Vitezslav Novak

Vítězslav Novák (5 December 1870 – 18 July 1949) was one of the most respected Czech composers and pedagogues, almost singlehandedly founding a mid-century Czech school of composition. Stylistically, he was a leading figure in the neoromantic movement, and his music has been occasionally considered an early example of Czech modernism.

Novák (baptized Viktor Novák) was born in Kamenice nad Lipou, a small town in Southern Bohemia. After the death of his father the family moved to Jindřichův Hradec, a larger town where an elementary school still bears his name. In his late teens he moved to Prague to study at Prague Conservatory, changing his name to Vítězslav to identify more closely with his Czech identity, as many of his generation had already done. At the conservatory he studied piano and attended Antonín Dvořák's masterclasses in composition where his fellow students included Josef Suk, Oskar Nedbal, and Rudolf Karel. When Dvořák departed for his three-year sojourn in America (1892–1895), Novák continued his studies with the ultra-conservative Karel Stecker. Novák would show his true colors, however, in the years shortly after graduation: just before and after 1900, he wrote a series of compositions that put distance between himself and the teachings of both Stecker and Dvořák, edging his style toward the fledgling modernist movement.

Beginning in the late 1890s, Novák began to explore influences beyond the prevailing Wagner/Brahms aesthetic of his contemporaries in Prague. Among these were folk influences from Moravia and Slovakia, which at that time were considered culturally backward in the cosmopolitan Czech capital. He also developed an interest in what would come to be called musical Impressionism, although in later life he denied any exposure to the music of Debussy at this time, claiming instead to have arrived at similar techniques on his own. These included forays into bitonality and non-functional, parallel harmony. Finally, after the Prague premiere of Salome in 1906, Novák formed an attachment to the music of Richard Strauss that would remain for the rest of his career. In many respects, Novák's career would follow a similar path as that of Strauss, in his early quest for new modernist expression and subsequent withdrawal from leadership in the movement.

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