PSU Magazine Fall 1987

giving him "a great basic music education." The family spent the war years in Boston but by 1946 his parents were homesick for their native Czecho– slovakia and the three returned. There, the boy's musical talents blos– somed. By the time he had graduated from the Prague Conservatory with degrees in composition, percussion and conducting, 23-year-old Svoboda had composed 40 opuses, six of them for orchestra. Performances and radio broadcasts were drawing national attention to his work. Such composers as Benjamin Britten and Darius Mil– haud were predicting great things for him. He had developed a powerful bond with a group of artists in Prague. And he had fallen in love with his future wife,Jana. That is when he decided to leave. "My blood wanted to get out," he said. "I had too much desire to see different landscapes. In Czechoslovakia there were no volcanoes, no oceans, no deserts. Those are the extremes that I was dying to see." No doubt these imagined landscapes had also come to symbolize freedom for the young musician in the Communist-controlled country. Svoboda and his parents went underground again , resurfacing in Los Angeles. "When I left, Jana and I promised to wait five years for each other. I waited only one year - 'only' one year! Then one day she called from Vienna." His voice deepens. "That was a great moment." N ow Jana and Tomas share a modest ranch-style home in Southeast Portland with their two teenage children. Jana is an accomplished painter and printmaker. Tomas is starting on Opus 129. Sitting in a lawn chair in the shady backyard, watching a hummingbird feed from a fuschia, Svoboda describes the driving force in his life, the strong under– current that carried him away from the tidy beauty of Czechoslovakia. ''The base inspiration of my music is nature - the energy of it, the beauty of it. The first symphony was my com– plete burst. That is when I tried my best to express how I felt about nature. "The base inspiration of my music is nature - the energy of it, the beauty of it." "If someone asked me if I'm a reli– gious man , I would say I believe in God but that God is a symbol of nature. Sometimes, meditating in the garden when I'm watering and seeing the living things, it's really magicial. It's incredible. And it's everywhere." Svoboda also loves people. It is obvious in the time he makes for others in his hectic schedule, in his gentle handling of people's ideas and opinions, in his ready smile and atten– tive ear. It is also obvious in his music. Whether the composer is being playful or tragic, his work is clearly human both in its origins and in its accessibil– ity. It is written for humans to enjoy. "I feel a little split between nature and people," admits the man who sacrificed "beautiful friendships" with Svoboda, who likes the precision ofmusi– cal notation, does the parts for a recent orchestral composition. A copyist would charge at least $12,000 for a 25-minute work, he said. PSU MAGAZINE PAGES fellow musicians in Prague. "We were like brothers. We were able to talk about things at the highest possible level of music as an an. I never found a substitute." And now, after making that choice, he sees his natural world being destroyed by humans. "People are sarificing the environment for heavy civilization and comfort. That's the tragedy." Svoboda's Symp!wny No. 4, subtitled "Apocalyptic," is his expression of this drift away from nature and toward ultimate annihilation. Ironically for a composer whose work tends to express optimism, this may be the symphony that "establishes Tomas as a composer to reckon with, one who is doing more than dabbling," according to publisher Stangland. Remaining in Oregon, near the kind of natural environment that sustains and inspires him, has created a further irony in Svoboda's life by keeping him out of the musical main– stream. "People ask me 'Why don't you move to the East Coast where more cultural things are happening?' But I don't want to sacrifice my contact with nature for being more well-known. And I'm not drying out here." S tangland, who has devoted 12 years of his life to publishing and promoting his former professor's work, can't help but wonder if he has "pushed the right buttons" for his only client. Much of his time has been spent in preparing scores for publica– tion, using everything from the labor– ious pen and ink method to rub-on type and, now, some computerized notation. Stangland has succeeded in publishing 15 scores, with 25 more available this fall. "It doesn 't do much good to have a closet full of clear scores if they're not getting promoted," said Stangland, who plans to devote more time to con– tacting "movers and shakers." As Svoboda's agent, Stangland has made arrangements for 20 commissions and numerous performances, some of which Svoboda has also conducted. Largely because of his efforts, the 1978 Overture of the Season, originally com– missioned and performed by the