Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Karel Husa, the Kappa Alpha Professor of Music Emeritus, poses at the piano. Charles Harrington/University Photography
Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Karel Husa returns to the Cornell concert stage this Saturday for the first time since his retirement from Cornell in 1992. Husa will be a guest conductor at a concert celebrating his 75th birthday.
The all-Husa program, to be performed by the Cornell Contemporary Directions Ensemble and the Cornell University Chamber Winds, under the direction of Professor Mark Scatterday, features Divertimento for Brass and Percussion (1970), Four Little Pieces for String Orchestra (1955), Al Fresco for Wind Ensemble (1975) and Fantasies for Chamber Orchestra (1957). The free performance begins at 8:15 p.m. in Barnes Hall.
Husa's 75th birthday has taken almost six months to celebrate. In the United States, Husa has been an invited guest at performances of his work in several states. In Europe, Husa's 75th has been marked by all-Husa programs on radio networks in the Czech Republic, Croatia and Germany.
Despite retiring from the faculty four years ago, Husa remains extremely active in music circles. He adds to his frequent-flyer miles regularly, attending performances of his work across the United States and Europe as an invited guest or as a guest conductor. He continues to get requests for commissions from symphony orchestras and bands, and there are some indications that a commission for an opera -- the one musical commission that has eluded Husa -- may be forthcoming from his homeland, the Czech Republic.
"It is something I have always wanted to do," Husa said about the opportunity to compose an opera.
He will travel to Northwestern University in November to conduct the world premiere of Le Couleurs Fauves, a piece he wrote for a fellow conductor. His inspirations for the piece are the painters Matisse and Van Gogh. "I am moved by color, by art work and by poetry, especially the work of several Czech poets, like Karel Capek, and American poet Walt Whitman."
But what has inspired Husa the most over his 50-plus years of writing music is nature.
"I am a believer in nature and its greatness," he said.
Evidence of Husa's belief in nature's power as well as its fragility is his acclaimed Apotheosis of the Earth, which he calls his "manifest against pollution and destruction."
Two spacious picture windows make up two walls of Husa's study, where one finds his grand piano and his desk, upon which he does most of his writing. His wooded lot is filled with oaks and white birches, which are painted with autumnal brilliance.
"I love to look out and see the leaves, see nature," he said, noting that a family of deer eats breakfast regularly in his backyard.
A condominium on Florida's east coast, where Husa escapes Ithaca's winters, provides the composer with another beloved view: the ocean.
"I am always amazed that no matter when you see the ocean, it is never the same," he said. "Some days it's blue, others white and gray. It is a very powerful inspiration."
For many years, a Cayuga Lake cottage was where Husa wrote most of his music, including his most widely performed piece, Music for Prague 1968. "Freedom is what inspired me to write," he said. Husa put pen to paper soon after the Soviet Union's invasion of Czechoslovakia. The piece was banned by the Communist government and was never heard in that country until the 1989 election of Vaclav Havel and the first non-Communist government in 40 years.
Husa has since returned to his homeland to numerous celebrations, in which he served as a guest conductor with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra for performances of Music for Prague 1968.
But it was Husa's String Quartet No. 3, the piece that won him the Pulitzer Prize in music in 1969, that brought him immediate acclaim. "That's when publishers began calling me all the time," he said.
Don't expect to find the Pulitzer on view in the Husa home, however. All of his honors, including the Czech Republic's State Medal Award of Merit, First Class, presented by Havel in 1995; the 1993 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition; and his certificate of membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters are on a wall in Husa's personal library, away from where he and his wife entertain guests.
But the professional achievement that may be the most important to Husa is his Concerto for Orchestra, which was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic and performed for the first time in 1986 under the baton of Zubin Mehta.
"It was such a thrill and an achievement for me to be able to write this piece for such an accomplished organization," he said.
The piece provided an outlet for Husa's emotions. "At the time I was writing the concerto, my father died. He was 91," Husa said. "The fact that I was not allowed to go to the funeral made his death all the more difficult. I titled one of the movements 'In Memoriam,' which spoke not only to my personal loss, but to loss felt by everyone at war."
Husa recalls his Cornell days fondly. He said his 36-year association with the university as a faculty member kept him "ageless," and he credits the association with his continued good health and vitality.
"I don't think I aged while I was teaching," he said. "I thought I was the same age the whole time, and it was simply the students who were getting younger and younger. They always kept me in good spirits, and I am very grateful for that." Husa's work with students continues today as he is frequently invited back to the classroom by the music department.
"When students play his music, which we often do here at Cornell," said Scatterday, "they become quite interested in meeting the man and finding out more about him.
"I think Karel Husa represents what's really best about Cornell, and that's the opportunity for students of every class to meet and learn from a world-class artist," he added.
It would be unfair to talk about Husa without noting that with all his honors from the music elite, it is his family that he continues to consider his greatest success.
A grandfather nine times, Husa on this fall afternoon is playing a role that comes to all grandparents: He is baby-sitting his three grandsons, who are home from school on holiday as their mother, a local physician, tends to her patients.
"These are my wonderful grandchildren," beams Husa, who without any prompting offers a litany of their endeavors and successes.