The Most Famous

COMPOSERS from Czechia

This page contains a list of the greatest Czech Composers. The pantheon dataset contains 1,451 Composers, 59 of which were born in Czechia. This makes Czechia the birth place of the 8th most number of Composers behind Russia, and Austria.

Top 10

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the top 10 most legendary Czech Composers of all time. This list of famous Czech Composers is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity. Visit the rankings page to view the entire list of Czech Composers.

1. Antonín Dvořák (1841 - 1904)

With an HPI of 82.41, Antonín Dvořák is the most famous Czech Composer. His biography has been translated into 125 different languages on wikipedia.

Antonín Leopold Dvořák ( d(ə-)VOR-zha(h)k; Czech: [ˈantoɲiːn ˈlɛopold ˈdvor̝aːk] ; 8 September 1841 – 1 May 1904) was a Czech composer. He frequently employed rhythms and other aspects of the folk music of Moravia and his native Bohemia, following the Romantic-era nationalist example of his predecessor Bedřich Smetana. Dvořák's style has been described as "the fullest recreation of a national idiom with that of the symphonic tradition, absorbing folk influences and finding effective ways of using them," and Dvořák has been described as "arguably the most versatile... composer of his time". Dvořák displayed his musical gifts at an early age, being a talented violin student. The first public performances of his works were in Prague in 1872 and, with special success, in 1873, when he was 31 years old. Seeking recognition beyond the Prague area, he submitted scores of symphonies and other works to German and Austrian competitions. He did not win a prize until 1874, with Johannes Brahms on the jury of the Austrian State Competition. In 1877, after his third win, Brahms recommended Dvořák to his publisher, Simrock, who commissioned what became the Slavonic Dances, Op. 46. The sheet music's high sales and critical reception led to his international success. A London performance of Dvořák's Stabat Mater in 1883 led to many other performances in the United Kingdom, the United States, and eventually Russia in March 1890. The Seventh Symphony was written for London in 1885. In 1892, Dvořák became the director of the National Conservatory of Music of America in New York City. While in the United States, Dvořák wrote his two most successful orchestral works: the Symphony From the New World, which spread his reputation worldwide, and his Cello Concerto, one of the most highly regarded of all cello concerti. On a summer vacation in Spillville, Iowa in 1893, Dvořák also wrote his most famous piece of chamber music, his twelfth String Quartet in F major, Op. 96, the American. While he remained at the Conservatory for a few more years, pay cuts and an onset of homesickness led him to return to Bohemia in 1895. All of Dvořák's ten operas, except his first, have librettos in Czech and were intended to convey the Czech national spirit, as were some of his choral works. By far the most successful of the operas is Rusalka, premiered in 1901. Among his smaller works, the seventh Humoresque and the song "Songs My Mother Taught Me" are also widely performed and recorded. The Dvořák Prague International Music Festival is a major series of concerts held annually to celebrate Dvořák's life and works.

2. Gustav Mahler (1860 - 1911)

With an HPI of 82.39, Gustav Mahler is the 2nd most famous Czech Composer. His biography has been translated into 119 different languages.

Gustav Mahler (German: [ˈɡʊstaf ˈmaːlɐ]; 7 July 1860 – 18 May 1911) was an Austro-Bohemian Romantic composer, and one of the leading conductors of his generation. As a composer he acted as a bridge between the 19th-century Austro-German tradition and the modernism of the early 20th century. While in his lifetime his status as a conductor was established beyond question, his own music gained wide popularity only after periods of relative neglect, which included a ban on its performance in much of Europe during the Nazi era. After 1945 his compositions were rediscovered by a new generation of listeners; Mahler then became one of the most frequently performed and recorded of all composers, a position he has sustained into the 21st century. Born in Bohemia (then part of the Austrian Empire) to Jewish parents of humble origins, the German-speaking Mahler displayed his musical gifts at an early age. After graduating from the Vienna Conservatory in 1878, he held a succession of conducting posts of rising importance in the opera houses of Europe, culminating in his appointment in 1897 as director of the Vienna Court Opera (Hofoper). During his ten years in Vienna, Mahler—who had converted to Catholicism to secure the post—experienced regular opposition and hostility from the anti-Semitic press. Nevertheless, his innovative productions and insistence on the highest performance standards ensured his reputation as one of the greatest of opera conductors, particularly as an interpreter of the stage works of Wagner, Mozart, and Tchaikovsky. Late in his life he was briefly director of New York's Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic. Mahler's œuvre is relatively limited; for much of his life composing was necessarily a part-time activity while he earned his living as a conductor. Aside from early works such as a movement from a piano quartet composed when he was a student in Vienna, Mahler's works are generally designed for large orchestral forces, symphonic choruses and operatic soloists. These works were frequently controversial when first performed, and several were slow to receive critical and popular approval; exceptions included his Second Symphony, and the triumphant premiere of his Eighth Symphony in 1910. Some of Mahler's immediate musical successors included the composers of the Second Viennese School, notably Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg and Anton Webern. Dmitri Shostakovich and Benjamin Britten are among later 20th-century composers who admired and were influenced by Mahler. The International Gustav Mahler Society was established in 1955 to honour the composer's life and achievements.

3. Bedřich Smetana (1824 - 1884)

With an HPI of 76.94, Bedřich Smetana is the 3rd most famous Czech Composer. His biography has been translated into 86 different languages.

