Obituary: Jarmil Burghauser

The name of Jarmil Burghauser is well known internationally, since he is Dvorak's "Kochel".

For many years now the confusion in the opus numbering of Dvorak's music, caused by misallocation on the part of the composer's German publisher Fritz Simrock, has been corrected by the use of "B" numbers, as is done through the "K" numbers in the case of Mozart. It was in 1960 that Burghauser's Antonin Dvorak: thematicky katalog, bibliographie, prehled zivota ("Antonin Dvorak: thematic catalogue, bibliography, survey of life and work") was published in Prague and immediately placed alongside those of Schmieder for Bach, Hoboken for Haydn, Kochel for Mozart and Kinsky for Beethoven, as the definitive work of reference. As if such a monumental undertaking was not enough, Burghauser's life was lived to the full in many fields of activity, not all of them musical.

Born Jarmil Mokry in Pisek in south Bohemia, in 1921, he was taught music from the age of six and had embarked upon his first compositions by the age of 12. Formal study in composition came in 1933, when he became a private pupil first of Jaroslav Kricka and then of Otakar Jeremias from 1937 until 1941. He entered the Prague Conservatoire in 1941, where his musical training included conducting under Metod Dolezil and Pavel Dedecek. On graduation three years later he was admitted for a further two years to the advanced conducting course of the great Vaclav Talich.

His early works had already begun to receive performances, and the Adagio and Furiant from his Symphony No 2 in D minor were broadcast by Czech Radio in 1936 when he was still 15 years old. By 1942 concerts of his works were given in Prague, first under the auspices of the organisation Pritomnost ("The Present"), with which he remained associated throughout his life. More significant recognition came in 1946 when the Prague Symphony Orchestra under Vaclav Smetacek performed his cantata Utrpeni a vzkriseni ("Suffering and Resurrection") based on texts from the Kralice Bible.

Burghauser also showed an early interest in musical history and research, entering Charles University to study musicology, under Josef Huttr, and psychology. The completion of his studies coincided with the advent of Communist control in Czechoslovakia in 1948. As one who refused to embrace the new political regime, openly remaining true also to his Christian beliefs, he was denied graduation. Indeed, like many Czechs, he received his doctoral degree only in 1991, after the fall of the totalitarian regime.

From 1946 to 1950, he held the post of Chorus Master of the opera, at the National Theatre in Prague, where he worked alongside many of the great figures in Czech music, including Talich. It was in 1950 that his change of name to Burghauser, the maiden name of his mother, a distinguished painter divorced from his father, was officially sanctioned by the authorities. In the same year his second opera, Lakomec ("The Miser"), based on Moliere to a libretto by Ludek Mandaus, was produced in Liberec.

Although Burghauser also taught at the Prague Academy of Musical Arts from 1946 to 1949 and served as the programme planner for the chamber opera in the mid-1940s, from 1953 he devoted himself in music exclusively to composition and musicology. He was employed for a time by the Czech State Film Studios and he became a member of the editorial boards of the Dvorak, Fibich and Janacek complete editions, positions that he held until the end of his life.

His work for the Dvorak Edition is another of his monuments. He was appointed to that board before the death of his father-in-law, Otakar Sourek, Dvorak's first biographer, in 1956. The first volumes appeared in 1955 and the work remains in progress. In more recent times his work on the Janacek Edition has come in for criticism, particularly in his attempts to "simplify" some of Janacek's notation. In 1964 he was appointed Director of the music drama section of the Union of Composers, in that period of easing of political oppression that led to the Dubcek era and subsequently the tragic events of 1968.

Like many of his fellow artists, Burghauser became a victim of the post- 1968 backlash; the unique recordings of many of his works in the archives of Czech Radio were wilfully destroyed. His name was removed from the published list of the editorial board of the Dvorak Edition, although he continued to work as a member. He was prevented from travelling and was able to continue composing only by using the pseudonym Michal Hajku until the political situation began to ease.

