Miroslav Venhoda

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Miroslav Venhoda (born April 18, 1915 in Moravské Budějovice , † May 7, 1987 in Prague ) was a Czech choir conductor .

Venhoda took lessons from Anna Blatná at the music school in his hometown . From 1930 he worked as an organist, in the following year he gained his first experience as a choir conductor with a student choir. In 1934 he began studying the Czech language at the Philosophical Faculty of Charles University in Prague , which he finished in 1938. At the same time he attended musicological lectures with Zdeněk Nejedlý , Josef Hutter , Metod Doležil and Josef Bohuslav Foerster .

In 1938 and 1939 Venhoda continued his training at the Pontificio Instituto di Musica Sacra in Rome. After his return to Prague, he founded the Schola Cantorum based on his model , with which he gave more than one hundred concerts and undertook several tours until its forced dissolution in 1950. He also taught music a. a. at the Prague Teachers' Institute and worked as organist and choirmaster at the church of the Dominican monastery Aegidius von St. Gilles (1940–45) and the monastery church of the Assumption of the Virgin of Strahov Monastery (1946–50). In 1946 he published the textbook Úvod do studia gregoriánského chorálu (Introduction to the Study of Gregorian Chant).

After the forced dissolution of the Schola Cantorum in 1950, Venhoda initially worked in a junkyard until the head of the Gramofonové závody , Jaroslav Šeda , found him a position as music editor, which he held until 1967. In 1954 he became director of the children's choir of the Prague Choral Society in Hlahol , and in the following year director of the Glagolithic Chamber Choir. In 1957 he gave up the leadership of the children's choir and, as the successor to his teacher Doležil, became the director of the Pěvecké sdružení pražských učitelů (Prague Teachers Choir), with whom he worked for a year. During this time Bohuslav Martinů composed the piece Zbojnící for the choir.

In 1956 Venhoda founded the Noví pěvci madrigalů a komorní hudby , from which the Pražští madrigalisté (Prague Madrigalists), a double quartet of singers and instrumentalists, emerged. He toured Czechoslovakia and beyond with the successful ensemble, and received the Prague City Prize for appearances in the stairwell of the National Museum. Participation in the Josquin des Prés competition in 1971 brought the ensemble invitations to two (successful) concert tours through the USA.

After leaving the Prague madrigalists, Venhoda founded the Společnost pro starou hudbu (Society for Early Music), an association that introduced music amateurs to the theory and practice of early music and held annual summer seminars for this purpose. While preparing for the third of these seminar cycles in 1987, Venhoda was killed in a car accident. On his 80th birthday in 1995, he was honored with a concert by Prague Madrigalists on the steps of the Prague National Museum.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Venhoda, Miroslav
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Czech choir conductor
DATE OF BIRTH April 18, 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH Moravské Budějovice
DATE OF DEATH May 7, 1987
Place of death Prague