Anton Viskup

"Viskup's initial works as a composer characteristically attempt to make terms with the existing multi-layered music of the present time. On the one hand, he is attracted by the new sound quality in work of recent decades; but the attempt to set boundaries to chaos leads him on the other hand to apply concealed rational methods of ordering the music material. His respect for the musical values lodged in European tradition requires him to sustain his evolutionary conception of musical form (working with motifs and themes) and a rich expressive palette of music material. Individual compositions subsequently present new solutions of the problem of the relation of old and new, rational and intuitive, hidden and apparent meaning of music composition in the last third of the 20th century. At the same time, via his concert activity he was constantly in contact with a music tradition that imperatively forbade him to accept the current fashionable solutions, whether these be rational methods of organising the tonal material or minimalist reductionism. For Viskup, the core of the composer’s work was giving the composition testimonial value, based on an evolutionary-dramatic conception of the music process, an ideal of integrated compositional texture, and a relation to inherited type and genre models of European music. Dominating Viskup’s creative production are works of absolute music devoted to the chamber and orchestral medium. If today his work is practically unknown to the Slovak cultural community, one of the reasons for this is the artist’s highly self-critical attitude, but there are other socially and culturally destructive agencies which it may be ascribed to also."

(GODÁR, Vladimír: Anton Viskup. In: A Hundred Slovak Composers. Eds. Marián Jurík, Peter Zagar. Bratislava : National Music Centre Slovakia, 1998, p. 286.)