Speaks for itself. Or does it? 

Collaboration with Jonáš Svoboda 

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A short and simple composition I made two years ago. A short recording of voices at the market in The Hague processed through a chain of effects of Trevor Wishart's CDP.

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Intimate sounds for an intimate ensemble in an intimate yet open space. Year before I've composed and played a “concert for birds”, this time it's a concert for crickets, or rather a concert with crickets. The soft sounds composed for an oud, flute, and bongos, are timed to interact with the crickets in different stages of their daily sonic activity. A large part of uncertainty and indeterminacy is to be expected. The weather conditions among many other things can drastically change the outcome. Thus, the performers are not following a strict score, nor is it purely improvised. There is a certain part precomposed and different rules and conditions which allow or force the performers to take a decision and carry out a certain action. In this sense, the composition is highly site & time-specific, however simultaneously, it could be done wherever and whenever where there are crickets active. And then — crickets…

In the press

For two days and one night I've been commissioned by Obscura Radio to collect field recordings from the flooded quarry in Kurovice, Czechia, to then make a composition on the spot and discuss the process.

Here's the result

The municipality building in Den Haag (...) The absolute whiteness and sterility of the interior, the vast openness, the vertical spaciousness, the large number of entrances and exits, the layers of railings, stairs, and floors… And its sonic nature is equally as blank. Often the only sounds present are human voices, spoken words. (...)

People, voices, and emptied-out concepts and words, politicized and problematic terms and phrases, the most common and overused words of contemporary discourses, which have been repeated over and over until the inevitable thorough depletion of meaning. And I use the audience as people who carry these voices, which are not theirs. (...)

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A collection of works by students, alumni and teachers from Sonology in dedication to our beloved teacher and colleague Peter Pabon. A small gift in return for his perpetual altruism and charming nature.
All composers were asked to make a piece that included a notion of human voice. 

My piece is track nr. 1 composed solely from Peter's speeches.

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The conductor is an annoying prick, asking the impossible from the poor performer, while the composer is sitting in a chair having fun and laughing at them both.

It's a race. Three laps of fixed media quadrophonic track. Four directional microphones in four corners of the performers cage corresponding to the four speakers of the quadrophonic setup. Conductor is giving instructions on what sound should be played at what mic at what time based on a video score. Hundred different objects on the table. The performer has to react immediately. The poor performer didn't know beforehand what instruments and what score he will be playing. He was kept in the dark.

At the end they both win and deserve a medal, because we are all losers.

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Footage from a live performance of František Hruška's composition.

Performed by the great Kerim Kali & Tristan Better.

The performance took place at The New Music Lab in Den Haag, The Netherlands on 3rd February 2023.

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Score

Soundwalk in collaboration with Yannis Mihos

The key difference between unity and uniformity is their acceptance of differences; when there is unity, people tend to tolerate and accept differences, but uniformity implies that everyone is alike, so there is no room for differences. In the same way everyone thinks they know what pizza is, while in fact, that’s not as simple.  (...) This continuous site-specific audio walk piece guides the listeners through the streets of the Hague in the Netherlands, moving them from one pizza place to another, wearing headphones connected to their mobile phones. (...)​

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Soundtrack to the film Běla Beránková

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Using the famous windows pipe screensaver as a score, this string quartet composition stares at the obsolete. Screensavers once used to serve a very important function in literally saving the old plasma screens from phosphor burning in the static displayed image. Besides their aesthetic value... (...)

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Concert for birds – A tribute to Kozmic meadows and all living beings

As a part of Radio Art Zone's project in cooperation with Magdalena Maderlova & Michal Kindernay.

