Svatopluk Havelka

Svatopluk Havelka (born 2 May 1925 – 24 February 2009) was a Czech composer. Svatopluk Havelka was born at Vrbice in the Karviná district. He studied composition privately with Karel Boleslav Jirák from 1945 to 1947, while a student of musicology at the Faculty of Philosophy of Charles University under Josef Hutter and Antonín Sychra. Havelka subsequently became a member of the music department of Czechoslovak Radio in Ostrava. At the same time he was the founder and artistic director of the NOTA Ensemble (1949–1950). For the next four years he was an instructor and composer with the Army Art Ensemble. Beginning in 1954 he devoted himself to freelance composing. He was especially prolific as a film composer, providing music for more than 200 films, including several from the Czech "New Wave" in the 1960s. His early style was marked by traits of the folk music of his native Moravia, but he later turned to more complex techniques, particularly in the large-scale orchestral and choral works he composed in the 1960s and 70s. Beginning in the late 1970s his attention became focused on Christian subjects, and he composed many biblically based chamber works and choral-orchestral pieces. Havelka died on 24 February 2009 in Prague.