Josef Bohuslav Foerster

He was born in Prague in the family of a music theoretician and director of the Organ School. Very soon he started playing the piano, the organ and the violoncello.

Among his tutors at the Organ School belonged, beside others, F. Z. Skuherský. Having finished his studies, he started giving private music lessons, but he also worked as a music critic (the National Newspaper, Die Zeit in Vienna, etc.).

In 1903 he became a professor of composition at the New Vienna Conservatory, and in 1919 he acquired the same post at the Prague Conservatory. He educated a number of composers of the inter-war generation (P. Bořkovec, E. F. Burian, J. Řídký, K. B. Jirák, V. Dobiáš, and the like). In the years 1931–1939 he assumed the position of president of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences and Art.

As an artist, Foerster was a very versatile personality: apart from his musical career he managed to assert himself as a skilled painter, playwright, poet, and writer as well. In his compositional output he contributed to all musical forms, leaving behind quite an extensive body of works.

He is usually ranked high among the composers of the so called Czech modernism, alongside J. Suk, V. Novák, and O. Ostrčil. He was influenced mainly by the music of late Romanticism, particularly Mahler, and Impressionism, and he also managed creatively to continue in the tradition of the 19th century Czech music.

Foerster’s choral work is generally considered of great significance. His compositional legacy includes also several operas, melodramas, song cycles, symphonic and chamber pieces or piano compositions. He died at the venerable age of ninety-two as a widely acknowledged composer of the traditional branch of Czech music.

Titles for sale:
Christmas Day Romance, op. 155
Sonata No. 1 in A minor for Violin and Piano
Three Christmas Melodramas, op. 155, 111, 162
Two Impromptus for Violin and Piano, op. 154

Titles for hire - see Complete catalogue