Jaroslav Jezek

Bugatti

Jaroslav Jezek (born 1906 in Prague, died 1942 in New York), the composer of the foxtrot Bugatti step, is regarded in his native country as a pioneer of popular jazz music and the author of the music for most of the plays by Jiri Voskovec and Jan Werich in the most famous era of the avant-garde Prague stage Osvobozene divadlo (Liberated Theater, 1925-1938). Like Paul Hindemith, Erwin Schuhoff and others, Jezek's Piano Concerto of 1927 and the Little Suite of 1928 put him in the same league as the great composers of modern music who made a name for themselves in the 1920s and 30s with their use of jazz elements in artificial composition. The Bugatti step, which Jezek composed in 1931 as a prelude to the play Don Juan & Comp., transcends the boundaries of so-called U- and E-music in terms of its dance-like character and masterful virtuosity. This foxtrot owes its title to the composer's enthusiasm for the emerging motor sport, in particular his admiration for the French Bugatti racing driver Louis Chiron, the winner of the Masaryk Ring in Brno at the time. At the same time, one has the impression of hearing the four-stroke engine of such a car in the pulsating rhythm of the composition based on fourths.