Bedřich Smetana ( BED-ər-zhikh SMET-ə-nə, Czech: [ˈbɛdr̝ɪx ˈsmɛtana] ; 2 March 1824 – 12 May 1884) was a Czech composer who pioneered the development of a musical style that became closely identified with his people's aspirations to a cultural and political "revival". He has been regarded in his homeland as the father of Czech music. Internationally he is best known for his 1866 opera The Bartered Bride and for the symphonic cycle Má vlast ("My Fatherland"), which portrays the history, legends and landscape of the composer's native Bohemia. It contains the famous symphonic poem "Vltava", also popularly known by its German name "Die Moldau" (in English, "The Moldau"). Smetana was naturally gifted as a composer, and gave his first public performance at the age of six. After conventional schooling, he studied music under Josef Proksch in Prague. His first nationalistic music was written during the 1848 Prague uprising, in which he briefly participated. After failing to establish his career in Prague, he left for Sweden, where he set up as a teacher and choirmaster in Gothenburg, and began to write large-scale orchestral works. In the early 1860s, a more liberal political climate in Bohemia encouraged Smetana to return permanently to Prague. He threw himself into the musical life of the city, primarily as a champion of the new genre of Czech opera. In 1866 his first two operas, The Brandenburgers in Bohemia and The Bartered Bride, were premiered at Prague's new Provisional Theatre, the latter achieving great popularity. In that same year, Smetana became the theatre's principal conductor, but the years of his conductorship were marked by controversy. Factions within the city's musical establishment considered his identification with the progressive ideas of Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner inimical to the development of a distinctively Czech opera style. This opposition interfered with his creative work, and may have hastened a decline in health that precipitated his resignation from the theatre in 1874. By the end of 1874, Smetana had become completely deaf but, freed from his theatre duties and the related controversies, he began a period of sustained composition that continued for almost the rest of his life. His contributions to Czech music were increasingly recognised and honoured, but a mental collapse early in 1884 led to his incarceration in an asylum and subsequent death. His reputation as the founding father of Czech music has endured in his native country, where advocates have raised his status above that of his contemporaries and successors. However, relatively few of Smetana's works are in the international repertory, and most foreign commentators tend to regard Antonín Dvořák as a more significant Czech composer.

4. Leoš Janáček (1854 - 1928)

With an HPI of 70.98, Leoš Janáček is the 4th most famous Czech Composer. His biography has been translated into 56 different languages.

Leoš Janáček (Czech pronunciation: [ˈlɛoʃ ˈjanaːtʃɛk] , 3 July 1854 – 12 August 1928) was a Czech composer, music theorist, folklorist, publicist, and teacher. He was inspired by Moravian and other Slavic music, including Eastern European folk music, to create an original, modern musical style. Born in Hukvaldy, Janáček demonstrated musical talent at an early age and was educated in Brno, Prague, Leipzig, and Vienna. He then returned to live in Brno, where he married his pupil Zdenka Schulzová and devoted himself mainly to folkloristic research. His earlier musical output was influenced by contemporaries such as Antonín Dvořák, but around the turn of the century he began to incorporate his earlier studies of national folk music, as well as his transcriptions of "speech melodies" of spoken language, to create a modern, highly original synthesis. The death of his daughter Olga in 1903 had a profound effect on his musical output; these notable transformations were first evident in the opera Jenůfa (often called the "Moravian national opera"), which premiered in 1904 in Brno. In the following years, Janáček became frustrated with a lack of recognition from Prague, but this was finally relieved by the success of a revised edition of Jenůfa at the National Theatre in 1916, which gave Janáček access to the world's great opera stages. Janáček's later works are his most celebrated. They include operas such as Káťa Kabanová and The Cunning Little Vixen, the Sinfonietta, the Glagolitic Mass, the rhapsody Taras Bulba, two string quartets, and other chamber works. Many of Janáček's later works were influenced by Czech and Russian literature, his pan-Slavist sentiments, and his infatuation with Kamila Stösslová. After his death in 1928, Janáček's work was heavily promoted on the world opera stage by the Australian conductor Charles Mackerras, who also restored some of his compositions to their original, unrevised forms. In his homeland he inspired a new generation of Czech composers including several of his students. Today he is considered one of the most important Czech composers, along with Dvořák and Bedřich Smetana.

5. Bohuslav Martinů (1890 - 1959)

With an HPI of 64.97, Bohuslav Martinů is the 5th most famous Czech Composer. His biography has been translated into 43 different languages.

Bohuslav Jan Martinů (Czech: [ˈboɦuslaf ˈmarcɪnuː] ; December 8, 1890 – August 28, 1959) was a Czech composer of modern classical music. He wrote 6 symphonies, 15 operas, 14 ballet scores and a large body of orchestral, chamber, vocal and instrumental works. He became a violinist in the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, and briefly studied under Czech composer and violinist Josef Suk. After leaving Czechoslovakia in 1923 for Paris, Martinů deliberately withdrew from the Romantic style in which he had been trained. During the 1920s he experimented with modern French stylistic developments, exemplified by his orchestral works Half-time and La Bagarre. He also adopted jazz idioms, for instance in his Kitchen Revue (Kuchyňská revue). In the early 1930s he found his main fount for compositional style: neoclassicism, creating textures far denser than those found in composers treating Stravinsky as a model. He was prolific, quickly composing chamber, orchestral, choral and instrumental works. His Concerto Grosso and the Double Concerto for Two String Orchestras, Piano and Timpani are among his best-known works from this period. Among his operas, Juliette and The Greek Passion are considered the finest. He has been compared to Prokofiev and Bartók in his innovative incorporation of Czech folk elements into his music. He continued using Bohemian and Moravian folk melodies throughout his oeuvre, for instance in The Opening of the Springs (Otvírání studánek). His symphonic career began when he emigrated to the United States in 1941, fleeing the German invasion of France. His six symphonies were performed by all the major US orchestras. Eventually Martinů returned to live in Europe for two years starting in 1953, then was back in New York until returning to Europe in May 1956. He died in Switzerland in August 1959.

6. Jan Dismas Zelenka (1679 - 1745)

With an HPI of 64.53, Jan Dismas Zelenka is the 6th most famous Czech Composer. His biography has been translated into 31 different languages.

