Olomouc is a nice city , lying in the middle of Moravia. This is the second largest historical preserve in our republic after Prague. There is also well-known Palacký University in Olomouc. Doc. PhDr. Zdeněk Fridrich CSc. /1927-2002/ was a professor at the department of music education at the Pedagogical faculty. He belonged to the most outstanding personalities of Olomouc music culture. He devoted himself from youth to composition. His first pieces which were: “A Romance for violin and piano” and “Spanish dance for four-hand piano” come from the years 1946 and 1947. There si also written dedication on these pieces for Květa, his later wife. Then he continued in composing pieces for brass orchestra and for solo instruments with piano. He also composed several pieces for Teaching symphony orchestra and Moravian Philarmony orchestra played some of them as well. He devoted himself to arrangements of folk songs and setting texts to music.

After being retired in 1992 he founded a small choir of the Capuchin church in Olomouc, which he conducted for 10 years.

He instrumented a lot of spiritual songs and set the texts of many poems into music, such as: “Tříkrálová”, “Chrpa polní”, “Chudí” from the anthology of poems: “Krajina milosti” by Jiří Vícha, the capuchin from Fulnek.

His Whitsuntide sacramental proprium consists of five parts and can be accompanied by either organ or small orchestra. Three-voiced Mass with organ with its parts: Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Snactus and Agnus Dei is his last composition. He composed for organs some occasional short pieces, and Three preludes /chromatic, whole-tone scale and diatonic/ and a Suite for organ with its four parts / Preludium, Ostinato, Ciacona and Risoluto/.Duet for the piano and organ is also very interesting.

Doc. Fridrich had detailed theoretical knowledge of compositional principles of 20th century music but his work is different. He derived his music from majorminor tonality together with the enlargement of contemporary compositional techniques. His music is in this way accessible to a general audience.

Organ and the history of Moravian organ became the lifelong specialized interest of doc. Fridrich who published many articles on this theme in our country and abroad as well. He also suggested historical organs to be reconstructed, the largest of which is the Halbich organ in the cathedral of St. Mary the Snow in Olomouc where doc. Fridrich used to organize cycles of concerts called:”Early evenings with the organ.”

This year 2007 we recall that it is 30 years since the reconstruction of the Halbich organ and it would be also 80th birthday of doc. Fridrich thanks to whom the reconstruction was done.

The part of the talk was accompanied by:
The greeting for clarinet and piano
2 parts from the Three-voiced Mass with organ
2 parts from the Organ suite
Song: You are Peter, this is a rock

The melody for flute was played by Romana Polzerová- a conservatory student. The supplement of the talk was made by exposition of the pieces of work from the history of Moravian organ.

MgA. Květa Fridrichová-Raueová
music theorist / Olomouc University, CZ /