Jaroslav Křička

Jaroslav Křička (Czech: [ˈjaroslaf ˈkr̝̊ɪt͡ʃka]; 27 August 1882 in Kelč, Moravia – 23 January 1969 in Prague) was a Czech composer, conductor, and music teacher. He was the brother of poet Petr Křička.

Jaroslav Křička was born into the family of the Kelč village cantor and headmaster František Křička (1848–1891) as the oldest of three siblings. His mother was Františka Křičková (1861-1936). His brother Petr Křička (1884–1949) later became a well-known poet, and his sister Pavla Křičková (1886–1972) became a writer. Their father enthusiastically supported the musical education of his children; Jaroslav received violin, piano, and voice lessons as a child.

He attended high school in Havlíčkův Brod and graduated in 1900. As a high school student, he founded his own vocal quartet, string quartet, and student orchestra and began to compose. After graduating from high school, he moved to Prague and studied at the Prague Conservatory from 1902 to 1905. Under the tutelage of Josef Klicka, he studied organ, orchestration, and harmony. He studied conducting with Karel Knittl and composition with Karel Stecker. His musical role models were the famous Czech composers Antonín Dvořák, Bedřich Smetana, and Zdeněk Fibich, and later also the Czech modernists Vítězslav Novák and Josef Suk.

After studying for a year in Berlin (1905–1906), he moved to Russia for three years (1906–1909) and taught music theory, harmony, and chamber music at the Imperial Music School in Ekaterinoslav. There he founded an orchestra with which he performed works by Antonín Dvořák and Bedřich Smetana. In Russia, he developed friendships with the composers Alexander Glazunov and Sergei Tanejev. Křička was inspired by Russian poetry and music, and the work of composers Mikhail Glinka and Modest Mussorgsky particularly influenced his compositions. It was in Ekaterinoslav that he penned one of his most famous songs, "Albatross," from the cycle Severní noci (Northern Nights). Mussorgsky's song cycles for children also inspired him to compose his own children's songs.

Křička moved to Prague in 1909, and from 1911 to 1920 he directed the Prague choir Hlahol. His tenure as director afforded him the opportunity to study numerous works by contemporary Czech composers such as Leoš Janáček, Vítězslav Novák, and Otakar Jeremiáš, in addition to premiering Novák's cantata Svatební košile (The Wedding Shirt), Op.48. During this period, he also began his first major work: the opera Hipolyta. From 1911 he championed his former teacher Karel Stecker at the Prague Conservatory, and after Stecker's death in 1919 he was appointed as a full professor of composition.

On October 14, 1918, he married Marie Krbová, a pianist and singer in the Hlahol choir who studied under Josef Bohuslav Foerster. Together with his student Jaroslav Řídký, Křička conducted the choir of the Czech Philharmonic from 1922 to 1930. During the critical years of World War II and the German occupation (1942–1945), he also served as rector of the Conservatory.

During his many years of teaching at the Prague Conservatory, Jaroslav Křička trained numerous composers, including Jaroslav Řídký, Karel Hába, Emil Hlobil, Karel Janeček, Václav Trojan, Ján Cikker, Jan Kapr and Jarmil Burghauser. He spent the last years of his life in the peaceful foothills of the Bohemian forest, where he dedicated himself to his composing in the village of Červené Dvorce near Sušice. He is buried in the Vyšehrad cemetery in Prague.

In 1936, Jaroslav Křička won a bronze medal in the art competitions of the Olympic Games for his Horácká suita (Horácko Suite a.k.a. Mountain Suite), Op. 63.

He was elected a member of the Czech Academy of Sciences and Arts in 1921, and in 1957 he received the esteemed title of Honored Artist (Zasloužilý umělec). The Křička Brothers Museum is located in his hometown of Kelč.

Jaroslav Křička's work encompasses almost all musical genres, in his words, “from passions to operetta,” with a distinct emphasis on vocal compositions. In addition to song cycles and cantatas, he also composed operas, operettas, incidental music, symphonies, string quartets, and chamber music works. His compositions for children were significant and unique for his time; he wrote numerous children's song cycles and the first Czech children's opera, Ogaři (1918). At the end of the silent film era, Křička began composing film scores; in 1929, he wrote the music for the historical film Svatý Václav, which commemorated one thousand years since the death of the Bohemian ruler Wenceslaus I. He began composing operettas after 1945.

In addition to his musical compositions, Křička wrote many treatises on music and published regularly in the music periodicals Hudební revue and Hudební rozhledy.