Juraj Hatrík

Juraj Hatrík (Okrucany, eastern Slovakia, 1 May 1941) is one of the Slovak composers of the second half of the twentieth century. His training and his teaching took place almost entirely in Bratislava, where he became a central figure in the musical life of his country.

After leaving school he studied privately with Alexander Moyzes, who remained his composition teacher at the Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts in Bratislava between 1958 and 1963. Alongside Ferenczy, he trained in theory and aesthetics. Between 1965 and 1968 he pursued postgraduate studies in composition and psychology at Comenius University in Bratislava. After teaching at the conservatoires in Košice and Bratislava, he served as adviser to the Slovak Music Fund from 1971 to 1990. In 1991 he was appointed associate professor at the Bratislava Academy and, in 1997, professor of composition at the same institution.

His music draws on extramusical references, above all from literature and poetry, as well as on a sustained study of aesthetics and musical philosophy. The contrast and struggle between opposites, such as good and evil or fantasy and reality, occupies a central place in his work, often expressed through varying degrees of simplicity and complexity. The vocal parts frequently underline the humanitarian dimension of his output.

His early works feature well-defined melodies, an expanded tonal language and traditional forms and procedures, as in the Symfonietta (1962) or Monumento malinconico (1964). From the mid-1960s onwards he adopted new compositional techniques, often blending vocal and instrumental timbres, as in Čakanie ("Expectation"), Introspekcia or Domov sú ruky, na ktorých smieš plakať ("The home is the hands in which you may weep"). In later works, synthesis and meditation replaced the idea of contrast.

His legacy includes one especially significant strand: music for accordion and works for children, which form an important block of his catalogue. His stage output, with titles such as Šťastný princ, based on Oscar Wilde, and Statočný cínový vojáčik, inspired by Andersen, completes the profile of a composer attentive to literature and to the expression of young audiences.