Jan Dismas Zelenka (16 October 1679 – 23 December 1745), baptised Jan Lukáš Zelenka was a Czech composer and musician of the Baroque period. His music is admired for its harmonic inventiveness and mastery of counterpoint. Zelenka was raised in Central Bohemia, educated in Prague and Vienna, and spent his professional life in Dresden. The greatest success during his career was the performance of the extensive composition Sub olea pacis et palma virtutis in the presence of the Emperor Charles VI, shortly after his coronation as king of Bohemia in 1723. Zelenka was born in Louňovice pod Blaníkem, a market town southeast of Prague, in Bohemia. He was the eldest of eight children born to Marie Magdalena (née Hájek) and Jiří Zelenka. The middle name Dismas is probably his confirmation name. Zelenka's father Jiří was a schoolmaster and organist in Louňovice, and was likely his first music teacher. Nothing more is known with certainty about Zelenka's early years, except that he received his musical training at the Jesuit college Clementinum in Prague and that his instrument was the violone (bass viol). His first works were probably written in Prague. His earliest known work is the school drama Via laureta (ZWV 245), composed in 1704, from which only the libretto has been preserved. In 1709 in Prague, Zelenka served Baron von Johann Hubert von Hartig before his appointment as a violone player in Dresden's royal orchestra. Baron von Hartig was a well-known connoisseur of music and a virtuoso musician. He corresponded with many important Italian composers, and amassed a great music library to which Zelenka would later have access, including notably Antonio Lotti's Missa Sapientiae. Zelenka copied this work from Hartig's collection around 1729, and later in the 1730s Johann Sebastian Bach acquired a copy of it from Zelenka's library. George Frideric Handel's copy of the same Mass might also have been acquired through Zelenka. When Johann Hubert died in Prague in 1741, Zelenka dedicated his Litaniae Lauretanae 'Salus infirmorum' (ZWV 152) to his old patron. Baron von Hartig may have recommended Zelenka to the Dresden Hofkapelle (court orchestra) as a double bass player. In any event, he entered the service of the Dresden court with a salary of 300 thalers in 1710/11. The conditions for music making there added impetus to his creativity, particularly with respect to the composition of sacred music for the Catholic court church. His first major work in Dresden was a Mass, the Missa Sanctae Caeciliae (c. 1711). Zelenka's music must have impressed the court, because only a few months after his arrival in Dresden his salary was increased to 350 thalers. This placed him among the most highly paid musicians in the Hofkapelle. Three years later, it was raised to 400 thalers. In 1716, Zelenka continued his education in Vienna under the Habsburg Imperial Kapellmeister Johann Joseph Fux. It is unlikely that he visited Venice as once thought. A Saxon court document of 1715 records a royal cash advance for a trip to Italy by Zelenka with his fellow musicians and composers Pierre Gabriel Buffardin, Johann Christian Richter and Johann Georg Pisendel. New documents confirming the arrival of the oboist Richter and violinist Pisendel in Italy have now surfaced but neither Zelenka nor Buffardin were travelling with them. Back in Dresden in 1719, he remained there except for an extended stay in Prague in 1722-3, when he conducted the première of one of his major secular works, Sub olea pacis et palma virtutis conspicua orbi regia Bohemiae Corona (a melodrama about St. Wenceslas), at the time of the coronation of Charles VI. While in Prague he composed some of his highly original instrumental works, as seen in the autograph of the score of Concerto à 8 Concertanti — "Six concerti written in a hurry in Prague in 1723" (ZWV 186, 187, 188, 189). In the early 1720s, Zelenka composed some of his finest works like the Responsoria pro hebdomada (ZWV 55) and the Lamentations (ZWV 53). His compositions still constitute an important part of the repertoire of the Catholic court church. Following the frequent illnesses of Kapellmeister Johann David Heinichen, Zelenka gradually took over the direction of the sacred music. In January 1726, he began entering his own works and those of others he collected into a register called Inventarium (1726-39), one of the most important documents of Dresden baroque music. In July 1729, Heinichen died and Zelenka became acting Kapellmeister, a position he occupied in an unofficial capacity until 1734. This period is known as the Interregnum, a term coined by Professor Wolfgang Horn. The first work that confirms Zelenka's new status is a Sinfonia (ZWV 190, 18 May 1729, previously known as Capriccio), which, as Janice B. Stockigt has established, was performed at a Gala to celebrate the birthday of the Saxon Elector and Polish king, Augustus II the Strong. The official publication Königl. Polnischer und Churfürstl. Sächsischer Hoff- und Staats-Calender (Hof- from 1734), which listed the members and servants of the Dresden court, listed Zelenka as a Contra-Basso & Compositeur in the editions of 1731 and 1732; in 1733, he is listed as a Compositeur only, which suggests that he was no longer playing the double bass. Instead, he most likely directed the music in his capacity as a singer. The period of the Interregnum gave birth to a number of outlandish theories on Zelenka's position at the Dresden court, and especially around his petitions from October/November 1733 for the Kapellmeister position. The fact is that before the death of Heinichen in 1729, the Dresden court was already actively looking for a well-established opera composer to take Heinichen's place. This was a part of a long-term project to re-establish the Italian opera in Dresden. In 1724, the Dresden court began training five young Italian opera singers with some of the finest vocal teachers in Italy like Nicola Porpora, a great composer in his own right and future teacher of the young Joseph Haydn. In the first week of February 1730, the young singers, the castrato alto Domenico Annibali, the castrato sopranos Giovanni Bindi (also called Porporino), Ventura Rocchetti 'Venturini' and the sister sopranos Maria Rosa Negri and Anna Negri were called to Dresden. There is hardly any coincidence that in the same week, Johann Adolf Hasse was offered the "primo" Kapellmeister position. Following the arrival of the five young singers in Dresden in April 1730, Zelenka played an important role in their continuing education. After the "compositeur de la musique italienne" Giovanni Alberto Ristori travelled to Moscow in the end of 1730, Zelenka, as the senior composer at the court, became responsible for supplying secular vocal music for the chamber concerts at the royal palace in Dresden. It is at this point in time when he began to assemble his fascinating collection of Italian opera and cantata scores, which partly still exists in Dresden and are individually numbered in Zelenka's own hand. This suggest that he wrote down a complete inventory of the secular works in his possession, and by referring to the numbers he assigned each work it was possible to reconstruct the now missing inventory. This included a number of arias of Hasse, who arrived in Dresden in July 1731 with his famous wife, Faustina Bordoni-Hasse, the most brilliant female singer of the Baroque era. Shortly after his arrival, Hasse was officially appointed Kapellmeister and, unrivalled and unchallenged, retained the position for the next 32 years. After the performances of his opera Cleofide in September 1731, Hasse and Faustina travelled back to Italy, but not before the future arrangements of the Hofkapelle had been decided and later put in motion. Pisendel, one of the greatest violinist of the baroque era, was officially appointed Konzertmeister. Eleven new musicians were hired for the orchestra on 28 November of the same year. On that same day, Zelenka was awarded a handsome salary increase of 37.5%, which brought his wages up to 550 thalers. This might have enabled him to purchase 24 opera arias, one duet, eight secular cantatas and two sacred motets in score from Antonio Vivaldi, music he was then able to use both in the chamber and the church. After August II died in Warsaw on 1 February 1733, his son and successor as Saxon Elector Friedrich August moved swiftly and signed Hasse and Faustina to an extraordinary contract worth an astonishing 6,000 thalers annually, while their travel expenses were also paid for by the court. At that time, Hasse was already one of the most famous composers in Europe and it was a major coup for the Dresden court to have secured his and Faustina's services. Confirmation of Hasse's position is seen in the libretto to his Siroe which was performed in Bologna in May 1733, where the composer was awarded the title of Maestro di Cappella di S.A. R. l’Elettore di Sassonia. In that same month, Zelenka was also referred to as the elector's "well-born and virtuoso Kapellmeister" in a letter written by the Superior of the Catholic court church in Dresden. Following the election of Friedrich August as August III, King of Poland in October 1733, servants from all departments of the Dresden court sent in petitions for unpaid salaries or promotions. Zelenka was one of those who petitioned. It was only natural for the composer to wish to