An avant-garde composer who messed with the giants

An avant-garde composer who messed with the giants

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norman lebrecht

August 10, 2017

The Slovak composer Marian Varga, who made post-modern ‘interpretations’ of works by Haydn, Bartok and Stravinsky in Communist Czechoslovakia, has died at 70.

In a pointed satire at phoney classical reverences, he named his 1969 art-rock band Collegium Musicum. The authorities forced him to disband it.

Later on, he devised a kind of classi-rock.

Comments

  • John Borstlap says:

    How could we live without such marvellous people?

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