Under this name his Rozmberksk Stita appeared in 1972 and his Guitar Concerto in 1978. It was typical of him that, where Dvorak and musical matters were concerned, he was prepared to take on his political masters. To the end he campaigned for the erection of a statue to Dvorak where, amazingly, none yet exists.

His own music was first steeped in the legacy of his beloved Dvorak, as can be heard in his ballet music for Honza a cert ("Johnny and the Devil", 1954). However, the influence of both Novak and Martinu can be discerned in other of his works from the 1950s, with neo-classicism and the music of Prokofiev also finding sympathy. In 1957 came perhaps his most successful score, another three-act ballet, Sluha dvou panu ("Servant of Two Masters"), based on Goldoni and first staged at the National Theatre the following year.

As with most Czech composers, his native folk music found a place in his output, no better than in the Five Czech Dances for nonet of 1940, later arranged for wind quintet in 1955. Film and incidental music also featured significantly in his large output.

In the 1960s Burghauser's style in composition changed to embrace his own use of serial techniques, to which he gave the name "harmonic serialism". Works of this time include Sedm reliefu ("Seven Reliefs", 1962) and Cesty ("The Ways", 1964), for strings, percussion, harp, guitar and cimbalom. He wrote about this method in Cesty nove hudby ("Ways of New Music", 1964). His largest work using this technique came in 1963-64 with his opera Most ("The Bridge"), staged in 1967.

In 1974 he revised his Symphony No 1 in G from 1933 and went on to write a number of chamber works during that and the next decade, as well as the significant Symphonic Fantasy: V zemi ceske ("In the Czech Country", 1982).

However, more and more of his time became taken up with musicological work and writing. Of more than a dozen books, after his "Thematic Catalogue", perhaps the most significant are Cteni a hra partitur ("Reading and Playing Scores", 1960), written with Petr Eben and Leos Janacek, and Edicni zasady a smernice ("Editorial Principles and Directions", 1979), with Milan Solc. In 1991 he was a leading figure at the conferences to mark the 150th anniversary of Dvorak's birth, held in New Orleans, Saarbrucken and Prague, as well as at the Royal Musical Association Annual Conference in London. In 1993 he led the Czech delegation at the centenary celebrations of Dvorak's visit to Spillville in Iowa. To mark his 75th birthday, Supraphon issued a special CD of his works in October 1996.

Jarmil Burghauser was a member of a remarkable group of senior Czech composers, the Pondelnici, which meets every Monday in a Prague arts club. He was a lifelong member of the church of Sv Marketa in the Blevnov district of Prague, where he, Jan Hanus, the late Vaclav Smetacek, Karel Cernicky and Jiri Vyskocil ensured a high standard of music even throughout the restrictive years of the Communist era.

An active boy scout from his youth - the movement was prohibited during both the Nazi occupation and Communist years (except for a short period before 1968) - he was called upon to become the first Chief Scout after the Velvet Revolution in 1989. He remained as Chief Scout until 1994, by which time he could hand over a lively organisation to his successor.

He was the Chairman of the Dvorak Society in the Czech Republic and in 1974 was appointed one of the first Vice-Presidents of the Dvorak Society for Czech and Slovak Music, in Great Britain. Among his closest friends was the leading British Dvorak scholar, the late John Clapham. The following generation of Dvorak and Czech music researchers will remember him as the most generous and kind-hearted person, as well as the musicological Aladdin's Cave which was his Prague home. In later years he was greatly supported by the companionship of his near neighbour Jarmilka Hnevsova. The day after his death, the long-awaited second edition of his Dvorak "Thematic Catalogue" was published in Prague.

Graham Melville-Mason

Jarmil Michael Mokry (Jarmil Burghauser), composer and musicologist: born Pisek 21 October 1921; married Vlada Sourkova (marriage dissolved); died Prague 19 February 1997.