attain official recognition from the newly elected Polish king. The impression has often been given in the literature that Zelenka was in direct competition with Hasse for the Kapellmeister position, but this is a misunderstanding. It was very clear to Zelenka at that time that his colleague Hasse was, and would remain, senior Kapellmeister. This led the Dresden court to create the official position of church composer (essentially Vice-Kapellmeister), which Zelenka held from 1734 onwards, along with his student Tobias Buz and, from November 1736 onwards, J.S. Bach, who received a "titular" position. Bach held Zelenka in high esteem, and the two composers knew each other, as evidenced by a letter of 13 January 1775 from his son C.P.E. Bach to the Bach biographer Johann Nikolaus Forkel. Bach was trusted enough by Zelenka for his eldest son Wilhelm Friedemann to copy out the Amen from Zelenka's third Magnificat (ZWV 108) to use in the Leipzig's St. Thomas' Church, where J. S. Bach was cantor for the last two and a half decades of his life. In addition to composing, Zelenka taught throughout his life a number of prominent musicians of his time, like Johann Joachim Quantz (Frederick the Great of Prussia's longtime court flautist and flute teacher) and J. G. Roellig. His close friends included eminent composers such as Georg Philipp Telemann, Johann Georg Pisendel and Sylvius Leopold Weiss. On 23 December 1745, Zelenka died of dropsy and was buried on Christmas Eve. He never married and had no children, and his compositions and musical estate were purchased from his beneficiaries by the Electress of Saxony and the Queen of Poland Maria Josepha of Austria. After his death, these were considered valuable court possessions. Telemann, with Pisendel's assistance, tried unsuccessfully to publish Zelenka's "Responsoria." On 17 April 1756, he wrote that "the complete manuscript will be at the Dresden court, kept under lock and key as something very rare." Zelenka's pieces are characterized by a very daring compositional structure with a highly spirited harmonic invention and complex counterpoint. His works are often virtuosic and difficult to perform, but always fresh and surprising, with sudden turns of harmony. In particular, his writing for bass instruments is far more demanding than that of other composers of his era. His instrumental works, the trio sonatas, capricci, and concertos are exemplary models of his early style (1710s –1720s). The six trio sonatas demand high virtuosity and expressive sensitivity from performers. As Zelenka was himself a violone player, he was known to write fast-moving continuo parts with driving and complicated rhythm. Zelenka was aware of the music in different regions of Europe. He wrote complex fugues, ornate operatic arias, galant-style dances, baroque recitatives, Palestrina-like chorales, and virtuosic concertos. Zelenka's musical language is closest to Bach's, especially in its richness of contrapuntal harmonies and ingenious usage of fugal themes. Nevertheless, Zelenka's language is idiosyncratic in its unexpected harmonic twists, obsession with chromatic harmonies, large usage of syncopated and tuplet figures, and unusually long phrases full of varied musical ideas. He is sometimes considered Bach's Catholic counterpart. Zelenka's music is influenced by Czech folk music. In this respect, he continues the tradition of the production of specific Czech national music initiated by Adam Michna z Otradovic and brought to its culmination by Bedřich Smetana and Antonín Dvořák in the nineteenth century and Leoš Janáček and Bohuslav Martinů in the twentieth century. In regard to his masses, Zelenka was not afraid to challenge the established traditions of his time. Furthermore, from his unorthodox, disjointed, and "bizarre" sounding fugal subjects (such as the Kyrie Eleison from ZWV 48) to his fiery orchestration, he presents fresh interpretations of established liturgical mass texts Despite his posthumous neglect, Zelenka was highly regarded during his own career and was respected by significant composers of the day, such as Telemann, Bach (as aforementioned), and Graupner. His music's innovative counterpoint (such as in the Miserere in D Minor, ZWV 56), clarity, and part-writing (especially in his fugues) earned him the respect of some of the most renowned contrapuntists (composers and performers who practice the art of counterpoint). Between the years 1716 and 1719, Zelenka studied under the guidance J.J. Fux (1660-1741), the author of Gradus ad Parnassum in Vienna and accepted J.J. Quantz (1697-1773) as one of his students. Zelenka also met A. Caldara (1671-1736) as well as F.B. Conti (c. 1681–1732) in Vienna, Austria. The rediscovery of Jan Dismas Zelenka's work is attributed to Bedřich Smetana, who rewrote some scores from the archives in Dresden and introduced one of the composer's orchestral suites in Prague's New Town Theatre festivals in 1863. It was mistakenly assumed that many of Zelenka's autograph scores were destroyed during the firebombing of Dresden in February 1945. However, the scores were not kept in the Katholische Hofkirche but in the basement of the Japanese Palace, north of the river Elbe. Some are certainly missing, but this probably happened gradually – and the lost scores represent only a small proportion of his total works. Interest in Zelenka's music has grown, especially since the end of the 1950s with the revival of interest in Baroque music. By the late 1960s and early 1970s all Zelenka's instrumental compositions and selected liturgical music were published in Czechoslovakia. The most important revival was demonstrated by the first presentation of selected compositions by the Czech conductor Milan Munclinger and his ensemble Ars Rediviva. They were three trio sonatas in 1958–60, Sinfonia concertante in 1963 and the exquisite interpretation of "Lamentationes Jeremiae prophetae" with the soloists Karl Berman, Nedda Casei and Theo Altmeyer in 1969. The music of Zelenka has become widely known and available since that time through recordings and sparked the interest of other musicians such as Heinz Holliger and Reinhard Goebel. More than half of Zelenka's works have now been recorded, mostly in the Czech Republic and Germany. Such recordings include the masses Missa Purificationis, Missa Sanctissimae trinitatis, Missa Votiva, Missa Sancti Josephi, and his secular works "Sub olea pacis" and "Il Diamante", mostly performed by new Czech ensembles using original instruments and interpretational techniques of the Baroque era. The most popular are Musica Florea, Collegium 1704, Ensemble Inégal, and Capella Regia Musicalis. In honor of Jan Dismas Zelenka, in 1984 the Autumn Music Festival under Blaník was founded and commemorated with the memorial plaque on his house. Since then, performances of Zelenka's music have regularly taken place in and around his birthplace. Several analyses of the composer's sacred and instrumental compositions (particularly fugues and other counterpoint) have contributed to his popularity, due to the efforts of both musicologists and organizations dedicated to the dissemination of his work. The most analyzed of Zelenka's compositions are his masses, requiems, litanies and other sacred vocal compositions, which have, ever since the revival of his music, experienced a surge in reputation and veneration. According to Susanne Oschmann, "Jan Dismas Zelenka has of late been recognized as one of the most original composers of a musical epoch that was long thought to have been shaped by Bach and Handel", and according to Heinz Holliger, "It seems essential to me, that Zelenka (like Bach) obviously has absorbed the total compositional knowledge of the previous generations, and, by virtue of his most individual personality exposes it to a breaking test, thus setting free a critical element opposing the tradition." Zelenka's complete compositions are listed in the digitized database of the Petrucci Music Library, as well as on the Discover Zelenka website. The total number of Zelenka's known and attributed opus-numbered works is 249. The sacred vocal-instrumental music is at the center of his compositions and include over 20 masses, four extensive oratorios and requiems, two Magnificats and Te Deum settings, 13 litanies, many psalms, hymns, and antiphons. Zelenka also wrote a number of purely instrumental works – six trio or quartet sonatas, five capricci, one "Hipocondrie" and other concertos, overtures and symphonies. The most appreciated of Zelenka's sacred works are his masses, above all his Missa Purificationis (ZWV 16, his last mass to include brass instruments) and his final five pieces (ZWV 17–21), commonly called "High Mass" compositions, written between 1736 and 1741 and considered as Zelenka's compositional peak. The last three were also called "Missae ultimae" (Last Masses). Discover Zelenka website - various resources including a searchable worklist, CD recordings database and recommendations, information on scores, timeline, etc. Media related to Jan Dismas Zelenka at Wikimedia Commons Free scores by Jan Dismas Zelenka at the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP) Free scores by Jan Dismas Zelenka in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki) Discussions about Jan Dismas Zelenka on Bach Cantatas Website https://www.jdzelenka.net/reading-frequently-asked-questions.php

