Jan Novák

Jan Novák
Czech composer. His musical talent was evident from childhood in his abilities in violin and piano studies, and later in his attempts at composition during his school years.

After completing a classical education in Brno, he entered the Brno Conservatory in 1940 and joined Petrželka’s composition class, having previously taken a brief course with Theodor Schaefer. Forced to interrupt his conservatory studies for two and a half years during the Nazi occupation, Novák completed his course only in 1946, submitting a string quartet and the Taneční suita (‘Dance Suite’) for orchestra. He then studied briefly with Bořkovec at the Prague Academy (AMU) and in 1947 left for the USA on a study trip financed by a Ježek Foundation scholarship that he won for his Serenade for small orchestra. He completed a summer course with Copland in Tanglewood and for five months studied with Martinů in New York. On 25 February 1948, the date of the communist takeover in former Czechoslovakia, Novák returned home and settled in Brno, where he would earn his living from composition. In 1963 he was one of the founders of ‘Toůrčí skupina A’ (Creative Group A) or ‘Parasiti Apollonis’, which brought together Brno theoreticians and composers united by a common view of the role of contemporary music and an interest in new compositional techniques. His liberal views and uncompromising attitude, however, brought him into conflict with the communist authorities; he was discriminated against in a number of ways and in 1961 he was expelled from the Union of Czechoslovak Composers. It was partly this that made him leave Czechoslovakia after the Soviet invasion of 1968. With his family he lived in exile in Denmark, in Italy (1970–77) and finally in the Federal German Republic. He is buried in Rovereto, Italy.