Work and the Albrecht House
He published the first volumes of Fontes Musicae in Slovacia, the textbook Musical Aesthetics for Students of Pedagogical Faculty of Comenius University in the 1970th, Forms and Transformations of Baroque Music, and Essays on Art in the 1980th. He continued to lead the Musica Aeterna Ensemble, edited new editions of sources of early music from Slovakia ( Castor and Pollux ), published reviews, studies, essays, and other texts in the specialized media, and “organized” informal art meetings in his house.
After retiring in 1982, he remained active as an essayist, editor, musicologist, researcher in the field of music sources and retained the class of viola and chamber music at the Academy of Performing Arts (until 1989). His house on Kapitulská became an even stronger magnet for students, teachers, artists, scientists, active musicians, and enthusiastic amateurs – simply for everyone who showed a real interest in art, social sciences, or mathematics. In it, Ján Albrecht and his wife Viera created an environment open to new ideas, instructed disputes, controversial debates, and simple human-friendly and sometimes bon vivant meetings.
He completed the manuscript of the book Memories of a Musician from Pressburg in the 1990s, gave guest lectures at the University of Vienna, finished the book The Spiritual World of Beauty, and continued to write shorter texts. In the years 1992-1993, he underwent demanding eye and heart surgery, on 20th November 1996, he died suddenly in the garden of his house in Kapitulská. Street
Studies
Ján Albrecht – pedagogue, musicologist, violist, and founder of the ensemble Musica aeterna – acquired his first lessons in music education (violin) as a child from Professor George Actardjief. He broadened his performing horizons at an early age by playing in the home string quartet (viola) and in the Church Music Society (violin).
In 1937 he began studying viola with Professor Gabriel Paulíny at the Bratislava Conservatory. After World War II, he joined the Slovak National Theatre Orchestra as a violinist and violist. He graduated from the conservatory in 1950, and the Academy of Performing Arts in 1954 in the viola class of Professor Rudolf Hofmann.
Professional life
Already during his studies, Ján Albrecht (nicknamed Hansi by friends and family) began to profile himself not only as a performer, but also as a personality interested in reflecting artistic and scientific problems, art theory, and natural sciences, and as a person with a gift to look at problems from a special point of view. This is documented by manuscript texts Expressionism and its Radical Evaluation, Generalization of Euler’s Theorem of Binomial Coefficients, or Discussion Books on Several Issues of Aesthetics and others. In 1957 he published the textbook Theoretical Foundations of Violin Playing for Comenius University. The mid-1950s can be seen as the beginning of Albrecht’s focused lifelong interest in fine arts, aesthetics, and music transformed into manuscript texts, studies, essays, reviews, scripts, books, and editorial activities. Ján Albrecht’s “literary” legacy counts on hundreds of texts, written mostly in German, in Slovak but also in English.
Teacher
After leaving the Slovak National Theatre Orchestra, Ján Albrecht began working as a teacher – in 1955 -1960 he taught at the Department of Music Education, the University of Pedagogy in Bratislava, in 1960-1967 at the Department of Musicology, Faculty of Philosophy, Comenius University, in 1967-1982 at the Department of Music Education, Faculty of Education, Comenius University in Trnava and at the same time led a chamber music class at the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava.
Musica aeterna
In parallel with his “official” pedagogical work, he first founded a chamber music association Collegium musicum, in 1968 Circle of Friends of Early Music, from the music-making of which it was created gradually Musica aeterna – the first ensemble dedicated to the programmatic revival of the sources of early music, preferably from the territory of today’s Slovakia and Europe.
Official “recognition “
The former regime “honored” Ján Albrecht for his lifelong pedagogical work, which was never limited to the time set by the school timetable, by the lifelong position of assistant professor. It must be said openly that this regime was often embodied by his long-term colleagues – teachers.
Late satisfaction for his lifelong pedagogical and musicological efforts (which Ján Albrecht never invoked) was his promotion to the senior lecturer in 1991, the position of chairman of the Slovak Section of the European Association of String Educators ESTA (1991), the Jozef Kresánek Award of the Slovak Music Fund (1991) and the professorship of 1995. He received the Award of the Capital of the Slovak Republic, Bratislava, on December 19th, 1996 – a month after his death, in memoriam …..
The Albrecht family has served art, science, education, and Bratislava documented for over a hundred years (the grandfather of Ján Albrecht – Johann was a teacher at the Royal Catholic Hungarian Grammar School on Klariska Street, later the director of the German Real School on Zochova Street). With the death of Jan Albrecht, the last male descendant of the Bratislava Albrecht family passed away.