7. Johann Stamitz (1717 - 1757)

With an HPI of 63.41, Johann Stamitz is the 7th most famous Czech Composer. His biography has been translated into 36 different languages.

Johann Wenzel Anton Stamitz (Czech: Jan Václav Antonín Stamic; 18 June 1717 – 27 March 1757) was a Bohemian composer and violinist. His two surviving sons, Carl and Anton Stamitz, were composers of the Mannheim school, of which Johann is considered the founding father. His music is stylistically transitional between the Baroque and Classical periods.

8. Josef Suk (1874 - 1935)

With an HPI of 62.75, Josef Suk is the 8th most famous Czech Composer. His biography has been translated into 35 different languages.

Josef Suk (4 January 1874 – 29 May 1935) was a Czech composer and violinist. He studied under Antonín Dvořák, whose daughter he married.

9. Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897 - 1957)

With an HPI of 62.66, Erich Wolfgang Korngold is the 9th most famous Czech Composer. His biography has been translated into 37 different languages.

Erich Wolfgang Korngold (German: [ˈeːʁɪç ˈvɔlfɡaŋ ˈkɔʁnɡɔlt]; May 29, 1897 – November 29, 1957) was an Austrian composer and conductor, who fled Europe in the mid-1930s and later adopted US nationality. A child prodigy, he became one of the most important and influential composers in Hollywood history. He was a noted pianist and composer of classical music, along with music for Hollywood films, and the first composer of international stature to write Hollywood scores. When he was 11, his ballet Der Schneemann (The Snowman) became a sensation in Vienna; his Second Piano Sonata, which he wrote at age 13, was played throughout Europe by Artur Schnabel. His one-act operas Violanta and Der Ring des Polykrates were premiered in Munich in 1916, conducted by Bruno Walter. At 23, his opera Die tote Stadt (The Dead City) premiered in Hamburg and Cologne. In 1921 he conducted the Hamburg Opera. During the 1920s he re-orchestrated, re-arranged and nearly re-composed several operettas by Johann Strauss II. By 1931 he was a professor of music at the Vienna State Academy. At the request of motion picture director Max Reinhardt, and due to the rise of the Nazi regime, Korngold moved to Hollywood in 1934 to write music for films. His first was Reinhardt's A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935). He subsequently wrote scores for such films as Captain Blood (1935), which helped boost the career of its starring newcomer, Errol Flynn. His score for Anthony Adverse (1936) won an Oscar; two years later he won another Oscar for The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). Korngold scored 16 Hollywood films in all, and received two more nominations for Oscars. Along with Max Steiner and Alfred Newman, he is one of the founders of film music. Although his late-Romantic style of classical composition was no longer as popular when he died in 1957, his music underwent a resurgence of interest in the 1970s beginning with the release of the RCA Red Seal album The Sea Hawk: The Classic Film Scores of Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1972). This album, produced by his son George Korngold, was hugely popular and ignited interest in his other film music (and that of other classic film composers), as well as in his concert music, which often incorporates popular themes from his film scores (an example being the Violin Concerto in D, Op. 35, which incorporates themes from four of his motion picture scores and has become part of the standard repertoire).

10. Anton Reicha (1770 - 1836)

With an HPI of 61.57, Anton Reicha is the 10th most famous Czech Composer. His biography has been translated into 32 different languages.

