Zdeněk Šesták

* 1925

  • “My bus to Litoměřice was leaving from the Florenc station at 6 o’clock in the morning. I could not even get to the bus station, but eventually I managed to get there. The bus departed, but we were going very slowly and stopping often. People had to get to work to Vodochody, but the army was going against us in the opposite direction. They asked us where we were going. To work... People in the bus had transistor radios, and they were listening to what was going on, because the radio was still broadcasting at that time. The announcer Mrs. Šťovíčková informed the listeners that when they played the Czechoslovak anthem, it would be a signal that the radio station was being occupied and they would have to stop the broadcast. We kept going in the bus, and when we were approaching Terezín, the Czechoslovak anthem was played. People in the bus stood up and they sang along. Near Terezín, do you understand the significance? It was a shock for me. Not even Salvador Dalí could have imagined something like that. The antinomy of a new occupation and the presence of the history of Terezín.”

  • “There was a meeting of students in the Technika building on Charles Square. We were no longer able to pass through Neruda Street, but we walked through Pohořelec to the Prague Castle. We went there to tell president Beneš not to accept the resignation of the government in 1948. My participation was probably the reason why I was later expelled from school.”

  • “I remember the autumn of 1945. The lights would go off very frequently, there was shortage of coal in Prague, and so on. Patočka was lecturing in the great auditorium in the main building in what is now Palach Square. The light went off in the middle of his lecture. He spoke from memory, and he was improvising, we could see that he was searching for words. The auditorium was packed, due to the war there were generations of people with twenty years of difference between them. The lights went off and he kept speaking in darkness. One colleague eventually found a candle somewhere and the place din on the lectern. You thus saw him as a magician, looking for words and using hand gestures to get the meaning across. These are some unforgettable memories that one carries within. Patočka was a precious man, and he died just like Sokrates. He was given a poison because he was corrupting the youth.”

  • Celé nahrávky
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    Praha, 04.05.2015

    (audio)
    délka: 03:27:37
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

You need to run under the barrier...

Z. Šesták in 1950
Z. Šesták in 1950
zdroj: Soukromý archiv pamětníka

  Zdeněk Šesták was born on December 10, 1925 in Cítoliby near Louny. His father worked as an official for the Czechoslovak State Railways, and his mother was a teacher. Apart from their professions, both his parents were amateur musicians. Zdeněk‘s father played violoncello, and his mother sang in a church choir. Zdeněk has been playing the piano since his early childhood, and during his study at the grammar school in Slaný he also played the organ in the local church. In 1945 he was admitted to the Prague Conservatory to the class of E. Hlobil. At the same time he studied musicology at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague, where he also attended lectures of Jan Patočka. He completed his studies at the Prague Conservatory in 1950, but he was not allowed to finish his university studies because he was expelled from the university in 1949 for political reasons. After his army service he became employed in the Central Folk Culture House, where he worked in 1952-1954. Subsequently he went to the Army Art Ensemble, where he worked as a lecturer for directors of the individual ensembles until 1957. He works free lance as a music composer, with the exception of the period in 1968-1969 when he became the head dramaturgist of the symphonic, chamber and vocal music in the Czechoslovak Radio, and in 1991-1992, when he lectured regional music studies at the musicology department of the Faculty of Arts of Charles University. He focuses on musicology research, and throughout his entire life he has been interested in the Cítoliby school of composition from the 18th century which he discovered. In 2008 he was awarded the Czech Ministry of Culture Prize for his extraordinary art and his musicology activity in the area of Czech music, culture and arts.