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  You are invited to the literary event "International Tibetan Women's Day" (ITWD),  held on Thursday 8th March 2012, 5.05pm, at the PEN club (České centrum Mezinárodního PEN klubu, 5th floor, Národní knihovna, Klementinum 190, Praha 1).

  At the literary event, dedicated to the poetry of Tibetan poet Tsering Woeser (1966), Vít Kremlička, Zuzana Bruknerová and Karla Vrátná will narrate poetry by Tsering Woeser, in the translation of doc. PhDr. Olga Lomová, CSc., and Karla Vrátná. There will be few poems from the collection Tibetiana by poet Vít Kremlička. Siblings cello duo "Duo Brikcius " will perform compositions by Joseph Hector Fiocco and Irena Kosíková.

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  Swiss composer Oscar Arthur Honegger was born on 10 March 1892 in Le Havre, France into the Swiss Protestant family as the eldest of four children. He learned the violin while his mother played the piano.

  In 1909 - 1911 he studied composition with composer, conductor, violinist Friedrich Hegar (1841 - 1927), violin with Willem de Boer and music theory with composer and conductor Lothar Kempter (1844 - 1918) at the Zurich Conservatory. In 1911 he registered at the Paris Conservatory to study composition with organist and  composer Charles - Marie Widor (1844 - 1937) and orchestration with composer Vincent d'Indy (1851 - 1931). When his family returned to Switzerland in 1913, he settled in Montmartre, residing there until his death. In 1915, Arthur Honegger was called up to defend the Swiss borders, but continued his studies immediately afterwards. He graduated from the Paris Conservatory in 1918. From the relationship with the singer Claire Croiza (1882 - 1947) was born his son Jean-Claude (1926 - 2003).

  In 1926 Honegger married his conservatory colleague, pianist Andrée Vaurabourg (1894 - 1980), who usually accompanied him on concert tours and performing his work. Because he required complete tranquillity to compose, they lived apart in separate apartments, except of two attempts in 1935, when Vaurabourg was seriously injured in a car accident and the last year of Honegger's life, when he was too ill to live alone. They had daughter Pascale Honegger (1932).

  During his studies he met group of young composers, including Georges Auric (1899 - 1983), Louis Durey (1888 - 1979), Darius Milhaud (1892 - 1974), Francis Poulenc (1899 - 1963) and Germaine Tailleferre (1892 - 1983). The group was in 1920 named Les Six.


   His first great success came with his dramatic psalm Le Roi David (1921) and his orchestral picture of a steam locomotive Pacific 231 (1923). Followed his success, he created eight programmes for radio and composed 43 scores for film music, including epic film Napoléon (1927) by French film director Abel Gance (1889 - 1981).

  While he taught at the École Normale de Musique de Paris, Honegger joined in 1941 a resistance movement the National Front. As a journalist for Comoedia he went to the Mozart festival in Vienna in 1941 and passed a photocopy of his Second Symphony (1941) to Swiss conductor and maecenas Paul Sacher (1906 - 1999). Shortly after the end of the Second World War he wrote Paduana for cello solo (1945) and the Third Symphony (1946), which has parallels with Sinfonia da Requiem (1940) composed by Benjamin Britten (1913 - 1976).

  After suffering a heart attack in the United States in 1947, he was forced to limit his musical activities. His depression is partially projected in his two books Incantation aux fossiles (Lausanne, 1948) and Je suis compositeur (Paris, 1951;  London 1966). In 1953 he wrote his last composition, Une Cantate de Noël. After a long illness, he died on 27 November 1955. He is buried at the cemetery Saint-Vincent Cemetery in the Montmartre Quarter of Paris.


  His honours include election to the Institut de France (1938), foreign membership in the Académie des Beaux-Arts, the presidency of the Confédération Internationale des SACEM and an honorary doctorate from the University of Zürich (1948). Among his students were Karel Husa (1921), Maurice Jarre (1924 - 2009), Eugene Kurtz (1923 - 2006), Ginette Martenot (1902 - 1996), Michel Perrault (1926) and Lester Trimble (1923 - 1986).

  He was dedicated composer, the doors of his studio in Montmartre clearly stated "Do not disturb" in more than 50 languages. His manuscripts are part of the collection of the Foundation Paul Sacher. Great passions in his life were rugby, trains and his beloved Bugatti. He is featured on the Swiss 20 franc banknote.

  For more about Arthur Honegger visit http://www.Brikcius.com , http://www.Arthur-Honegger.com and http://En.Wikipedia.org/Wiki/Arthur_Honegger .

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Support new cello project "Festival Brikcius" - the chamber music concert series at the Stone Bell House
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