Dalibor C. Vačkář

An author of concert, film, and popular music, D. C. Vačkář was born to the family of a composer, music life organizer, and conductor Václav Vačkář.

In the years 1922–1929 he attended the Prague conservatory, studying violin with Rudolf Reissig and composition with Otakar Šína. He then went on to the Master School where he studied violin with Karel Hoffmann and composition with Josef Suk. He also applied himself to conducting that he studied under Otakar Ostrčil.

For one year Vačkář was a member of Jaroslav Ježek’s Orchestra at the Liberated Theatre, and together with Ježek and E. F. Burian he worked for the revolutionary group Devětsil (Butterbur). Between 1934 and 1945 he was a member of the Czechoslovak Radio Symphony Orchestra, and from 1945 to 1947 he worked as a screenwriter and dramaturge in a film studio. Afterwards, he became a freelance composer and writer.

Under the pseudonym Dalibor C. Faltis he published several collections of poems and a play entitled Veronika that was to serve as the subject-matter of Rafael Kubelík’s opera of the same name.

As a composer he contributed to many genres, his music is comprehensible and rewarding for the listener. In the inter-war period, influenced by the Neo-Classical musical speech, he wrote symphonic (for example five symphonies), chamber, and vocal compositions. Apart from concert music he also wrote pop-music pieces, using the pseudonym Pip Faltis, Petr Filip, Tomáš Martin or Karel Raymond.

He composed music to fourteen full-length pictures, including Vacation with Angel (Dovolená s Andělem, 1952), The Proud Princess (Pyšná princezna, 1952), or Music from Mars (Hudba z Marsu, 1955). Together with his father, he is the coauthor of the publication Instrumentation of Symphonic and Wind Orchestra (Instrumentace symfonického orchestru a hudby dechové, 1954).

Titles for sale:
Winter in Tatras, the music for the film Anděl in the Mountains
The Music for "The Conceited Princess"

Titles for hire - see Complete catalogue