Vacek Miloš Miloš Kamenický

Year of Birth - Death :

1928 - 2012 †

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Biography

Milos Vacek spent his childhood in Kamenice nad Lipou in the southeast of Bohemia where he gained foundations of musical education from his father Jindrich Vacek, a composer and teacher. He studied at the organ department of Prague Conservatory (1943-47) and completed his studies of composition at the Academy of Arts and Music in Prague with Frantisek Picha and Jaroslav Ridky (1947-51). Then he spent his military service in the Vit Nejedly Army Artistic Ensemble (1951-54) which was of high importance for his future development as composer. Since 1954 Vacek has dedicated himself to composition professionally. He also holds various organisational positions in the field of music, above all in the Union of Czech Composers and Concert Artists.
Vacek' s tendency towards musical dramatic creation was expressed already in his first opera with a historical subject from the period of Hussite wars, "Jan Zelivsky\", composed at the age of twenty-five. Then his dramatic talent developed broadly in ballet, incidental, film music and in musical comedy. The latter became his first domaine where Vacek was gaining successes since the end of the fifties; his ballets were performed at prominent Prague stages, in other Czechoslovak towns and met with great response abroad (in particular France, Italy, the GDR, the FRG, Austria, Spain, Mexico).
However, Vacek' s creative interests did not remain constantly directed on that sphere alone. At the beginning of the seventies there appeared his orientation towards chamber, symphonic, vocal and vocal-symphonic creation. Vacek wrote a number of compositions which won an important place in concert life; most of them were premiered at Weeks of New Works by Czech Composers in Prague and awarded prizes in important competitions; at the beginning of them was "Sonata Drammatica\" for piano, the "May Symphony", and symphonic "Poem on Fallen Heroes" which found broad social application and was also used as the sound background in the Hrabyne Memorial of the Ostrava Operation from the Second World War.
This tendency towards concert platform coincided with the composer's re-entry of the theatrical stage, this time of operahouses. It was pre-announced in 1974 by a new version of the opera "Jan Zelivsky", not a revision, but a new composition in which the composer took up again the subject of his early work. It was soon followed by another opera, "Brother Jacques", a dramatic story of a family of itinerant actors to Ivan Olbracht' s subject, "Romance for Bugle-horn" to a poem by Frantisek Hrubin, and "Mikes the Tom-cat" after stories and pictures by Josef Lada.
Vacek is an author who, besides a dramatic sense and talent for subject breathing contemporary emotionality, brings smiling, optimistic and life-enjoying music. He knows to discover the charm of ordinary moments and the greatness of ordinary emotions and to express them with warm melody, linked with the best traditions of Czech national music. To the great development line of his career as composer, which led Vacek from ballet, musical, incidental and film music to the concert platform and then to the opera stage, belongs as more than mere addition his variegated pieces of music written for various occasions, compositions of popular and entertaining character as well as large works as musical accompaniment of gymnastic events at State-wide Spartakiades. They belong to Vacek' s compositional output as its inseparable part and show his unreserved loyalty to the totalitarian regime.
Milos Vacek was awarded a number of prizes in various competitions of composers; he was several times awarded high state distinction by the then communist regime.