The composer Ivan Kurz represents the generation of composers who asserted themselves in the course of the seventies. He had a thorough preparation: in 1964-1966 he studied privately music theory with Karel Risinger, then he was a student of the Faculty of Music of the Prague Academy of Perfoming Arts (with Emil Hlobil, 1966-1971). After one-year military service at the Army School of Music, he completed his education as a postgraduate with Vaclav Dobias at the Academy of Performing Arts (1973-1976). Since 1977 he has been employed as a teacher of composition and orchestration at the Faculty of Music. In 1996 he was appointed professor, and later became the head of the compositional department (2004).
Ivan Kurz is a type of a versatile composer. He is also prolific and very succesful in the field of incidental and film music. His music to TV series The Waxworks of the City of Prague, and The Gendarme Humoresques in particular, were highly acclaimed and have become very popular with the wide public.
Kurz considers expression of ideas (whether musical or ‘extra-musical‘) as the substance of his musical message, and the simplest means often as the most effective. He prefers simple motivic basis, trim concordant system and clean-cut formal division. There is an astonishingly wide range of Kurz's artistic inspirations including not only nature and literature, but also philosophy, theology and - especially in his more recent works - Christian mysticism. Symphonic picture "Inclined Plane" (1979) became a certain milestone in his creation: it strives for simplification and the achievement of a minimum of expressional elements used without reducing thereby the spectrum of his spiritual message. His long-term symphonic composition project culminated in the highly metaphorical symphonic picture I Come to Thee (1988). In the nineties he wrote a four-parts oratorio cycle At The End Of Time to the texts of Marian apparitions during the 20th century in Fatima, Lourdes and other places. For his compositions he was awarded several times: 1974 piano suite Five-leaf Clover won first prize at the Competition of Young Composers of Young Composers, organized by the then Czech Ministry of Culture; 1974 Concertino for Piano, Flute, Percussion and Strings won first prize "Generation" competition in Ostrava, 1976 Symphony No 2 - first prize at the Competition, and 1980 his song-cycle Flying Carpet won the prize of the Union of Czech Composers and Concert Artists.