Rudolf Komorous left Czechoslovakia in 1968 after the Russian invasion. He moved to Canada in 1969, teaching composition at the University of Victoria (UVic) on Vancouver Island from 1971 to 1989. Before emigrating, he had been principal bassoon in the Prague opera orchestra, was co-director of Musica Viva Pragensis with Petr Kotik (they had brought John Cage to Prague in 1963), and was published by Universal Edition in Vienna.
His students included Rodney Sharman, Linda Catlin Smith, Christopher Butterfield, Owen Underhill, Martin Arnold, Allison Cameron, among others . A later generation of composers followed at UVic, including Cassandra Miller, Anna Höstman, Andrea Young and eldritch Priest, all taught by Christopher Butterfield, who started teaching there in 1992. All would acknowledge Komorous’ importance.
Komorous’ compositional style is completely his own. He taught as if every student already had a unique voice, which he would then help them to find. He was interested in everything; lessons could be learned, not just from music (early 17th c. Italian monody, Janaček, Webern), but from any medium, whether visual art (Schwitters, Mondrian, Klee, Malevich), writing (Lautréamont, Roussel, Huysmans), design (Bauhaus, Wiener Werkstätte).
He loved jazz (he played alto sax in bands in Prague), Baroque music (except Bach), and the American avant-garde. He did not care for Romantic music, although he seemed to like Chopin. At heart he was a melodist, so could not completely dismiss opera composers (he used to talk about ‘the divine stupidity of Puccini.’) Indeed, he wrote several operas himself, the most recent being ‘The Mute Canary’ (2018) on a libretto by Paris dada Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes (https://www.straight.com/arts/1135366/veteran-composer-rudolf-komorous-seeks-strangeness-mute-canary) Although deeply interested in Zen, he was never a practitioner.
Komorous is 92, lives in a senior’s residence in Victoria B.C., and continues to write music. He has never once returned to Prague.
-Christopher Butterfield 8 June 2024
