Václav Nelhýbel Explained

Václav Nelhýbel
Background:non_vocal_instrumentalist
Birth Date:24 September 1919
Birth Place:, Ostrava, Czechoslovakia
Occupation:Composer
Genre:Classical

Václav Nelhýbel (September 24, 1919  - March 22, 1996) was a Czech-American composer, mainly of works for student performers.[1] [2] [3]

Life and career

Nelhýbel was born the youngest of five children in, Ostrava, Czechoslovakia. He received his early musical training in Prague, going to both Charles University in Prague and Prague Conservatory. In 1942 he went to Switzerland, where he studied at University of Fribourg; after 1947 he taught there. In 1957 he came to the United States, where he taught at several schools, including Lowell State College. He served as composer-in-residence at University of Scranton for several years until his death. The university's Department of Performance Music continues to house his full collection of works.

Some of his music is for wind instruments or concert band, and most of his published music is designed for student performers. He used non-functional modal writing, pandiatonicism, and motor rhythms extensively.

He was an advocate[4] of the use of a flute in F, sitting between (and notably aurally bridging) the standard (and far more common) C Flute and C Piccolo. Although such a flute is now commercially available from Kotato,[5] he wrote of it in hypothetical terms as solving a perceived dilemma at the end of the chorale in his Symphonic Movement (1966); however, his advocating does not seem to have borne fruit. Interestingly, he advised against such a bridge role being served by either the E soprano flute or G treble flute (at least in concert band settings) due to the additional accidentals (sharps and flats, respectively) compared to the key in which the flute/piccolo would be playing. His writing of the G treble flute in hypothetical terms, implies that he was unaware in 1967 of its recent creation and use by the Ulster Amateurs (a Northern Irish flute band) in 1965.[6] That band used it as a replacement for the pre-Boehm (simple-system) flute in A. Those flutes served the same function as Nelhýbel's proposed F soprano flute – a bridge between piccolo and C flute.

Nelhýbel received numerous prizes and awards for his compositions, which include a prize at the International Music and Dance Festival in Copenhagen, Denmark, for his ballet "In the Shadow of the Limetree". In 1954, he was also awarded the first prize of the Ravitch Foundation in New York for his opera A Legend, and in 1978 he won an award from the Academy of Wind and Percussion Arts. Four American universities honored him with honorary doctoral degrees in music.

In addition to his works for winds, he wrote three ballets, three operas, and a symphony.

He was also a member of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia and Kappa Kappa Psi.

Works

Orchestra

Concert band

Organ

Choral

Opera

Selected discography

External links

Notes and References

  1. James P. Cassaro: "Vaclav Nelhybel", Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (Accessed June 20, 2005), (subscription access)
  2. http://www.scranton.edu/academics/performance-music/nelhybel/index.shtml Scranton.edu
  3. https://archive.today/20110716182330/http://www.kkpsi.org/prominentmembers.asp Archive.is
  4. Nelhybel . Vaclav . June 1967 . Band Instrumentation – The Most Needed Change . The Instrumentalist. 132–133. Via Woodwind Anthology; a compendium of articles from The Instrumentalist on the woodwind instruments
  5. Web site: Soprano Flute . 2024-01-12 . kotatofukushima . ja.
  6. Greer . Derek . 1985 . The Flute Bands of Ireland . The Flutist Quarterly. XI . 1 . 41–43.

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