Čestmír Gregor

Čestmír Gregor (14 May 1926 – 2 March 2011) was a Czech composer, theorist and publicist. His career as a composer lasted from 1942 to 2005, and encompassed a variety of styles and formats.

Čestmír Gregor was born in Brno, the son of composer and theorist Josef Gregor (1892-1957) and Františka Gregorová Koldová. After graduating from grammar school, he studied composition at the Brno Conservatory with Jaroslav Kvapil and musicology at the Masaryk University in Brno. He then continued studies in studio tracks with Kvapil at the Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts, which he eventually completed in 1970.

Gregor settled in Nový Jičín and worked as a composer. He married and had one son, Vit Gregor. He served as secretary of the creative branch of the Union of Czechoslovak Composers. Beginning in October 1959, he moved to Ostrava to work as head of the music broadcast station for Ostrava Czech Radio. In 1968 the arrival of Warsaw Pact troops disrupted his work at the radio station, and in 1972 Gregor was banned from publishing. In 1976 he moved to Prague, where he continued working as a composer.

As a composer, Gregor was initially heavily influenced by 20th century classical music, especially that of Igor Stravinsky, and by jazz. During the 1950s, with their requirements of Socialist realism, he produced songs for the Socialist Youth Movement, and expressed politically correct themes in his symphonic works. In later years, he endorsed the European modernist tradition.

He died in Prague in 2011.

Gregor produced stage, orchestral and chamber music and also songs and incidental music.

...
Wikipedia