Karel Odstrčil
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Karel Odstrčil (b. 1930 - d. 1997) was a Czech composer.
Biography
Karel Odstrčil's road towards composing was not typical and he entered the musical career rather late, though he hailed from a region with rich folk music traditions (born 1930 in Valaske Mezirici) and a musically inclined family.
His studies began in Ostrava at the Mining College (1954), where he acquired a mining engineer degree. Then he worked as teacher of mining subjects at the industrial school in Pribram. During his student years in Ostrava he also studied music with experts such as Josef Kysela (piano), Jaroslav Gotthard and Rudolf Vasats (conducting) and Josef Schreiber (composition). He complemented his theoretical studies with a practical activity as the conductor of the Ostrava Student Ensemble.
A meeting with composer Klement Slavicky (with whom he had private lessons between 1957 and 1963) represented the decisive impetus for the development of his creative talent: Slavicky proved to be a good teacher and adviser and sent him on the road towards the first ripe creative results.
Karel Odstrčil's first compositions include the symphonic triptych "450 Fahrenheit" (awarded a diploma of honour in the Czech Music Fund competition for the 20th liberation anniversary) and a piano sonata - both of them performed for the first time in Prague at the beginning of 1964.
In 1967 he began to work at the newly-established Studio of Experimental Music of the Czechoslovak Radio in Plzen, where he was one of the founding members. He is one of the first pioneers of electronic music in Czechoslovakia: a status demonstrated by the remarkable creative results of his special-purpose compositions (audiovisual programmes for exhibitions, museums, trade fairs, etc.) as well as autonomous ones. His most important composition of this kind is the "Wax Figures Cabinet" (1967-72) and in synthetic compositions, Integration (1972), a quadraphonic composition, combining the sounds of asymphony orchestra, mixed chorus and vocal solists with electroacoustic music. Besides electroacoustics, the author is also interested in experiments combining sound and light (through the use of a space-developed laser beam and a sound source) - in cooperation with the Brno Via Lucis group.
Electroacoustic music
- Integration - quadrophonic musical programme for the Czechoslovak exhibition ot the Brno International Engineering Fair (1972) 30'
- Wax Figures Cabinet - cycle of compositions: Einstein, Sorge, Curie Kafka Gandhi, Amundsen, Hemingway, Louis (1967-72) 78'
- Fiction I (1970) 11'
- Fiction II (1974) 11'
- The Urban Tower four chime programmes (The Spring, The Summer, The Autumn, The Winter) to inougurate the tower clock in Kosice (1977), r (under preparation) 110'
- Ex Plzen - music for an exhibition of the same name in Plzen (1978, 1979, 1980) Maxwell (1978)
- Homo Sapicus - multivision music (1980) 30'