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Minstrel's Beads

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They taught us a lot of songs and carols in kindergarten, many of which I still remember today. As a three-year-old boy, I was fascinated - on a walk with my father - by a large barrel-organ, that played in front of the carousel in front of Brno's old town hall. The melodies that came out of the barrel-organ fascinated me and I never forgot them. These were melodies from Rossini's overture to the opera Guillaume Tell. My father often played just for himself at home, changing instruments. He also allowed me to press the flaps of a flute or clarinet. It was a feast for me when my father took me to the Orchestral Association rehearsal sometime on Sunday morning. The real world of music opened up to me here. Around a lot of instruments, violins, bigger violins and even bigger violins! My father patiently taught me the names of these instruments, and so I recognized various string, wind and percussion instruments from childhood.
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I had good hearing and I did well, but according my father I was not very diligent and focused. No wonder. In front of our windows, boys were playing in the street - and at the same time I had problems how to play F sharp a little higher or E-flat little lower, and here and there some slap came, of which there was shouting and crying, so it was no wonder that after two years of torture, during the First World War, when my father had to go to war, I was entrusted to more professional hands.
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Our country is not big, but we are a real power in the world in music. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, it has become a well-known thanks to the composers Smetana and Dvořák, because their works have become the property of world culture. After both wars, however, the knowledge of Czech and Slovak music, both younger and contemporary, spread around the world - thanks to the popularity of Czechoslovak performers abroad, who mainly promote the music of their nations. I personally have experience from Argentina and Venezuela, where the musical visitor community was drawn to Czech music to great applause. I remember the premiere of Smetana's My Homeland in Buenos Aires, which had to be repeated for great success. However, Dvořák, Janáček, Martinů, Eben, Sommer and other Czech masters also won there. Serving culture is wonderful, serving national art is the happiness of life, and the greatest satisfaction is the appreciation of people who love music. If I were to be born again, I would like to be again - in the words of Master Antonín Dvořák - a modest Czech musician.
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MILÍ, POSLOUCHEJTE A STAHUJTE NAŠI HUDBU ZDARMA (jako cenu uveďte nulu).
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With the present album, I conclude my "baptism trilogy", a triptych of albums that I created in the years when I was preparing even more intensely than in the previous ones to receive the sacrament of baptism, which I finally received on this year's Easter Vigil Mass on White Saturday. This third recording synthesizes the previous ones - as in the classical sonnet, the last six verses summarize the two previous strophes. While in the first of them - In The Land of Lonesome Vicarages - I turned mainly to the environment that I interpret, and in the second - A Hidden River - I dived into my own soul and asked about her own ways, on the third, I try to find on the lost paths of my native region those who have ever walked the most faithfully on them. I approach the cowherd boys from Jan Preisler's paintings and drawings, who suspect something unnameable in the blues of horizon, the simple wandering musicians who have already strayed here from fairy tales or the prodigal sons who have just stepped back and will take the longest path of anxiety. I join them - I try to hear what they hear and to capture their experience of these places that is also my home land. Land where the one climbs so easily to the horizons, country in which man ages so lightly and unnoticed, space in which everything sings and where it is so difficult to return. Of course, the experience of the last two war months had to be reflected in the album, which mainly addresses one's fellow. I have already express my fears of a possible war conflict in my recording from 2017, Friendly Greetings from Pre-War Bohemia, and I also refer to its outbreak on my new album, in the compositions immediately preceding the final one (in which I try to present a personal experience of rebirth in the baptismal bath). The Ukrainian composition connect with the last one their explicit Marian themes: the rosary, already mentioned in the album title (which also refers to the glass pearls from Hermann Hesse's novel The Glass Bead Game and its messages, the musical essence of the universe), is related to the message of Our Lady of Fatima and blue and gold from the Ukrainian flag to a pair of traditional Marian colors.

