Emil Viklický, a prominent Czech jazz pianist and composer, received the title of doctor honoris causa at the Archbishop's Palace in Olomouc. He received the highest honour that Palacký University can bestow in the year of the 450th anniversary of the founding of the University of Olomouc for his extraordinary merits and contribution in the field of jazz music.
Emil Viklický is an unmissable personality of the Czech and international music scene of the 20th and 21st centuries. He received an honorary doctorate on the proposal of the Scientific Council of the Faculty of Education of the UP, which was confirmed by the Scientific Council of the UP.
"Emil Viklický is one of those graduates whose names we like to mention with due pride and respect, while basking in the rays of glory and success that they themselves achieved in their careers through their efforts, skills and diligence. This is especially true in the case of Mr. Viklický, as he studied natural sciences at Palacký University, not music, to which he dedicated his life and thanks to which he gained a worldwide reputation," said Martin Procházka, the rector of UP.
Emil Viklický was already immersed in music during his studies of numerical mathematics at the Faculty of Science of the University of Prague. Before he started his professional career as a jazz musician, he founded his own quartet Musica Magica, then the Jazz sextet E. V. He also earned money in the Bigband of Věroslav Mlčák, where he gained swing and big band experience by playing at dances and balls. During his basic military service, he worked in the army art ensemble in Pavel Bayerle's orchestra, and in the early years of his professional career in various groups, for example in Karel Velebný's SHQ. Since jazz, like other free artistic expressions, was rather suppressed in the Czechoslovakia of the time, these experiences were crucial for the development of Czech jazz.
In the laudation delivered by Vojtech Regec, Dean of the Faculty of Education at UP, it was mentioned that the jazz rock band Energit, later Energit of Luboš Andršt, also played a formative role in Emil Viklický's career. It was in this group that Emil Viklický fully emerged as a distinctive soloist and composer.
When in 1976 he succeeded in an international jazz piano competition in Lyon and then in a composition competition in Monaco, he was offered a scholarship to Boston's prestigious Berklee College of Music. Before he left for the USA, however, he released his album V Holomóci městě. It won the 1979 Supraphon Prize and can be described as urgent, personal and exciting.
"You can find in it a distinctive and characteristic feature of Viklický's music: an original expression arising from the creative processing of folk-art impulses that are set in a new context. The Moravian song with its typical modulation - combined with jazz piano improvisation - is the basis of Viklický's new improvisational expression and at the same time a perfectly built and tight style, a perfect musical architecture based on pure jazz and the roots of Moravian folk music," said Dean Vojtech Regec.
Viklický's intensive artistic activity, as well as many years of cooperation with outstanding jazz musicians in the Czech Republic and abroad, have borne numerous fruits not only in the form of albums, but also in respect for the personality of Emil Viklický. Although he received his musical education while studying jazz at Berklee College in the United States, he never forgot his university studies at the Faculty of Science of UP and always proudly claimed his alma mater. He made the Czech Republic and Palacký University famous on all continents during his half-century long career.
"It is special and very emotional for me to be on the campus of this university after so many years and at such a solemn moment for me. I remember not only the time of my studies, but also some of the teachers," said Emil Viklický in his doctoral speech. During his speech, he spoke especially about the Czech mathematician, composer and choirmaster Miroslav Jiroušek, who supervised his thesis in algebra. He recalled how he came to the topic of his thesis, and how consultations on the topic, for which there was no mathematical literature at the time, were conducted.
"Determinants, and hence symmetric polynomials, were considered a dead or marginal direction of algebra in 1970. Professor Jiroušek, however, was of a different opinion. I remember extremely interesting meetings at his house. Apart from mathematics, we talked about music, about Richard Wagner, about the Tristan chord and also about Schillinger's musical method. I defended my thesis, even with a proposal for a doctorate," added the winner of Palacký University's highest award. In telling his life story, he stopped briefly in 2019.
"Almost fifty years later, I received an invitation from the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics in Prague to attend a lecture by Christian Krattenthaler entitled 'Music and Mathematics Are Related. Is it really so?'. When Christian found out the topic of my thesis and the time of its creation, he asked what I had actually based it on in 1971. Then he sent me the very first thesis on the subject, which was published in 1979... The wonderful thing about this story is that Professor Jiroušek had a vision that came true. He believed that symmetric polynomials were not a dead branch of algebra. I regret that I was unable to fulfil his hope that I would continue in this field. In the context of the time, it really couldn't. I am sorry that he is no longer with us and that he cannot take part in this great honour for me," concluded the recent recipient of an honorary doctorate from Palacký University and its commemorative medal.
Since 1990, Palacký University in Olomouc has awarded honorary doctorates to five dozen personalities who have contributed significantly to the development of science, culture or otherwise contributed to the benefit of humanity. Emil Viklický thus ranks alongside such personalities as former Czech and Czechoslovak President Václav Havel, chemist Antonín Holý and plastic surgeon Bohdan Pomahač. An overview of all honorary doctors can be found on the university's website.
