Born: 1921, Prague, Czech Republic

"If to express human feelings - joy, love - is romantic, then I am romantic. Expressing a fight for freedom must be romantic, too. I think that music can express these things and I don't want to be a cerebral composer. I want to be inventive, to have a score that will reveal something interesting and intriguing and sophisticated to the performer or conductor, or to another composer. At the same time, it must be musical and warm, and show that I care about other people."

Husa studied composition and conducting at the Prague Conservatory during the war years, 1941-1945; his first published work, a piano sonatina, was issued in 1943. After the war, he studied in Paris with Honegger and Boulanger, among others. He joined the faculty at Cornell University in 1954, teaching composition and conducting there until his retirement in 1992. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1969 for his Third String Quartet, a work of unusual techniques and sonorities, and the Grawemeyer Award in 1993 for his Cello Concerto.

Further listening:

String Quartets No. 2 (1953) & No. 3 (1968)

Fine Arts Quartet (Phoenix USA)

The Trojan Women (1981)

Louisville Orchestra, Akira Endo

(First Edition)

05/07