Václav Nelhýbel

From Wind Repertory Project

Václav Nelhýbel

Biography

Václav Nelhýbel (VAHTS-love NEL-hee-bel) (born 24 September 1919 in Polanka, Czechoslovakia) was a Czech composer and conductor. He studied composition and conducting at the Prague Conservatory of Music and musicology at the universities of Prague and Fribourg, Switzerland. As a student, he was already affiliated with Radio Prague as composer and conductor. At age 18, he was conducting the Czech Philharmonic as an assistant to Rafael Kubelik. By 1948, he had become active in Swiss National Radio as composer/conductor and from 1950-1957, he served as co-founder and Music Director of Radio Free Europe in Munich. During this time he functioned as guest conductor with numerous European Orchestras, including the Vienna Philharmonic, Munich Philharmonic, Bavarian Symphony, and Orchestra de la Swisse Romande. Beginning in 1957 he lived in the United States, becoming a U.S. citizen in 1962, and was active as a composer, conductor and lecturer up to his death in 1996.

Among his many awards are the First National Prize for the best radiophonic composition (Prague, 1947); First Prize for the motion picture score to La Beaute des Formes (Paris, 1955); First Prize for the ballet In the Shadow of the Lime Tree at the First International Music and Dance Festival (Copenhagen, 1947); First Prize of the Ravich Music Foundation for the opera, A Legend (New York, 1954); The "Man of the Year in Music" St. Cecelia Award (University of Notre Dame, 1968) and the United States Treasury Department Award for "Patriotic Service" (1968).

A common trait in the Nelhýbel "sound" would seem to be a panchromatic melodic system, not serial in the dodecaphonic sense, but one which has a strong relation to one gravitational center. This relation to the 'gravitional center ' generates and releases tensions which Nelhýbel calls the human element in music and is the sine qua non of communication between composer and listener. He is not a revolutionary innovator. He is rather, a synthesist, bringing all of past techniques into a harmonious entity. Nelhýbel often employed thematic material from his Czech heritage.