Jaroslav Tomášek

Czech composer (10.04.1896 - Prague, 26.11.1970). First he attended the piano school of the Philharmonic Society in Brno (1906-1914), then he fought in the WWI, was injured and spent some time in hospital in Vienna. After his release, he was not able to play the piano with both hands, and he did not perform in public anymore. After returning from the war, he studied musicology at the Charles University in Prague. More or less concurrently he studied composition privately with Vitezslav Novák and Jaroslav Křička. During his life he was employed largely as a librarian, and between 1950 - 1955 he was a director of the Czechoslovak Copyrights Society. In the 1920s and 1930s he became known as a composer of song cycles and piano pieces, as music editor he wrote a lot of reviews and articles in music magazines. Among his works - apart from his songs and piano pieces - there are two string quartets from 1921 and 1942 and a rondo for piano from 1924.