Václav Tomášek
Encyclopedia
Skutec
Skuteč is a small town in the Pardubice Region of the Czech Republic near from the town Hlinsko. It has about 5,400 inhabitants.-External links:*...
, Bohemia
Bohemia
Bohemia is a historical region in central Europe, occupying the western two-thirds of the traditional Czech Lands. It is located in the contemporary Czech Republic with its capital in Prague...
– 3 April 1850, 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 people
Czechs, or Czech people are a western Slavic people of Central Europe, living predominantly in the Czech Republic. Small populations of Czechs also live in Slovakia, Austria, the United States, the United Kingdom, Chile, Argentina, Canada, Germany, Russia and other countries...
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...
and music teacher.
Life
As a pianist, he was an autodidact, becoming one of the most important piano teachers of PraguePrague
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...
for a century. Until 1824 he worked as a piano teacher in aristocratic families. Afterwards he created a considerable school of music; among its most well-known pupils were Jan Voříšek
Jan Václav Voríšek
Jan Václav Hugo Voříšek , was a Czech composer of classical music, pianist, and organist.-Life:...
, Alexander Dreyschock
Alexander Dreyschock
Alexander Dreyschock was a Czech pianist and composer.Born in Žáky in Bohemia, his musical talents were first noticed at age of eight, and at age fifteen he travelled to Prague to study piano and composition with Václav Tomášek...
and Eduard Hanslick
Eduard Hanslick
Eduard Hanslick was a Bohemian-Austrian music critic.-Biography:Hanslick was born in Prague, the son of Joseph Adolph Hanslick, a bibliographer and music teacher from a German-speaking family, and one of his piano pupils, the daughter of a Jewish merchant from Vienna...
. Tomášek made the acquaintance of Beethoven, and also of Goethe, whose poems he set. His autobiography was published in German, as well as in a Czech translation. He lived at number 15 Tomášská Street in Prague - the building bears a memorial plaque to him in Czech and German.
Style
Tomášek wrote a good deal for the piano and became a forerunner of the lyric piano piece which later reached its apogee in the works of SchubertFranz Schubert
Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer.Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies , liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music...
and Chopin. At first he remained loyal to the Classical style, but later was influenced by the newly born Romanticism
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
. An important part of his oeuvre are his songs. Besides songs to Goethe's German poems he composed also songs to the patriotic lyrics of Czech authors. He composed short pieces for glass harp
Glass harp
A glass harp is an instrument made of upright wine glasses....
and organ
Organ (music)
The organ , is a keyboard instrument of one or more divisions, each played with its own keyboard operated either with the hands or with the feet. The organ is a relatively old musical instrument in the Western musical tradition, dating from the time of Ctesibius of Alexandria who is credited with...
, and works for choir
Choir
A choir, chorale or chorus is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform.A body of singers who perform together as a group is called a choir or chorus...
.
In 1823-1824, he was one of the 50 composers who composed a variation on a waltz by Anton Diabelli
Anton Diabelli
Anton Diabelli was an Austrian music publisher, editor and composer of Italian descent. Best known in his time as a publisher, he is most familiar today as the composer of the waltz on which Ludwig van Beethoven wrote his set of thirty-three Diabelli Variations.-Early life:Diabelli was born in...
for Vaterländischer Künstlerverein
Vaterländischer Künstlerverein
Vaterländischer Künstlerverein was a collaborative musical publication or anthology, incorporating 83 variations for piano on a theme by Anton Diabelli, written by 51 composers living in or associated with Austria. It was published in two parts in 1823 and 1824, by firms headed by Diabelli. It...
.
Selected works
Piano:- Six sonaten
- EclogueEclogueAn eclogue is a poem in a classical style on a pastoral subject. Poems in the genre are sometimes also called bucolics.The form of the word in contemporary English is taken from French eclogue, from Old French, from Latin ecloga...
s (7 parts, 1807–1823) - Rhapsodies (3 parts, 1810–ca. 1840)
- DithyrambDithyrambThe dithyramb was an ancient Greek hymn sung and danced in honour of Dionysus, the god of wine and fertility; the term was also used as an epithet of the god: Plato, in The Laws, while discussing various kinds of music mentions "the birth of Dionysos, called, I think, the dithyramb." Plato also...
s (1818)
Chamber:
- Grand trio for violin, viola and piano (1800)
- Contrapunctal string quartet (1805)
Orchestral:
- Symphony in C majorC majorC major is a musical major scale based on C, with pitches C, D, E, F, G, A, and B. Its key signature has no flats/sharps.Its relative minor is A minor, and its parallel minor is C minor....
(1801) - Symphony in E-flat major (1805)
- Symphony in D majorD majorD major is a major scale based on D, consisting of the pitches D, E, F, G, A, B, and C. Its key signature consists of two sharps. Its relative minor is B minor and its parallel minor is D minor....
(1807) - two piano concertos
Songs:
- Lenora (ballad, 1805)
- Six songs (1813)
- Songs to the Goethe's poems (1815)
Operas:
- Seraphine (1811)
- Alvaro