Jarmil Burghauser - Czech composer, musicologist, conductor, chorus master, editor and administrator - studied composition privately with Jaroslav Kricka from 1933 and with Otakar Jeremias from 1937. Later, at the Prague Conservatoire he studied conducting with Metod Dolezil and Pavel Dedecek, graduating in 1944 and afterwards, at the Senior School, with Vaclav Talich, from which he graduated in 1946. His compositions of that period were being performed on the Czechoslovak Radio from 1933 and at two independent concerts of the composer s works in Prague in 1942. The full-length cantata, Utrpeni a vzkriseni, was performed in 1946 in Prague by the Prague Symphony Orchestra conducted by Vaclav Smetacek.
Burghauser interrupted his studies in musicology and psychology at the Charles University in 1948. He was appointed as a chorus master and conductor at the National Theatre in Prague (1946-1950). Since 1953 Burghauser has devoted his practical musical activity mainly to composition and musicological research. In 1991, he received the degree of PhD.

The most successful composition of Burghauser is the ballet Sluha dvou panu (premiered at the National Theatre in 1957, with twenty productions in various countries up to 1990). This number of productions is exceeded only by some music for films, television and incidental music and by the compositions originating in cooperation with the SCARS group for audiovisual presentation at large exhibitions. In the early sixties, Burghauser's style changed from his earlier following of the principles of neoclassicism to a transformation to those of Musica Nova (e. g. Seven Reliefs, Ways, chamber music) and adopted its own technique which he called 'harmonic serialism'. On this topic he wrote a study in the miscellany Cesty nove hudby (Ways of New Music, 1964). Using this technique with a functional application of aleatorics, he wrote the opera Most, which was performed at the National Theatre in 1967. Burghauser was a member of the Executive Committee of the Czech Music Fund and, in the short period of "Prague Spring", chairman of the Club of Non-party Men at the Union of Czech Composers, as well as chairman of its composers section.
After the start of the post-1968 "process of normalisation", Burghauser' s name could not appear even in the newly published volumes of the Dvorak Edition, of which he was one of the editors. He could not travel abroad and all recordings by the radio of his compositions were destroyed. In spite of this, he continued working as an editor; he prepared the principles and directions for the critical edition of the works of Leos Janacek, together with Milan Solc and the Janacek editorial board in Brno; with Ludvik Kundera he prepared the volume of Janacek's piano compositions. Adopting the pseudonym Michal Hajku, he was able to create audiovisual presentations for exhibitions abroad; under this fictitious name he also composed a series of works in the style of earlier periods of music, "Storie apocrifa della musica Boema".
Burghauser s scientific interest in musical acoustics resulted in the book "Acoustic Basis of Orchestration" (1965) in cooperation with Antonin Spelda. This book appeared also in German at Regensburg in 1971. Burghauser worked for many years in the Dvorak Society and has been its Chairman since 1984. From 1978 until 1989, he was choir-master at the St. Margaret's church at Brevnov in Prague. His most lasting non-musical activity is in the Czech Boy Scout organization, Junak.
In 1990 he was elected Chairman of the Society of Composers in the Association of Musical Artists and Scientists and Chairman of the Rehabilitation Committee of musical artists. He was a member of the Committee of the Prague Spring Festival, a member of the Board of the Czech Musical Society and Vicepresident of the Dvorak Society in Great Britain.