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Přítomným albem uzavírám svou „křestní trilogii“, trojici alb, která vznikala v letech, kdy jsem se ještě intenzivněji než v těch předchozích připravoval k přijetí svátosti křtu, kterou jsem nakonec o letošní velikonoční Vigilii na Bílou sobotu obdržel. Tato třetí nahrávka obě předešlé syntetizuje – jako v klasickém sonetu shrnuje posledních šest veršů dvě předcházející strofy. Zatímco na první z nich – V kraji opuštěných far – jsem se obracel především k prostředí, jehož znění interpretuji, a na druhé – A Hidden River – jsem se nořil do vlastní duše a ptal se na její vlastní cesty, na třetí se snažím nalézt na ztracených pěšinách rodného kraje ty, kdo kdy po nich nejvěrněji chodili. Přibližuji se na nich pasáčkům z obrazů Jana Preislera, kteří tuší v modrých dálkách cosi nepojmenovatelného, prostým potulným muzikantům, již sem zabloudili z pohádek či k marnotratným synům, kteří právě vykročili nazpět a půjdou tou nejdelší cestou úzkosti. Připojuji se k nim – snažím se slyšet to, co slyší oni, a zachytit zde i jejich kraj – ten, kterým se tak lehce stoupá k horizontům, v němž se tak zlehka a nepozorovaně stárne, v němž vše zpívá a kam se tak obtížně navrací. Do alba, které se především obrací k bližnímu, se pochopitelně musela promítnout i zkušenost posledních dvou válečných měsíců. Se svými obavami z možného válečného konfliktu jsem svěřil již na svém albu z roku 2017 Přátelské pozdravy z předválečných Čech a k jeho propuknutí se vztahuji i zde, ve skladbách bezprostředně předcházejících té závěrečné, v níž se snažím zpřítomnit osobní prožitek znovuzrození v křestní lázni. S ní ony ukrajinské spínají jejich explicitní mariánské náměty: růženec, připomenutý již názvem alba (který současně odkazuje ke skleněným perlám z románu Hermanna Hesseho Hra se skleněnými perlami a k jeho poselstvím, o hudební podstatě veškerenstva), souvisí s poselstvím Panny Marie Fátimské a modrá a zlatá z ukrajinské vlajky k dvojici tradičních mariánských barev.

credits

released April 30, 2022

All the music was composed by Ká who had recorded all the sounds in the landscapes and interiors of foreland of Bohemian Forest between 2017 and 2022 too.
Tracks 6, 8, 10: voice of Czech composer, conductor and oboist Václav Smetáček (radio broadcast of recording of his memories) - English translation in lyrics!
Great thanks to Roman Kolliner and Milan Holeček for technical and moral support!
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Všechnu hudbu složil Ká, jenž rovněž pořídil všechny výchozí nahrávky krajiny a interiérů v předhůří Šumavy v letech 2017-2022.
Skladby 6, 8, 10: hlas českého hudebního skladatele, dirigenta a hobojisty Václava Smetáčka (záznam rozhlasového vysílání nahrávky jeho vzpomínek).
Velký dík náleží Romanu Kollinerovi a Milanu Holečkovi za technickou i mravní podporu!


Don't miss the newest Ká's compositions on split EP Spring Meeting (with Frequently Asked Questions):
recordingsontheroad.bandcamp.com/album/spring-meeting

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In the late nineties Ká started with his first experiments with poetry and its interpretation. In 2003 after approximately twenty site specific events with different literary works and a few musical attempts he based Abbé Brémond Ensemble, chamber orchestra dedicated to idea of pure poetry by Henri Brémond. In this time he started to compose intensively and till 2007 orchestra has recorded and published about ten albums and played a few free improvisation sets. The musical horizon of group was wide: electroacoustic composition, land(e)scapes, freak folk, ambient, sound art. After pause Ká renewed ensemble in 2014 with new ideas and musical visions. At this time he started to work with his own field recordings and his new electroacoustic compositions are based on the sounds of nature and atmosphere of different places. He tries to express the face of his native land in music by the electronically transformed field recordings of its exteriors and interiors. His compositions connect subjective mood of man and attentively revealed atmosphere of the place. Both composer and listener in one paints the sonic pictures and entrances them to socially and ecologically depressed context of country.

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Recordings On the Road Czech Republic

Collective publishing project of a few kindred musicians, flowing outside (on periphery or in underground) the Czech music happening and mostly devoted themselves to alternative rock or avantgarde music. Stylistically diverse is united by a similar attitude to music perceived not as a medium, but as the way, autonomous and eminently participating on our lives, on our road. ... more

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