Vladímir Hirsch


Vladimír Hirsch is a Czech composer and instrumentalist. The author of the concept of the so-called "integrated" musical form — combining contemporary classical music with dark-ambient and industrial music, his compositional style is characterized by polymodal architecture and alchemical work with sound, using mainly digital techniques to expand the action potential of the means of expression. Vladimír Hirsch is or was the leader of the avant-garde projects Aghiatrias, Skrol, Zygote, Subpop Squeeze, and more. From 1986 to 1996, he was a member of the experimental post-punk band Der Marabu. Vladimír Hirsch graduated from the Faculty of Medicine at Charles University in Prague and has been practicing medicine with shorter or longer breaks.

Biography and style

Vladimír Hirsch was born in Benešov, lived in Ledeč nad Sázavou until he was 18 and then moved to Prague, where he now lives and works. Composing since 1973, he started with small romantic and classical compositions for piano and organ, but very soon abandoned the experiments and devoted himself only to rock and jazz. A long-time member of the Prague-based post-punk group Der Marabu, after its disintegration, he founded the ensemble Skrol and several other parallel projects like Aghiatrias, Zygote, Subpop Squeeze, Luminar Ax, etc.
Without ever abandoning his projects and ensembles, in 1987 the composer began working in parallel on solo production, and around 2002 it became his main program. Emphasizing the use of modern means of expression and the search for specific compositional techniques, he bring together serial, atonal, microtonal, polymodal, and spectral music. Partly inspired by the traditions of 20th-century Slavic classical music, Vladimír Hirsch keeps building hybrid working models in tonal principles, composition, and instrumentation. Using digital techniques for classical orchestras together with a wide range of sound sources, he searches to achieve the alchemical transformation of sounds into a homogeneous, indivisible substance. This principle, called "integrated music" by itself, also represents the metaphysical idea of the creative concept, which consists in the collision and reconciliation of two seemingly opposite spiritual worlds within an individual.
Vladimír Hirsch regularly gives concerts both at home and abroad, including tours in the USA, Germany, Great Britain and Italy. In 2010, an eight-disc set of key recordings was released by the Italian publishing house Ars Benevola Mater entitled "The Assent to Paradoxon". He has also collaborated with foreign artists on different projects like Dawn Carlyle aka Dove Hermosa, Nadya Feir, Cecilia Bjärgö, Igor Vaganov, Alessandro Aru, and Kenji Siratori.

Creations

Vladimír Hirsch's music lingers between experimental projects and compositions of a very strict compositional order, but is almost always of a conceptual nature:
"It is the work of a non-conformist individualist, forging a completely original aesthetic form, where the unifying element is a rather dark, emotionally tense, often apocalyptic atmosphere of compositions, characterized by their metaphysical, existential anxiety, and spirituality."
His most notable works include "Symphony No. 4" with the subtitle "Snímání z kříže" and its revised, live version "Graue Passion" ; the conceptual dark ambient albums "Underlying Scapes", "Exorcisms", "Invocations" and "Scripta Soli"; the extensive ingressive composition "Contemplatio per nexus"; the post-industrial mass "Missa Armata"; the composition for piano, percussion and combined electroacoustic techniques "Endoanathymia"; the digital symphony "Axonal Transit"; the microtonal dark ambient album" Epidemic Mind"; the selection of compositions for organ and piano "Selected Organ and Piano Works", and Concerto for Organ No. 2 "Horae".
While the composer's work seems to be permeated by a very elaborate and authentic expression of the internal conflict of values within the individual and one's confrontation with the anthropocentric model of contemporary society, the composer disagrees it was the initial idea in throughout the compositions. For the insiders of the industrial and post-industrial scene, Vladimír Hirsch produces very intense, full of suggestive and stormy atmosphere music.
Vladímir Hirsch was included in Olivier Bernard's Anthology of Ambient Music, The Complete Guide of Ambient Music and in the encyclopedic publication of composers of contemporary world music.

Selected compositions

Hirsch's work is represented by the activities of his ensembles and also by an extensive collection of solo works. He is the composer of a number of conceptual albums, several symphonies, suites, concert and experimental compositions, stage music, and many smaller compositions.
Selected compositions
Vladimír Hirsch also deals with computer graphics: among other things, he is the author of the design of all his solo albums and the vast majority of albums of his projects. In this regard, he often collaborates with the Czech art photographer Jan Vávra, a representative of the so-called neopictorialism, whose works became a model for the unified design of Hirsch's set of albums "The Assent to Paradoxon". He is also the author of a number of articles and essays. not only on music and art. He has long been committed to the use of the geographical names Czechia.