Pavel Trojan

* 1956

  • "I would say that the greatest contribution of European music is the invention of musical notation. It was Guido of Arezzo who actually invented musical notation in order to write down the already developing choral singing. Because new and new chants were constantly being created and just to be able to remember it - because they had these amateurish ones where they only wrote down the directions of the chant and that was just not enough - so a script was created that was able to better write down the existing chant. But, what a wonder, the evolution always takes place in such a way that what is created has some consequences that we are not able to achieve. And that consequence was the emergence of composition as an art comparable, I don't know, to literature or painting. Because it was only then - and only in Europe - that musical composition as musical composition came into being, and that caused by the notation."

  • "You know, I think that maybe we had a little bit of an illusion that the regime was not the fifties anymore. And it's a fact that they did... I had such an unpleasant (experience) once when they were with us, I went to school - to Prague for the follow-up study. So somehow they came to get my dad in the morning and I went. They wanted me to show them my bag when I was leaving so that I wouldn't take away any files. I only had school stuff in there. So, I had to give it to them to look at. That was quite uncomfortable. Otherwise - we weren't afraid of them. We weren't really scared of them. I would never have thought to blame my parents for being involved, for having problems because... We just took it as necessary. And I don't remember... It bothered me that I couldn't travel, I hadn't really been out west for nineteen years since the nineteen-sixties when my parents did that trip to Scandinavia, we went back through Hamburg - so I didn't really go out west for nineteen years until 1988 when my wife and I went out, that's when the ice started to melt a little bit."

  • "The fact that I grew up in a family of evangelical clergy influenced me - and certainly my sister - quite fundamentally. My father, as we know, was a member of the New Orientation, he belonged to this movement. So, we were brought up to believe that faith leads to a responsible life, a committed life in the best sense of the word. That was probably the greatest gift. Even though in adulthood my relationship to faith itself has become a little more lukewarm, what has remained with me is that it is not some sort of mere hobby, that one is somehow comforted by praying to God, but it is a call to responsible living. And I think that was the most valuable thing. And as far as my profession or vocation as a composer, my parents were supportive of that, even though they weren't musicians, and they tried to break that path for me somehow."

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Praha, 05.01.2023

    (audio)
    duration: 02:01:14
    media recorded in project Stories of the 20th Century TV
  • 2

    Praha, 26.01.2023

    (audio)
    duration: 02:13:40
    media recorded in project Stories of the 20th Century TV
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He got into the conservatory only thanks to international diplomacy

Pavel Trojan, early 1970s
Pavel Trojan, early 1970s
photo: Archiv pamětníka

Pavel Trojan is a composer and pedagogue. He was born on 14 August 1956 in Domažlice and grew up in Kdyně and Libiš in a family of evangelical ministers. His father is a pastor of the Evangelical Church of Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren Jakub S. Trojan, later a signatory of Charter 77. At the turn of the 1960s and 1970s, his father was a member of the Evangelical church in Libiš, of which Jan Palach was also a member. Shortly before his act, Palach had listened to Trojan’s sermon and after his self-immolation, Jakub S. Trojan buried him. Pavel Trojan had played the piano and composed music since childhood. He graduated from the Mělník grammar school in 1975, but for political reasons he could not get into the conservatory. He was only admitted after the third attempt in 1977, ironically after his father signed Charter 77 and at the Belgrade follow-up meetings of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe, the Czechoslovak negotiators were reproached for preventing the children of dissidents from studying. He then went on to study at The Academy of Performing Arts in Prague - Music and Dance Faculty (HAMU), where he was admitted again after the third attempt in 1982. In 1986, in addition to his studies at HAMU, Trojan began teaching at the conservatory, with which he is still associated today. From 1992 he was deputy director and from 2004-2018 director of the Prague Conservatory.