The Czech composer Marta Jirackova came to the attention of Czech musical public in the 1970s, being already an accomplished artist, after a break in her career for family reasons during the 1960s. Having spent her childhood in an art-loving family, she graduated from grammar school in Kladno and studied at the Prague Conservatory of Music under Emil Hlobil. She took lessons with Alois Haba (modern harmony and composition, 1962-64). After graduating in 1959 she worked in Czechoslovak Radio as a music director. Marta Jirackova' s long-term involvement with broadcasting was instrumental in extending her musical horizons, which had been focused during her studies primarily on the music of J.S.Bach, J. Suk and A. Bruckner. Moreover, the composer' s radio training and experience provided her with a thorough knowledge of the efficiency of sound phenomenon of which she made full use in her numerous electroacoustic compositions.
In her profound and systematic study of contemporary music, Marta Jirackova was greatly influenced by her marriage to the conductor Vaclav Jiracek who sadly died in a tragic accident.
A major source of inspiration which brought Marta Jirackova back to composition during the early 1970s was her friendship with Slava Vorlova, a Czech composer almost forty years her senior (Jirackova' s first orchestral composition "Slava Vorlova' s Confession").
During the second half of the 1970s the composer continued her training in postgraduate studies at the Janacek Academy of Performing Arts in Brno with Ctirad Kohoutek and Alois Pinos. The latter, a distinguished music teacher and composer, particularly has had a major influence on Marta Jirackova' s further career, as well as on her efforts to find her own way of composing.
Marta Jirackova' s work include more than fifty compositions, including most of music genres, including music for radio and television. Her specific interest, however, is in the use of the human voice as a musical instrument. This one can heard in compositions such as "Eight Wonders of the World", "Three Songs a Without Lyrics", the two-part ballet "Five Times a women" and "The Ship of Fools" and other works. In addition to characterising her own musical style, which aims at a modern type of construction based on 20th century music and links with European musical traditions, these compositions duly reflect the composer's sincere efforts to write comprehensive music, as illustrated, for instance, by her Second Symphony "Silbo" (Silbo is sometimes used as a term to indicate an ancient protolanguage).
In the 1990s Marta Jirackova has been particularly successful in electroacoustic music. Her composition "The Ship of Fools" was awarded the 1992 Prize of the Czech Music Fund. In the international electroacoustic music competition Musica Nova '98 she received the second prize (first prize wasn't awarded). Her sources of inspiration are very rich and varied. Having brought up two daughters, Marta Jirackova is in a position to consider the issue of the role of women in the process of artistic creation. Her first symphony, "Nanda Devi", portrays the tragic fate of a young mountaineer Nanda Devi Unsoeld, who died while ascending the Himalayan mountain of the same name, while the position of women is central to the electroacoustic ballet variation "Five times A Woman", composed in 1992, as well as in other pieces.