[체코] Josef Bohuslav Foerster

                                                                 

                                                 Josef Bohuslav Foerster

 

 

Josef Bohuslav Foerster (30 December 1859 – 29 May 1951) was a Czech composer of classical music. He is often referred to as J. B. Foerster. The surname is sometimes spelled Förster.

 

 

String Quartet no. 4 in F op. 182

 

Foerster was born in Prague. His ancestors were of Bohemian German ethnicity, but had assimilated into the Czech community. He was a musical family normally living in Prague, where his father, a composer also named Josef Foerster, taught at the Conservatory. (His father's students included Franz Lehár.^[1]) His brother was artist Viktor Foerster. Josef was educated accordingly, and duly studied there.

 

He also showed an early interest in the theatre, and thought of becoming an actor. From 1884 he worked as a critic, and he would prove to be a writer of distinction. In 1893 he married the leading Czech soprano Berta Lautererová (Bertha Lauterer) in Hamburg, during ten years making his living there as a critic, and she was engaged at the Hamburg Staatsoper. In 1901 he became a teacher at the Hamburg Conservatory.

 

In 1903 Berta went to sing at the Vienna Hofoper, and so Josef moved there with her, continuing to make a living as a music critic. He returned to Prague on the foundation of the Czechoslovak Republic in 1918, thereafter teaching at the conservatory and the university.

In 1946 he was declared a National Composer. He died in Nový Vestec.

 

Foerster produced numerous compositions. His music is not nationalistic in the sense of employing the idioms of Czech folk music. His work, words and music, is considered^{[by whom?]} very subjective and personal, mystical and idealistic.

 

Foerster's opera Eva is another example, like Leoš Janáček's Jenůfa, of a libretto based on a play by Gabriela Preissová, though his treatment differs.^[2]

 

His compositions include five symphonies (No. 1 in D minor; No. 2 in F, Op. 29 (1892-8);^[3] No. 3, Op. 36;^[3] No. 4 in C minor, Op. 54, "Easter Eve" (1905); and No. 5, Op. 141 (1929) =

 

concertos for cello (Op. 143)

 

==============================

 a symphonic poem based on Cyrano de Bergerac,

chamber  music (including five string quartets (No. 1 in E, Op. 15; No. 2, Op. 39;^[4] No. 3 in C, Op. 61; No. 4 in F, Op. 182 (1943); and the last, written 1950-1, completed by Jan Hanuš ^[5][6]); three piano trios, two violin and two cello sonatas, and a several-times-recorded wind quintet=Wind Quintet, Op. 95 =ive operas (notably Eva),

two for violin (No. 1 in C minor)

 in  D  min0r   0p. 104), liturgical music, among other works, over 170 published opus numbers in all.

 

Many of his works remember family members: the 2nd Symphony is dedicated to his sister Marie; his brother's death led to the cantata Mortuis fratribus; his son is commemorated in the  Piano Trio No. 3, Op. 105

 

Piano Trio No. 2 in B flat major, Op. 38

Piano Trio No. 1 f minor, Op. 8

and his mother is a theme throughout his overture