Alois Hába

21 June 1893, Vizovice – 18 November 1973, Prague

Alois Hába was born in the family of a Wallachian musician and a folk singer. Together with his brothers, he played in his father’s band and in church. He began composing during his studies at the school of education in Kroměříž from 1908 to 1912. In the Autumn of 1914 he enrolled in Vítězslav Novák’s master class in composition at the Prague Conservatory. After the First World War, he worked in Vienna as an editor with the music publisher Universal-Edition and began studying under Franz Schreker, first privately and then at the University of Music and Performing Arts. He briefly studied at the Berlin University of the Arts.

In September 1923 he returned to Prague and began teaching at the conservatory, where he contributed to the opening of the quarter tone and sixth tone class. From 1936 he taught as a full professor at the department for microtonal music. He designed special quarter tone and sixth tone instruments and one of his quarter-tone pianos is now housed at the Music and Dance Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague.

In the 1920s and 1930s, his compositions could be heard at international festivals of contemporary music: in Salzburg in 1923, in Prague in 1924 and 1925, in Siena, Italy, in 1928, etc. Future prominent musicians of national and international importance attended his classes, e.g. his brother Karel Hába, Gideon Klein, Jaroslav Ježek, Karel Reiner, Miloslav Kabeláč, Klement Slavický, etc. He had dozens of international students as well, from Italy, Poland, Ukraine, Denmark, England, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Egypt, etc. His innovative approach to music was far-reaching. After the war, he became a professor of composition at the Music and Dance Faculty and simultaneously the director of the Theatre of 5 May (modern-day State Opera). After the communist coup in 1948 his world-famous master class in composition was dissolved.