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"Kozmic meadows are a system of floodplain meadows situated in the Opava region, northeast of the Czech Republic. This area was formerly intended for gravel mining and experienced difficult times of water drainage, aggressive terrain destructions, and extraction of resources. These activities disrupted the natural balance and caused the loss of biodiversity. Kozmic meadows are now, thanks to the long-term commitment and dedicated work and care of the local community and the company Semix, full of life and accommodating hundreds of species of birds and plants, amphibians, Exmoor ponies, and an ornithological observation station.
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As a tribute to Kozmic meadows and all living beings, we commissioned Martin Režný and František Hruška, two local experimental musicians, to perform a Concert for Birds. The improvised performance took place near the bird reserve in the dusk of August 16th, 2022."  from: radioart.zone/thursday-22-september

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A live daxophone musical performance / public intervention. Performed by Ghaith Qoutainy & František Hruška in June in Den Haag, The Netherlands.

With the kind help from Hilde Wollenstein​

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A recording of a process of a generative analog logic synthesis system. 

A result of a collaboration with Max Frimout & Tristan Better in the Analogue studio of the Insitute of Sonolgy in Den Haag. ​

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What do all the digits of pi, a slice of wood, human DNA and a blueprint of the Eiffel Tower have in common? 

That somewhere down the line some different composers made it all sound like C major. (...)

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Composition for piano and pipe organ

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The idea was to compose a piece for the pipe organ where the building pieces of the composition are the two existing whole-tone scales. There are two main reasons for this choice. (...)​

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I ask for forgiveness.

That is the name of the composition in translation from Hungarian. Why Hungarian? (...)

Fixed media

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fixed media spatial composition for 18 speakers as part of the Sounding the Spui project at the Rewire music festival

in The Hague, April 2022

The composition was created in collaboration with Tristan Beutter

For obvious reasons, there is no recording, as 18 channels simply cannot be mixed into stereo.

Press & program notes

Visual score for voices, accordion, bendir, bongos and synthesizers

I spent hours and hours looking at these bookcases by Jana Beranová (1932), originally a Czech poet and translator who has lived in Rotterdam for a long time. And that is just one of many, her entire two-story apartment is under siege by books that get tangled under your feet and between the bowls in the kitchen. In addition to all that beauty, there is also a bit of distress, a constant reminder that it is not possible to read as much as one would like. It reminds one of the limitedness of time. It must have helped Jana live to her healthy 90 years.

So if you can't read the books, at least try to play them.

Dedicated to Jana

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Fixed media audiovisual

The lockdown had a different effect on each of us, and it had a such effect on me.

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Fixed media

What does my computer hear?

Computers not only calculate and provide results, but they also have their own sensory organs that allow them to receive information from outside and inside. And these "hearing organs" often also distort sound in many ways, contributing their own character and resulting in an interpretation of sound from the subjective listening angle of that particular computer.

In this composition, I look into what my computer "hears" at times when I don't expect it to be "listening."

By recording all the sounds the computer perceived, both internal and external, over a longer period of time and then composing them into two minutes, I created something like a time-lapse - A Day in the Life of My Computer.

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Composition created in an analog studio at the Institute of Sonology at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague.
Inspired by the composition principle of Terminus I by Gottfried Michael Koenig.
The source material is sequences of field recordings, all sound transformations are purely analog.

Originally a four-track composition mixed into stereo.

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When I was studying in Holland, far from home, and feeling sad about Czech sounds, I created this system that allows a performer to synthetically create sounds similar to Czech trains, because trains in the Netherlands are sterilely quiet.

CTG is a digital musical instrument for live performance that I programmed in SuperCollider. This is a short recording of a composition/performance on this instrument. All sounds are purely digitally synthesized and digitally processed.

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Acousmatic fixed media composition, created in the analog studio BEA5 at the Institute of Sonology in The Hague. The source of the composition is purely analog sounds (pulses, sine waves, noise) and all sound processes are also done only with the help of analog technology. The composition was originally created for five channels, then mixed into stereo.

June 2019

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The first single by the now legendary versatile artist František Hruška with his pioneering use of the C major chord

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Experimental film with experimental music

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