Josef Křička

Josef Křička stems from a musical family, his father, Antonín Křička, was a teacher and popular music composer.

In the years 1904–1908 he studied at the Teacher Training School in Prague. Afterwards, in order to deepen his knowledge in the field of music he took music theory lessons with K. Bautzký between 1916 and 1919, and he also studied composition with Vítězslav Novák (1917–1920). He also attended history of music and aesthetics lectures at Charles University.

He was a very versatile personality – a teacher, author of music textbooks and radio programmes, composer, pianist, conductor, and public culture worker. His pioneering approach to music education affected substantially the modern conception of the subject. Křička published several books on music education, e.g. two volumes of The Child and Music (Dítě a hudba) from 1918.

He taught at an elementary school in Prague, and later on, together with the reformatory pedagogue Ferdinand Krch, he founded and was in charge of the Music Institute for Children. In the years 1930–1933 he also worked for the Czech Radio in Prague as an editor of the programme called the Children’s Musical Forum (Dětské hudební táčky).

During the World War II he was actively involved in the resistance movement. Křička’s compositional output includes a considerable number of instructive works, piano and orchestral compositions, suites, melodramas, songs, and children’s choral pieces. Some of Křička’s music came out in print during the author’s life.

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