Domazlicky reached his first public successes in the1930s as an amateur musician - violinist, trumpet and accordion player, band leader and composer. In 1935 he won a competition for tramp songs and that same year started to study under a qualified teacher - violinist Otto Silhavy, a pupil of Otakar Sevcik. During the Second World War Frantisek Domazlicky was imprisoned at Terezin where he managed to write several songs and choruses and the Song without Words for string quartet. Then followed transports to concentration camps at Oswiecim, Schwarzheide, Oranienburg and finally one of the death marches. After the war he completed his musical education at the Prague Academy of Arts and Music, where he graduated in the violin under Frantisek Daniel in 1955. He studied composition at that same school under Jaroslav Ridky and, after his death, Emil Hlobil - he graduated under him in 1960 with Symphony for Large Orchestra. From 1950 onwards he played violin and later viola in several ensembles, for 15 years in the Film Symphony Orchestra.
The musical speech of Frantisek Domazlicky is richly chromatic, built on a firm tonal foundation, marked by freely developing melody within a trim form and distinct rhythm. His music is written with an intention to satisfy the aesthetic needs of broadest possible range of listeners and performers. The mood of his compositions is always in harmony with the nature of the sound of the instruments used; harmonious balance prevails, passing on the one hand in joyful expression, on the other in lyric passages alternated with masculine, energetic, almost dramatic music. Such has been the character of Domazlicky's music since his Academy studies when he wrote such successful compositions as Serenade for Strings in D, First Quintet or Concerto for Oboe and Orchestra. These and some other compositions are accessible even to amateurs and students, who introduce them often at home and abroad.
The symphonic picture for violoncello and orchestra The Spring of Knight d'Artagnan, one of few programme compositions in Domazlicky's creation, belongs to a category more exacting for performers. In relaxed rondo form it depicts, in places very faithfully, some chosen episodes from Three Mousquetaires, the famous novel by Dumas - the employed sound effects, showing for instance a fencing duel, are simultaneously interesting instrumentation ideas. Successful premiere with Reine Flachot took place in France, other renditions with Janos Starker in the USA and Jan Sirc in Czechoslovakia.
To compose music for the pleasure of music itself and in this way to teach people to love truthfulness, beauty, life, honesty and themselves - this is a tendency which is most apparent in The Spring of Knight d'Artagnan, but is also more or less present in all music by Frantisek Domazlicky.