Through individual mastery of his craft, Lubor Barta influenced the generation of Czech composers that began to assert itself in the middle of our century. He was born into a family of teachers. His first compositional efforts began at the age of twelve. He was a skilled violinist and an exceptional pianist. As a result, he was able to start a concert career at a young age, and he was active as an accompanist. Barta strove for mastery and individuality, in accord with his education. Upon finishing his secondary studies, he took up musicology and aesthetics at the philosophical faculty of Charles University /1946-48/. He learned composition with Jaroslav Ridky, privately at first, and later on as a full-time student in his class at the Academy of Music and Perfomring Arts (1948-52). At the Academy he focused first on tradition, but also discovered an interest in the poetic character of the modernists of the 20th century such as Stravinsky, Honegger, and Bartok. Barta' s own compositional style would stem from the synthesis and transformation of these influences.
In his compositions, Barta excels in sensitivity to the peculiarities of instrumental possibilities and exhibits a masterful ability to work with musical material in all its components. He achieves a rare harmony of a sparkling musical inventiveness and conceptive thinking. In his works, he creates tension between the mood of depression and spaces of forceful exaltation, testing the contrasts of human identities. Spontaneity, melodic naturalness disturbed by rough conflictedness, harmonically complex subjects transformed into dramatic gradations - such are the symptoms of the composer' s idiom in every genre that he pursued. He believed in the effectiveness of the concertante principle and in the possibilities of a loosened sonata form. He used those means to express the sensations of life without the help of programmatic proclamations, but through the force of expression and brisk articulation.
Lubor Barta produced full-blooded sonatas for a whole number of instruments: piano, violin, violoncello, flute, clarinet, guitar, harpsichord. Barta's most important works include his chamber compositions for ensembles: three string quartets, two wind quintets, and works for chamber orchestra. With strict responsibility he adopted the view of the importance of the symphonies, of which he wrote three. The popularity of the author's concertos was proved by the return of musicians to the performance of both his violin concertos and those for the piano and viola. Each of them have been recorded. In the mature works of the sixties and seventies, the romantic nature of Barta's music presented itself fully, seeking to overcome the pain of social alienation and to find peace in simple warmth.