Jarmil Michael Burghauser (born Jarmil Michael Mokrý, October 21, 1921, Písek

Písek

Písek is a town in the South Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic. It has a population of 29 909 .-About:Písek is usually called "The Athens of the South", although Athens is much more southerly, because it has many high schools and schools of higher education, e.g. the Film School in Písek...

February 19, 1997, Prague

Prague

Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...

) was a Czech

Czech Republic

The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....

 composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

, conductor

Conducting

Conducting is the art of directing a musical performance by way of visible gestures. The primary duties of the conductor are to unify performers, set the tempo, execute clear preparations and beats, and to listen critically and shape the sound of the ensemble...

, and musicologist

Musicology

Musicology is the scholarly study of music. The word is used in narrow, broad and intermediate senses. In the narrow sense, musicology is confined to the music history of Western culture...

.

After the short-lived Prague Spring

Prague Spring

The Prague Spring was a period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia during the era of its domination by the Soviet Union after World War II...

, he incurred the disfavor of his country's Communist regime

Communist Party of Czechoslovakia

The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, in Czech and in Slovak: Komunistická strana Československa was a Communist and Marxist-Leninist political party in Czechoslovakia that existed between 1921 and 1992....

 and had to adopt the pseudonym

Pseudonym

A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...

 Michal Hájků in order to write a series of compositions in a style which evoked earlier periods of music, called Storie apocrifa della musica Boema.

The works of Antonín Dvořák are commonly referred to today by their Burghauser numbers (as an alternative to the often confusing or absent opus number

Opus number

An Opus number , pl. opera and opuses, abbreviated, sing. Op. and pl. Opp. refers to a number generally assigned by composers to an individual composition or set of compositions on publication, to help identify their works...

s), which come from an authoritative chronological catalog Burghauser prepared of Dvořák

Antonín Dvorák

Antonín Leopold Dvořák was a Czech composer of late Romantic music, who employed the idioms of the folk music of Moravia and his native Bohemia. Dvořák’s own style is sometimes called "romantic-classicist synthesis". His works include symphonic, choral and chamber music, concerti, operas and many...

's œuvre. Dvořák's pieces were not published in the order he wrote them, and his publisher gave his works opus numbers corresponding to publishing date. Burghauser has helped greatly to clear up this confusion.