II.

I have your snow on my window,

from the window I look outside,

there, at the beauty of the white sleigh,

there, at the wings of the crows,

I like watching the wings of the crows flying towards us.

Some days have already flown inside us,

some days the weather changes,

weather I love immensely,

weather of victories and defeats,

weather of blue games when I lose my way, [note 2]

weather that loses […]

III.

The winter gate opens,

the tower leans into silence,

mornings fall from the wise bells

like stars into apple trees,

it rains from the morning stars,

I want to guide you with the dew,

I will write upon wet faces,

silent forever in the clasp of hands,

they carry flowers on an old cart,

vain love slips from the hand

Side D is given over to “Eufónia”, a chaotic instrumental fantasia in which Varga reigns supreme: the rest of the band appears only in the first five minutes, then steps aside for the man of the house, moving between Hammond organ, prepared piano and assorted manipulations (near the end a choir of children's voices returns, this time fragmented and unintelligible).

These are disjointed, often cacophonous waves of sound, yet also surprisingly forward-looking: Varga himself would later state that, despite having access to every kind of synthesizer in the years that followed, what he drew out of the electric organ on this piece remained the cornerstone of his sonic research. It is likely this fresco of electronic abstraction that led Steven Stapleton and co. to include the band in the “Nurse With Wound List” (1979-80), which in the decades since has so intrigued nerds and fans of avant-garde music, whether genuinely so or merely presumed.

It's a fitting close to a work that lives up to its own bulk, able to satisfy the most disparate tastes thanks to an unusually wide-ranging scope: an instrumental jam interspersed with Christmas carols, a reworking of a classical masterpiece, a sequence of songs and interludes, and a suite devoted to the most radical experimentation.

Launched with great fanfare by Opus, “Konvergencie” proved a major commercial success, reaching 140,000 copies sold within its first ten years, despite initially being sold for 120 crowns - double the price of a normal vinyl album on the local market.

Varga went on leading the Collegium Musicum project in the decades that followed, albeit with long pauses devoted to his solo career. In 2015 he was decorated with the Order of Pribina by President Andrej Kiska, in recognition of “everything he has done for Slovak culture, with world-class achievements both on record and on the concert stage”. Though a head of state is not necessarily a reliable music critic, in this particular case his words ring entirely true.

Like the other guitarists before him, perhaps feeling he didn't have enough room to express himself, Griglák left the band shortly after the release of "Konvergencie": in 1972 he founded Fermáta, who in turn proved to be one of the best jazz-rock bands in continental Europe. Frešo and Hájek, meanwhile, continued to take part in Varga's projects, as well as Hammel's.

Varga passed away on August 9, 2017, due to complications from cancer and several chronic illnesses.

[note 1] It's worth spending a few words on the comparison between Varga and Emerson, because although the former has always honestly admitted to being influenced by the British keyboardist, he remains a highly original musician. His youthful studies and his attention to Slavic composers and Slovak culture are evident in his style, particularly in his handling of timing, characterized by rushes and drags of mere fractions of a second (to give credit where it's due, this spot-on observation belongs to user Salviaal, from the ProgArchives database).

[note 2] It's not clear what "blue games" is supposed to mean. The color does, however, play a fundamental role in Slovak culture: it's one of the pan-Slavic colors and as such appears on their flag, it's associated with their mountains (as shown by the national coat of arms), with religion (it's the color of Mary of Nazareth and of the famous Church of St. Elizabeth in Bratislava), not to mention the hand-dyed blue-print fabrics that have been a local point of pride since the 19th century, and the "blue booklet," the document granting exemption from military service both in Czechoslovakia and in the nations that emerged from it. Finally, it should be considered that both Peteraj and the band members were fans of Anglo-American music, and were therefore well aware of blue's association with feelings of sadness.

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15/12/2024