Anton (Antonín, Antoine) Joseph Reicha (Rejcha) (26 February 1770 – 28 May 1836) was a Czech-born, Bavarian-educated, later naturalized French composer and music theorist. A contemporary and lifelong friend of Beethoven, he is now best remembered for his substantial early contributions to the wind quintet literature and his role as teacher of pupils including Franz Liszt, Hector Berlioz and César Franck. He was also an accomplished theorist, and wrote several treatises on various aspects of composition. Some of his theoretical work dealt with experimental methods of composition, which he applied in a variety of works such as fugues and études for piano and string quartet. None of the advanced ideas he advocated in the most radical of his music and writings, such as polyrhythm, polytonality and microtonal music, were accepted or employed by other nineteenth-century composers. Due to Reicha's unwillingness to have his music published (like Michael Haydn before him), he fell into obscurity soon after his death and his life and work have yet to be intensively studied. Reicha was born in Prague. His father Šimon, the town piper of the city, died when Anton was just 10 months old. Apparently Reicha's mother was not interested in her son's education, and so in 1780 he ran away from home following a sudden impulse – as he recounted in his memoirs, he jumped onto a passing carriage. He first visited his paternal grandfather in Klatovy, and then his paternal uncle Josef Reicha, a virtuoso cellist, conductor and composer living in Wallerstein, Bavaria, who adopted him. Josef and his wife, being childless, could give young Anton their full attention: Josef taught him violin and piano, his wife insisted on him being taught French and German, and he was also taught the flute. In 1785 the family moved to Bonn, where Reicha became a member of the Hofkapelle of Max Franz, Elector of Cologne, playing violin and second flute in the court orchestra under his uncle's direction. The young Beethoven entered the Hofkapelle as violist and organist in 1789 and Reicha befriended him. Christian Gottlob Neefe, one of the most important figures in the musical life of the city at the time, may well have instructed both Reicha and his gifted piano pupil Beethoven in composition and introduced them to the works of Johann Sebastian Bach, such as The Well-Tempered Clavier. From about 1785 Reicha studied composition secretly, against his uncle's wishes, composing and conducting his first symphony in 1787 and entering the University of Bonn in 1789, where he studied and performed until 1794, when Bonn was attacked and captured by the French. He managed to escape to Hamburg, vowed never to perform in public again and began to earn a living teaching harmony, composition and piano. He continued composing and studied mathematics, philosophy and, significantly, methods of teaching composition. In 1799 he moved to Paris, hoping to achieve success as an opera composer. These hopes were dashed, however: he could neither get his old librettos accepted nor find suitable new ones despite support from friends and influential members of the aristocracy, and moved on to Vienna in 1801. Once there, like Beethoven and the young Schubert, he studied with Antonio Salieri and Johann Georg Albrechtsberger. Both were renowned teachers, and Albrechtsberger was also an important theorist and acknowledged authority on counterpoint and fugal theory. Reicha called on Haydn, whom he had met several times in Bonn and Hamburg during the 1790s, and renewed his friendship with Beethoven, whom he had not seen since 1792, when the latter moved from Bonn to Vienna. At this time (late 1802–1803) Beethoven's Eroica symphony was in gestation, and it is likely that the two men exchanged ideas on fugues in modern composition. Reicha's move to Vienna marked the beginning of a more productive and successful period in his life. As he wrote in his memoirs, "The number of works I finished in Vienna is astonishing. Once started, my verve and imagination were indefatigable. Ideas came to me so rapidly it was often difficult to set them down without losing some of them. I always had a great penchant for doing the unusual in composition. When writing in an original vein, my creative faculties and spirit seemed keener than when following the precepts of my predecessors." In 1801, Reicha's opera L'ouragan, which failed in Paris, was performed at the palace of Prince Joseph Franz von Lobkowitz, a prominent patron of Beethoven. Empress Maria Theresa (of Naples and Sicily) commissioned another opera after this performance, Argine, regina di Granata, which was only privately performed. His studies in Hamburg came to fruition here with the publication of several semi-didactic, encyclopedic works such as 36 Fugues for piano (published in 1803, dedicated to Haydn) and L'art de varier, a large-scale variation cycle (composed in 1803/04 for Prince Louis Ferdinand), and the treatise Practische Beispiele (published in 1803), which contained 24 compositions. Reicha's life and career in Vienna were interrupted by Napoleon's November 1805 occupation of the city by French troops. In 1806 Reicha travelled to Leipzig to arrange a performance of his new work, the cantata Lenore (stopping at Prague to see his mother for the first time since 1780), but because Leipzig was blockaded by the French, not only was the performance cancelled but he could not return to Vienna for several months. When he did return it was not for long, because by 1808 the Austrian Empire was already preparing for another war, the War of the Fifth Coalition, so Reicha decided to move back to Paris. He was soon teaching composition privately, future prolific composer George Onslow being one of his pupils by 1808. This time three of his many operas were produced, but they all failed; yet his fame as theorist and teacher increased steadily, and by 1817 most of his pupils became professors at the Conservatoire de Paris. The following year, Reicha himself was appointed professor of counterpoint and fugue at the Conservatoire with the support of Louis XVIII, despite opposition from its influential professor of composition and (from 1822) director Luigi Cherubini This second Paris period produced several important theoretical writings. Cours de composition musicale, published by 1818, became the standard text on composition at the Conservatoire; the Traité de mélodie of 1814, a treatise on melody, was also widely studied. Another semi-didactic work, 34 Études for piano, was published by 1817. It was also in Paris that Reicha started composing the 25 wind quintets which proved to be his most enduring works: far more conservative musically than the experimental fugues he had written in Vienna, but exploiting the skill of his virtuosi from the Opéra Comique to extend significantly the technique and musical ambitions of future players of the still evolving wind instruments. In 1818 he married Virginie Enaust, who bore him two daughters. Around this time he taught composition to the future pioneer of the modern oboe Henri Brod, and in 1819 he began teaching harmony and music theory to Louise Farrenc; after interrupting her studies for her own marriage, she completed studies at the Paris Conservatory with Reicha in 1825. Reicha stayed in Paris for the rest of his life. He became a naturalized citizen of his adopted country in 1829 and Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur in 1835. That same year, he succeeded François-Adrien Boieldieu at the Académie Française. He published two more large treatises, Traité de haute composition musicale (1824–1826) (Treatise on advanced musical composition) and Art du compositeur