‘MUSIC FOR PRAGUE’ : KAREL HUSA: PUTTING HIS CONVICTIONS TO MUSIC

Though his English is, for the most part, immaculate, Karel Husa’s accent still retains a slight trace of French and a stubborn streak of Czech. And so does his music.

“I consider myself an international composer,” he insisted. “I have been touched by several cultures. And that must show in my music.”

Yet it is clear where his sympathies remain.

Inevitably, during a wide-ranging telephone conversation from Maine, his thoughts would return to his homeland--usually in reference to his “Music for Prague 1968,” which he will lead in a concert tonight by the Orange County Pacific Symphony at Santa Ana High School Auditorium.

“You know,” Husa said, “I’ve been back there (Czechoslovakia) once since 1968--and only briefly. My music isn’t played there at all. But I understand. A regime like this . . . I don’t see things changing.”

The nation’s oppressive political situation inspired “Music for Prague.” Though the piece was written in response to the Soviet ouster of liberal Czech leader Alexander Dubcek, the 64-year-old musician noted: “I don’t think of it as a political message for one country. It is universal.

“Sometimes I conduct the work with an orchestra or band of young people, and it’s amazing how they don’t know anything about what happened (in ‘68). But if I tell them about the value and necessity of freedom, how it is important to have a (musical) piece that manifests freedom--well, so many of them respond with incredible strength.”

Husa pointed out that his original reasons for leaving his birthplace were non-political. After attending the Academy of Musical Arts in Prague, he was invited to study composition with Arthur Honegger in Paris and conducting with Andre Cluytens.

That was 1946. Three years later, his passport expired, but he realized that more study was needed. “In 1949,” he said, “I lost my Czech citizenship.

Comfortably ensconced in Paris, where he soon married, he entertained no thoughts of leaving. “I learned so much in Paris,” he recalled. “There is this incredible sense of proportion that the French culture has. No one wrote music that was too long.”

But the French connection was not to last. Soon, the composer would cross another border: In 1954 he was offered a teaching post at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., where he has remained ever since.

In retrospect, his move to America seemed almost a foregone conclusion even before Husa left Czechoslovakia. “I remember a festival in Prague in 1946,” he noted. “Leonard Bernstein was there, and he led a concert of American music. The vitality of it was amazing. I liked the strength, the exuberance of it.

“Some members of my family had already settled in the United States. My mother used to tell me, ‘When we win the National Lottery, you will go to Paris and then to America to see your aunt.’

“It’s curious how it worked out.”

In the United States, Husa willingly absorbed all styles of musical writing. Even today he refuses to play favorites: “Every composer has something to say,” he noted.

Though much of his music written here is absolute--i.e., non-programmatic--including his Pulitzer Prize-winning String Quartet No. 3 from 1969 and a Concerto for Orchestra, currently being completed for the New York Philharmonic, Husa has occasionally used music to make a philosophical or political statement.

Witness the anti-pollution “Apotheosis of This Earth” (1971), the anti-war ballet “The Trojan Women” (1981) and, of course, “Music for Prague.”

“When you feel something important,” he said with conviction, “why hide it?”

Husa recalled how the much-performed work has brought unexpected responses from listeners: “There is a prominent five-note motive. I don’t know how many people have told me it was really an SOS signal.”

In reality, the score was begun before the fateful events of 1968. “Then,” he noted, “things started happening. I remembered a simple work song I heard quite often during the (Nazi) occupation in 1939. It has been sung by our people for over 500 years, ever since (religious reformer) Jan Hus was burned at the stake. It has kept the nation alive during all the occupations we’ve suffered.

“The piece (“Music for Prague”) uses it throughout. It’s a warrior’s song--really a long, fairly tricky melody, too. I’ve always wondered how they could sing it on their way to battle.”

Husa then quoted from the song: “Ye warriors of God, if you believe in the future, things will be better in the future.”