The cycle EIGHT INVENTIONS, one of Kabelc's most famous works, was
written in 1962 for the French ensemble Les Percussions de Strasbourg.
The inventions were sometimes combined with a ballet performance,
which was the case for the Strasbourg premiere. However, Kabelc
clearly favoured a purely instrumental, concert performance of the
work, which was subsequently undertaken by numerous ensembles,
presently including the Prague Percussion Ensemble and another Czech
ensemble, Dama-Dama.
The piece was written for six players and a large group of percussion
instruments - the instruments required vary from one movement to the
next. Here, Kabelc uses new proportional notation in a form which is
essentially his own invention. The eight parts treat different
intellectual, formal, sound and rhythmic-metric issues; the cycle as a
whole reflects musical inspiration from outside Europe.
For the sake of clarity, the inventions are always performed from the
score. Its new critical edition, with detailed commentary from the
editor, corresponds to the autograph with the exception of isolated
minor deviations which the composer wrote into the score for the
Panton edition (1966, 2nd edition, 1971) after the work's premiere.