Zdenek Fibich

Zden─[]k Fibich (, 21 December 1850 Ô[][] 15 October 1900) was a Czech composer of classical music. Among his compositions are chamber works (including two string quartets, a piano trio, piano quartet and a quintet for piano, strings and winds), symphonic poems, three symphonies, at least seven operas (the most famous probably ┼á├írka and The Bride of Messina), melodramas including the substantial trilogy Hippodamia, liturgical music including a mass - a missa brevis; and a large cycle (almost 400 pieces, from the 1890s) of piano works called Moods, Impressions, and Reminiscences. The piano cycle served as a diary of sorts of his love for a piano pupil. He was born in V┼íebo┼[]ice (┼áebo┼[]ice) near ─[]├íslav. That Fibich is far less known than either Anton├¡n Dvo┼[]├ík or Bed┼[]ich Smetana can be explained by the fact that he lived during the rise of Czech nationalism within the Habsburg Empire. And while Smetana and Dvo┼[]├ík gave themselves over entirely to the national cause, consciously writing Czech music with which the emerging nation strongly identified, FibichÔ[][]s position was more ambivalent. That this was so was due to the background of his parents and to his education. FibichÔ[][]s father was a Czech forestry official and the composerÔ[][]s early life was spent on various wooded estates of the nobleman for whom his father worked. His mother, however, was an ethnic German Viennese. Home schooled by his mother until the age of nine, he was first sent to a German speaking gymnasium in Vienna for two years before attending a Czech speaking gymnasium in Prague where he stayed until he was 15. After this he was sent to Leipzig where he remained for three years studying piano with Ignaz Moscheles and composition with Salomon Jadassohn and Ernst Richter. Then, after the better part of a year in Paris, Fibich concluded his studies with Vinzenz Lachner (the younger brother of Franz and Ignaz) in Mannheim. Fibich spent the next few years living with his parents back in Prague where he composed...