Tomáš Edvard Schiffauer (born 26 March 1942), more commonly known as Edvard Schiffauer, is a Czech composer of classical music. Schiffauer is mainly a composer of music for

theatre Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The perform ...

. He moreover composed vocal pieces like

opera Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a librett ...

s, an

oratorio An oratorio () is a large musical composition for orchestra, choir, and soloists. Like most operas, an oratorio includes the use of a choir, soloists, an instrumental ensemble, various distinguishable characters, and arias. However, opera is mus ...

, a

mass Mass is an intrinsic property of a body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the quantity of matter in a physical body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physics. It was found that different atoms and different elementar ...

and others, along with

chamber music Chamber music is a form of classical music that is composed for a small group of instruments—traditionally a group that could fit in a palace chamber or a large room. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small numb ...

, such as

sonata Sonata (; Italian: , pl. ''sonate''; from Latin and Italian: ''sonare'' rchaic Italian; replaced in the modern language by ''suonare'' "to sound"), in music, literally means a piece ''played'' as opposed to a cantata (Latin and Italian ''cant ...

sonatina A sonatina is a small sonata. As a musical term, sonatina has no single strict definition; it is rather a title applied by the composer to a piece that is in basic sonata form, but is shorter and lighter in character, or technically more elementar ...

s, a

string quartet The term string quartet can refer to either a type of musical composition or a group of four people who play them. Many composers from the mid-18th century onwards wrote string quartets. The associated musical ensemble consists of two violinists ...

, pieces for a

brass Brass is an alloy of copper (Cu) and zinc (Zn), in proportions which can be varied to achieve different mechanical, electrical, and chemical properties. It is a substitutional alloy: atoms of the two constituents may replace each other with ...

quintet, a

wind Wind is the natural movement of air or other gases relative to a planet's surface. Winds occur on a range of scales, from thunderstorm flows lasting tens of minutes, to local breezes generated by heating of land surfaces and lasting a few hou ...

octet Octet may refer to: Music * Octet (music), ensemble consisting of eight instruments or voices, or composition written for such an ensemble ** String octet, a piece of music written for eight string instruments *** Octet (Mendelssohn), 1825 compos ...

, a string trio and more.

Biography

Edvard Schiffauer was born in

Ostrava Ostrava (; pl, Ostrawa; german: Ostrau ) is a city in the north-east of the Czech Republic, and the capital of the Moravian-Silesian Region. It has about 280,000 inhabitants. It lies from the border with Poland, at the confluences of four rive ...

in an educated upper-middle-class family. However, the family's quality of life degraded after the

communist Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...

1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état In late February 1948, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, with Soviet backing, assumed undisputed control over the government of Czechoslovakia. It marked the onset of four decades of the party's rule in the country., sk, Február 1948) or ...

. In 1960, Schiffauer started his study at the

Technical University of Ostrava Technical may refer to: * Technical (vehicle), an improvised fighting vehicle * Technical analysis, a discipline for forecasting the future direction of prices through the study of past market data * Technical drawing, showing how something is co ...

, which he discontinued, but he completed his master's degree at the Pedagogical Institute of the

University of Ostrava The University of Ostrava (Czech ''Ostravská univerzita'') is a public university in the city of Ostrava, Moravian-Silesian Region, Czech Republic. Founded in 1991, it is the newest public university in Ostrava. It consists of six faculties a ...

in 1964. He also started studying musical composition in the Academy of Performing Arts. In 1961, Schiffauer and other students established the theatre Divadélko Pod okapem (''Little Theatre under the Gutter''), which became an Ostravian equivalent of the

Semafor Theatre Semafor is a theatre in Prague, Czech Republic, established by Jiří Suchý and Ferdinand Havlík in 1959. Suchý has performed there for many years and is the current owner. The theatre was a starting point for many famous Czech musicians, i ...

, in Prague. Furthermore, he was involved in the foundation of the theatre Divadlo Waterloo (''Waterloo Theatre'') and wrote the music for the musical ''Syn Pluku'' (op. 3) (''Son of the Regiment'') in 1968. Later, the Waterloo Theatre was banned by the authorities in the normalization era in

Czechoslovakia , rue, Чеськословеньско, , yi, טשעכאסלאוואקיי, , common_name = Czechoslovakia , life_span = 1918–19391945–1992 , p1 = Austria-Hungary , image_p1 ...

and a large-scale court trial was held with those involved in the theatre. Schiffauer was expelled from the Academy of Performing Arts and sentenced to nine months of imprisonment as a result of having composed for ''Syn Pluku''. He served his sentence in the prison in Pilsen-Bory, wherein he wrote the children's opera ''Vrat' nám, ptáku, Hastermana!'' (''Bring us Hasterman back, Bird!'') with the author Ivan Binar, his friend and later Charter 77 signatory. Schiffauer was employed as a worker and was being permanently interrogated by the State Security Police throughout the normalization era. This experience was briefly summarized by Schiffauer in an interview published on YouTube in February 2019.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OS6MtB0LClU. YouTube (28 February 2019). Retrieved 26 December 2019. After the

Velvet Revolution The Velvet Revolution ( cs, Sametová revoluce) or Gentle Revolution ( sk, Nežná revolúcia) was a non-violent transition of power in what was then Czechoslovakia, occurring from 17 November to 28 November 1989. Popular demonstrations agains ...

, Schiffauer was allowed to complete his university education (

Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts The Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts ( cs, Janáčkova akademie múzických umění v Brně; abbreviation in Czech: JAMU) is a public university with an artistic focus in Brno, Czech Republic. It was established in 1947 and consi ...

) and could fully engage himself into composition of music. He taught in the Janáček Conservatory in Ostrava and in the

Silesian University in Opava The Silesian University in Opava, ( cs, Slezská univerzita v Opavě) is a university offering tertiary education. It was established by the law (Nr. 314/199), adopted by the Czech National Council on 9 July 1991, making it one of the youngest u ...

Works

Unknown Dates

References

External links

Schiffauer, Edvard , musicbase.czDílo :: Edvard Schiffauer
{{DEFAULTSORT:Schiffauer, Edvard Living people 1942 births Czech composers Czech male composers Musicians from Ostrava