dramatique (1833) (Art of dramatic composition), on writing opera. His ideas expressed in the former work sparked some controversy at the Conservatoire. In 1826 Franz Liszt, Hector Berlioz and Henri Cohen became students of his, as did composers Charles Gounod and Pauline Viardot sometime later. Berlioz in his Memoirs acknowledges that Reicha was 'an admirable teacher of counterpoint' who cared about his pupils and whose 'lessons were models of integrity and thoroughness' – high praise indeed from one so critical of the Conservatoire in general. Frédéric Chopin considered studying with him in December 1831 shortly after arriving in Paris from his native Poland, but ultimately decided otherwise. From June 1835 until Reicha's death in May 1836, the young César Franck took private lessons. His notebooks survive (in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris) with Reicha's annotations (and a later cryptic comment possibly by Erik Satie), showing how hard Reicha worked his 13-year-old pupil. Reicha was buried at the Père Lachaise Cemetery, and Luigi Cherubini resumed the teaching of counterpoint at the Conservatoire, replacing Reicha's heretical work on fugue with his own as the standard text. It is difficult to present a coherent list of Reicha's works, because the opus numbers assigned to them at the time of publication are in disarray, some pieces were supposedly lost, and many works were published several times, sometimes as part of larger collections. His surviving oeuvre covers a vast array of genres and forms, from opera to piano fugues. He is best known today for his 25 wind quintets, composed in Paris between 1811 and 1820, which were mostly premiered from 1817 in the foyer of the Théâtre Favart by some of the world's finest wind soloists, to such effect that they were played all over Europe shortly afterward. Reicha claimed in his memoirs that his wind quintets filled a void: "At that time, there was a dearth not only of good classic[al] music, but of any good music at all for wind instruments, simply because the composers knew little of their technique." Indeed, Reicha's experiences as a flautist must have helped in the creation of these pieces, in which he systematically explored the possibilities of the wind ensemble and invented an extended sonata form variant that could accommodate as many as five principal themes. Reicha wrote his first experimental quintet in 1811; the 'incomparably superior' first two of the later published quintets of Opus 88 were written by 1814 after further study of the instruments and collaboration with his players, with the remaining four completed before publication in 1817. Three further sets of six were published as Opus 91 in 1818, Opus 99 in 1819 and Opus 100 in 1820. Musically, the wind quintets represent a more conservative trend in Reicha's oeuvre when compared to his earlier work, namely the compositions of the Viennese period. In the quintets, as he describes in his preface, Reicha wanted to expand the technical limits of the five still evolving wind instruments (hand horn, 'un-rationalised' flute and clarinet, double reeds with fewer keys), and thereby also the ambitions of amateur wind players, by establishing a nucleus for a corpus of substantial work like that available to string players (and consciously more serious than the Harmoniemusik of the last century). His writing combines virtuoso display (often still very challenging today, yet idiomatic for each instrument), popular elements (from the comic opera his soloists played, from his Bohemian folk heritage, from the military background to his life – many marches, 'walking' themes and fanfares), and his lifelong more academic interests in variation form and counterpoint. Four of the quintets have trios in passacaglia form, the repeating theme however being on different instruments in each case so not necessarily in the bass. The earlier Beethoven connection, now severed, is revisited in the scherzo of the quintet in E-flat Op. 100 no. 3, which contains clear musical quotations (most obvious in the horn part) from both the scherzo of his Eroica (also in E-flat major) and the first movement of his 5th symphonies. Berlioz says the quintets "enjoyed a certain vogue in Paris for a number of years. They are interesting pieces but a little cold", while Louis Spohr, who was visiting Paris in 1820–21 and reserved judgment until he had heard several performed, assessed them in a letter home (which he included in his autobiography) as having too many ideas linked carelessly or not at all ("were he less rich, he would be richer"), "yet the minuets and scherzi, as short pieces, are less open to this objection, and some of them are real masterpieces in form and contents". Spohr was generally impressed by the virtuosity of the wind soloists and was very pleased with their performance of his own piano and wind quintet. Berlioz also comments on two of the players (in other works): "Joseph Guillou, the first flute...has to dominate...so he transposes the flute line up an octave, thus destroying the composer's intention" (p. 56); of Gustave Vogt's cor anglais playing he says (p. 23): "However remarkable the singer...I find it hard to believe she can ever have made it sound as natural and touching as it did on Vogt's instrument". Reicha was particularly close personally to the horn player L-F Dauprat, who was nominated by the family's lawyer as a surrogate guardian to Reicha's two daughters at his death. Technical wizardry also prevails in compositions that illustrate Reicha's theoretical treatise Practische Beispiele (Practical Examples) of 1803, where techniques such as bitonality and polyrhythm are explored in extremely difficult sight-reading exercises. 36 fugues for piano, published in 1803, was conceived as an illustration of Reicha's neue Fugensystem, i.e. those new ideas about fugues which had piqued Beethoven. Reicha proposed that second entries of fugue subjects in major keys could occur in keys other than the standard dominant), to widen the possibilities for modulations and undermine the conservative tonal stability of the fugue. The fugues of the collection not only illustrate this point, but also employ a variety of extremely convoluted technical tricks such as polyrhythm (no. 30), combined (nos. 24, 28), asymmetrical (no. 20) and simply uncommon (no. 10 is in 12/4, no. 12 in 2/8) meters and time signatures, some of which are derived from folk music, an approach that directly anticipates that of later composers such as Béla Bartók. No. 13 is a modal fugue played on white keys only, in which cadences are possible on all but the 7th degree of the scale without further alteration. Six fugues employ two subjects, one has three, and No. 15 has six. In several of the fugues, Reicha established a link with the old tradition by using subjects by Haydn (no. 3), Bach (no. 5), Mozart (no. 7), Scarlatti (no. 9), Frescobaldi (no. 14) and Handel (no. 15). Many of the technical accomplishments are unique to fugue literature. The études of op. 97, Études dans le genre fugué, published in Paris by 1817, are similarly advanced. Each composition is preceded by Reicha's comments for young composers. Thirty of the 34 études included are fugues, and every étude is preceded by a prelude based on a particular technical or compositional problem. Again an exceptionally large number of forms and textures is used, including, for example, the variation form with extensive use of invertible counterpoint (no. 3), or an Andante in C minor based on the famous Folia harmonic progression. Reicha's massive cycle of variations, L'art de varier, uses the same pedagogical principle and includes variations in the form of