Career
Trained during the 1930s at Prague"s Charles University, Venhoda spent the war years as choral director and organist at the city"s Strahov (Dominican) monastery. A book he published in 1946, called Method of Studying Gregorian Chant, drew on this experience. These discs, mostly for the Supraphon label, included a great many world premiere recordings of composers such as Dufay, Ockeghem, Obrecht, and Jacobus Gallus, as well as of more frequently performed masters such as Palestrina, Lassus, Monteverdi, Dowland, Tallis, and Orlando Gibbons.
Sometimes they included Venhoda himself at the organization
He concentrated – a singular feat, given the Czechoslovakian Communist regime"s ideology – upon sacred works. Venhoda"s approach indicated his German artistic influences: choral singing which emphasized rich chest-voice production.
Invariably Teutonic renderings of Latin (quoniam would become kvoniam, and Agnus would become Agg-nus, for example). Tempi which inclined to the leisured and majestic.
Above all, profuse doubling of the vocal parts by instruments, such as became unfashionable with the advent of a cleaner, "whiter" sound from later, English or English-influenced, early-music groups like the Tallis Scholars.
Nevertheless Venhoda"s legacy remains a valuable one, as can be discerned from the power and intensity of those all too few Venhoda performances which have been transferred to compact disc. The Prague Madrigalists continue to this day, and are now led by Italian-born Damiano Binetti.