COMPOSED BY INTERNATIONALLY RENOWNED CZECH COMPOSED VACLAV NELHYBEL IN 1966. HE WROTE MANY PIECES FOR CONCERT BAND: FESTIVO, DIVERTIMENTO, AND HIS MOST POPULAR TRITTICO, ARE ALL LISTED HERE. PERFORMED BY THE 1968 UNIV. S. MISSISSIPPI SYMPHONIC BAND.
highschool bands
jazz bands
college bands
all region bands
community bands
concert bands
honor bands
interlochen arts academy
marching bands
national music camp
tmea all state bands
university bands
Story behind the song
Internationally renowned composer Vaclav Nelhybel was born on September 24, 1919, in Polanka, Czechoslovakia. He studied composition and conducting at the Conservatory of Music in Prague (1938-42) and musicology at Prague University and the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. After World War II he was affiliated as composer and conductor with Swiss National Radio and became lecturer at the University of Fribourg. In 1950 he became the first musical director of Radio Free Europe in Munich, Germany, a post he held until he immigrated to the United States in 1957. Thereafter, he made his home in America, becoming an American citizen in 1962. After having lived for many years in New York City, he moved to Ridgefield and Newtown, Connecticut, and then, in 1994, to the Scranton area in Pennsylvania. During his long career in the United States he worked as composer, conductor, teacher, and lecturer throughout the world. At the time of his death on March 22, 1996, he was composer in residence at the University of Scranton.
A prolific composer, Nelhybel left a rich body of works, among them concertos, operas, chamber music, and numerous compositions for symphony orchestra, symphonic band, chorus, and smaller ensembles. Over 400 of his works were published during his lifetime, and many of his over 200 unpublished compositions are in the process of being published. (Nelhybel's passion for composing was all encompassing and left him little time for "marketing" his works; for this reason, many of his compositions, though commissioned and performed, remained unpublished.) Although Nelhybel wrote the majority of his works for professional performers, he relished composing original, challenging pieces for student musicians and delighted in making music with young players.