four-voice fugues, program music variations, toccata-like hand-crossing variations, etc., foreshadowing in many aspects not only Beethoven's Diabelli Variations, but also works by Schubert, Wagner and Debussy. Many of Reicha's string quartets are similarly advanced, and also anticipate numerous later developments. The eight Vienna string quartets (1801–1805) are among his most important works. Though largely ignored since Reicha's death, they were highly influential during his lifetime and left their mark on the quartets of Beethoven and Schubert, much as Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier was ignored by the public but well known to Beethoven and Chopin. Reicha also wrote prolifically for various kinds of ensembles other than wind quintets and string quartets, including violin sonatas, piano trios, horn trios, flute quartets, various works for solo wind or string instruments accompanied by strings, and works for voice. He also wrote in larger-scale genres, including at least eight known symphonies, seven operas, and choral works such as a Requiem. Much of Reicha's music remained unpublished and/or unperformed during his life, and virtually all of it fell into obscurity after his death. This is partly explained by Reicha's own decisions he reflected on in his autobiography: "Many of my works have never been heard because of my aversion to seeking performances [...] I counted the time spent in such efforts as lost, and preferred to remain at my desk." He also frequently advocated ideas, such as the use of quarter tones, that were too far ahead of his time to be understood by his contemporaries. Reicha's major theoretical and pedagogical works include the following: Practische Beispiele: ein Beitrag zur Geistescultur des Tonsetzers ... begleitet mit philosophisch-practischen Anmerkungen (1803), a didactic work that includes 25 sight-reading exercises of extreme difficulty, some of which were later published separately or in collections such as the 36 fugues. The exercises are divided into three groups: one for polyrhythm, one for polytonality and one that included exercises written on four staves and so required knowledge of the alto and tenor clefs. Traité de mélodie (Paris, 1814), on melody, translated into German by Czerny Cours de composition musicale, ou Traité complet et raisonné d'harmonie pratique (1818), on composition, translated into German by Czerny (From Chapter 9 of Czerny's Letters to a Young Lady: "My view was only to give you a general idea of Harmony or Thorough Bass; and when you begin the study of it in a regular manner – and I hear with pleasure that you are shortly about to do so, and that your worthy teacher has selected for the purpose the excellent Treatise on Harmony by Reicha...") Traité de haute composition musicale (2 vols. 1824–1826), translated into German by Czerny around 1835. In this late treatise Reicha expressed some of his most daring ideas, such as the use of quarter tones and folk music (which was almost completely neglected at the time). An article in this treatise deals with the problem of irregular resolution of dissonant chords, formulating a simple law for its successful employment; this article was so innovative and celebrated, that it was published even by itself in the past and in the present, the latest English translation being the one by Lorenzo M. A. Giorgi (A new theory for the resolution of discords, according to the Modern Musical System, 2017). L'art du compositeur dramatique (4 vols., 1833), on the writing of opera. Provides an exhaustive account of contemporary performance techniques and is supplemented with examples from Reicha's own operas. In addition to these, a number of smaller texts by him exist. These include an outline of Reicha's system for writing fugues, Über das neue Fugensystem (published as a foreword to the 1805 edition of 36 fugues), Sur la musique comme art purement sentimental (before 1814, literally "On music as a purely emotional art"), Petit traité d'harmonie pratique à 2 parties (c. 1814, a short "practical treatise" on harmony), a number of articles and the poem An Joseph Haydn, published in the preface to 36 fugues (which were dedicated to Haydn). Horn Trios (1980). Zdeněk Tylšar, Bedřich Tylšar, Emanuel Hrdina. Supraphon, VT 2976-2 Complete Wind Quintets (1990). The Albert Schweitzer Quintet. 10 CDs, CPO, 9992502 36 Fugues Op. 36 (1991–1992). Tiny Wirtz (piano). 2 CDs, CPO 999 065-2 Complete Wind Quintets (2005–2012). The Westwood Wind Quintet. 12 CDs, Crystal Records, CD260 36 Fugues (2006). Jaroslav Tůma (fortepiano Anton Walter, 1790). 2 CDs, ARTA F101462 Complete Symphonies (2011). Ondřej Kukal conducting Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra. 2 CDs, Radioservis, CR0572-2 Musique de Chambre (2017). Solistes de la Chapelle Musicale Reine Elisabeth. 3 CDs, ALPHA369 Reicha Rediscovered, Volume 1 (2017). Ivan Ilić (piano). 1 CD, CHAN 10950 Reicha Rediscovered, Volume 2, Études dans le genre Fugué, Op.97 Nos 1–13 (2018). Ivan Ilić (piano). 1 CD, CHAN 20033 Reicha Rediscovered, Volume 3, L'Art de varier ou 57 variations pour le piano, Op. 57 (2021). Ivan Ilić (piano). 1 CD, CHAN 20194 Sources Bernard de Raymond, Louise (2013). Schneider, Herbert; Bartoli, Jean-Pierre (eds.). Antoine Reicha, compositeur et théoricien (Actes du Colloque international tenu à Paris du 18 au 20 avril 2013). Olms Verlag. ISBN 978-3-4871-5096-3. Demuth, Norman (April 1948). "Antonin Reicha". Music & Letters. 29 (2): 165–172. doi:10.1093/ml/XXIX.2.165. JSTOR 730884. Stove, R. J. (2012). César Franck: His Life and Times. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press. ISBN 978-0-8108-8207-2. Olga Šotolová, Antonín Rejcha: A Biography and Thematic Catalogue. Deryck Viney, translator. Supraphon, Prague, 1990. ISBN 80-7058-169-7. (The standard monograph on Reicha. Contains numerous errors, but is richly informative on many aspects of Reicha's life; see Hoyt 1993 above.) Stone, Peter Eliot (2001). "Antoine Reicha". In Sadie, Stanley; Tyrrell, John (eds.). The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (2nd ed.). London: Macmillan Publishers. ISBN 978-1-56159-239-5.‎ General reference "Anton Reicha". Classical.net. Archived from the original on 14 December 2007. Retrieved 30 August 2018. Essay on Anton Reicha by Charles-David Lehrer for the International Double Reed Society Bill McGlaughlin's article on Reicha for Saint Paul Sunday Beethoven's Contemporaries: Anton Reicha Letters Archived 11 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine written by or concerning Reicha and portraits Archived 11 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine of him in the Digital archives of the Beethoven-Haus, Bonn. Dr David Whitwell's essay on Reicha's pioneering composition for wind band, including extensive quotation from Berlioz' tribute to Reicha in his column for the Journal des débats, 1836 "John Humphries' liner note for CD 8.550432 by Michael Thompson Wind Quintet". Naxos.com. Retrieved 19 November 2019. Klassiekemuziek: Anton Reicha (in Dutch) Scores Free scores by Anton Reicha at the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP) "Anton Reicha Wind Quintets: free scores". The Royal Library, Copenhagen. Retrieved 29 October 2008.

People

Pantheon has 60 people classified as Czech composers born between 1567 and 1959. Of these 60, 1 (1.67%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living Czech composers include Vladimír Franz. The most famous deceased Czech composers include Antonín Dvořák, Gustav Mahler, and Bedřich Smetana. As of April 2024, 3 new Czech composers have been added to Pantheon including Christoph Demantius, Andreas Hammerschmidt, and Karel Husa.