Václav Nelhýbel (September 24, 1919 – March 22, 1996) was a Czech American composer, mainly of works for student performers.^[1][2][3]

Life and career

Nelhýbel was born the youngest of five children in Polanka, Czechoslovakia. He received his early musical training in Prague, going to both Charles University in Prague and Prague Conservatory. In 1942 he went to Switzerland, where he studied at University of Fribourg; after 1947 he taught there. In 1957 he came to the United States, where he taught at several schools, including Lowell State College. He served as Composer-in-Residence at University of Scranton for several years until his death. The University Department of Performance Music continues to house his full collection of works.

Some of his music is for wind instruments or concert band, and most of his published music is designed for student performers. He used non-functional modal writing, pandiatonicism, and motor rhythms extensively.

He was an advocate^[4] of the use of a flute in F, sitting between (and notably aurally bridging) the standard (and far more common) C Flute and C Piccolo. Although such a flute is now commercially available from Kotato^[5], he wrote of it in hypothetical terms^[4] as solving a perceived dilemma at the end of the Chorale in his Symphonic Movement (1966); however, his advocating does not seem to have borne fruit. Interestingly, he advised against such a bridge role being served by either the E♭ Soprano Flute or G Treble Flute (at least in concert band settings) due to the additional accidentals (sharps and flats, respectively) compared to the key in which the flute/piccolo would be playing. His writing of the G Treble Flute in hypothetical terms^[4], implies that he was unaware in 1967 of its recent creation and use by the Ulster Amateurs (a Northern Irish flute band) in 1965^[6]. That band used it as a replacement for the pre-Boehm (simple-system) flute in A♭^[6]. Those flutes served the same function as Nelhýbel's proposed F soprano flute - a bridge between piccolo and C flute.^[6]

Nelhýbel received numerous prizes and awards for his compositions, which include a prize at the International Music and Dance Festival in Copenhagen, Denmark, for his ballet "In the Shadow of the Limetree". In 1954, he was also awarded the first prize of the Ravitch Foundation in New York for his opera "A Legend", and in 1978 he won an award from the Academy of Wind and Percussion Arts. Four American universities honored him with honorary doctoral degrees in music.

In addition to his works for winds, he wrote three ballets, three operas, and a symphony.

He was also a member of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia and Kappa Kappa Psi.

Works

Selected discography

• The Symphony Orchestra and Its Instruments (1959)
• Twelve-Tone Composition Prepared by Vaclav Nelhybel (1961)
• Forms in Instrumental Music: Prepared by Vaclav Nelhybel (1962)
• Modal Counterpoint in the Style of the 16th Century Prepared by Vaclav Nelhybel (1962)
• Music Arrangement: Prepared by Vaclav Nelhybel - Musical Examples Played by Chamber Orchestra (1962)
• Traditional Harmony Prepared by Vaclav Nelhybel (1962)
• The Fugue in the Style of the 18th Century (1964)
• Tonal Counterpoint in the Style of the 18th Century Prepared by Vaclav Nelhybel (1964)
• Outer Space: Music by Vaclav Nelhybel (1974)

References

External links

• Official website
• Discography at Smithsonian Folkways
• Interview with Vaclav Nelhybel, October 25, 1986