František (Fraňo) Dostalík

“Dostalík's ambition and confidence to succeed as a composer was restricted by insufficient technical erudition, low self-criticism and an impatience to acquire the necessary foundations of professional compositional training. According to historical criticism his music was characterized by form amorphousness and inventive fragmentation. As a composer, he was active in several kinds of music. In addition to vocal and instrumental chamber work, he also tried to compose an opera (using a score of Radúz and Mahuliena he applied to the competition of Cs. Artistic Club in New York for an original Slovak opera, but it was unsuccessful). Dostalík was a nationally oriented composer, trying to use Slovak song folklore, and in his vocal compositions he set to music the newer domestic poetry (Vajanský, Hviezdoslav, Rázus, Braxatoris, and mainly Krasko). Although he did not have the artistic or creative preconditions to join the new generation of Slovak musical modernism, he was connected with its program orientation by an interest in new music, more rhapsodically than systematically (e.g. the lecture of A. Hába in Bratislava motivated him to compose pieces using a micro-interval system – the choral pieces Cantate Dominum Canticum Novum, Slovensko moje / My Slovakia – but also to create quarter-tone harmonies). Dostalík's continuous relationship with new music is documented in retained criticism, glossaries, and reviews (cca 200 posts from1927-41). From them the composer's passion and appreciation for music of composers of the 20th century which was performed in Bratislava between two wars is evident (L. Janáček, B. Bartók, I. Stravinsky, S. Prokofiev). His manuscripts have been lost. From his production (30 compositions) retain only two (published) choirs. This makes it difficult to objectively and comprehensively evaluate Dostalík's compositional activity. Bibliographic processing of his critical activities was prepared by J. Potúček (1987).”

(CHALUPKA, Ľubomír: František (Fraňo) Dostalík. In: 100 slovenských skladateľov. Ed. Marián Jurík, Peter Zagar. Bratislava : Národné hudobné centrum, 1998, p. 82.)