Gone too soon
The composer Vítězslava Kaprálová Gone too soon The composer Vítězslava Kaprálová

The list of promising composers whose work was cut short by untimely death is sadly extensive. Vítězslava Kaprálová is among them, and it is painful to imagine what great music she might otherwise have written.

Had she not died in exile in France in 1940 at the age of just 25, Vítězslava Kaprálová might well have become one of the defining voices of 20th-century Czech music. During the interwar years, she was regarded as one of her country’s great musical hopes and would likely have gone on, alongside Bohuslav Martinů, to play a leading role in Czech musical life.

Born in Brno in 1915 into a musical family – her father was a composer, her mother a singer – Kaprálová first studied at the conservatory in her home city before moving to Prague. There she studied composition and conducting with Vítězslav Novák and Václav Talich, two of the leading musical figures in Czechoslovakia at the time.

In 1937, Kaprálová moved to Paris to continue her studies at the École normale de musique, where she studied with Bohuslav Martinů and Charles Munch. She achieved her first major success with the Military Sinfonietta, which won the Smetana Prize and brought her international recognition. Kaprálová conducted the world premiere herself and later presented the work at the 1938 festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music in London.

After the Nazi annexation of her homeland in 1939, she decided to remain in France, despite originally intending to return home. The following year, she married the Czech writer and journalist Jiří Mucha. When German troops advanced on Paris in 1940, the already seriously ill composer was evacuated to Montpellier, where she died on 16 June at the age of 25, apparently from complications related to tuberculosis.

After the war, Kaprálová’s output – around 50 works in total – was largely forgotten, but over the past three decades it has undergone a remarkable revival. Vítězslava Kaprálová was the first woman to conduct the Czech Philharmonic, and the conductor Rafael Kubelík was among the earliest champions of her music, repeatedly programming her works in concert. In 1948, she was posthumously elected to the Czech Academy of Sciences and Arts.