page_title: Jaroslav Křička
section_title: Life
hierarchical_section_title: Jaroslav Křička / Life
caption_attribution_description: Čeština: Kelč, okres Vsetín, Česká republika. Bývalá škola, rodný dům bratří Křičků, Kelč 290. English: Kelč, Vsetín District, Czech Republic. Deutsch: Kelč, Kreis Vsetín, Tschechien. This is a photo of a cultural monument of the Czech Republic,number: 19280/8-262.Památkový&#160;katalogMIS hledat obrázky hledat seznamyWikidata Camera location49°&#160;28′&#160;32.16″&#160;N, 17°&#160;49′&#160;18.07″&#160;E&#160;View this and other nearby images on: OpenStreetMap - Google Earth
context_page_description: Jaroslav Křička was a Czech composer, conductor, and music teacher. He was the brother of poet Petr Křička.
context_section_description: Jaroslav Křička was born into the family of the Kelč village cantor and headmaster František Křička (1848–1891) as the oldest of three siblings. His mother was Františka Křičková (1861-1936). His brother Petr Křička (1884–1949) later became a well-known poet, and his sister Pavla Křičková (1886–1972) became a writer. Their father enthusiastically supported the musical education of his children; Jaroslav received violin, piano, and voice lessons as a child.
  He attended high school in Havlíčkův Brod and graduated in 1900. As a high school student, he founded his own vocal quartet, string quartet, and student orchestra and began to compose. After graduating from high school, he moved to Prague and studied at the Prague Conservatory from 1902 to 1905. Under the tutelage of Josef Klicka, he studied organ, orchestration, and harmony. He studied conducting with Karel Knittl and composition with Karel Stecker. His musical role models were the famous Czech composers Antonín Dvořák, Bedřich Smetana, and Zdeněk Fibich, and later also the Czech modernists Vítězslav Novák and Josef Suk.
  After studying for a year in Berlin (1905–1906), he moved to Russia  for three years (1906–1909) and taught music theory, harmony, and chamber music at the Imperial Music School in Ekaterinoslav. There he founded an orchestra with which he performed works by Antonín Dvořák and Bedřich Smetana. In Russia, he developed friendships with the composers Alexander Glazunov and Sergei Tanejev. Křička was inspired by Russian poetry and music, and the work of composers Mikhail Glinka and Modest Mussorgsky particularly influenced his compositions. It was in Ekaterinoslav that he penned one of his most famous songs, "Albatross," from the cycle Severní noci (Northern Nights). Mussorgsky's song cycles for children also inspired him to compose his own children's songs.
  Křička moved to Prague in 1909, and from 1911 to 1920 he directed the Prague choir Hlahol. His tenure as director afforded him the opportunity to study numerous works by contemporary Czech composers such as Leoš Janáček, Vítězslav Novák, and Otakar Jeremiáš, in addition to premiering Novák's cantata Svatební košile (The Wedding Shirt), Op.48. During this period, he also began his first major work: the opera Hipolyta. From 1911 he championed his former teacher Karel Stecker at the Prague Conservatory, and after Stecker's death in 1919 he was appointed as a full professor of composition.
  On October 14, 1918, he married Marie Krbová, a pianist and singer in the Hlahol choir who studied under Josef Bohuslav Foerster. Together with his student Jaroslav Řídký, Křička conducted the choir of the Czech Philharmonic from 1922 to 1930. During the critical years of World War II and the German occupation (1942–1945), he also served as rector of the Conservatory.
  
  During his many years of teaching at the Prague Conservatory, Jaroslav Křička trained numerous composers, including Jaroslav Řídký, Karel Hába, Emil Hlobil, Karel Janeček, Václav Trojan, Ján Cikker, Jan Kapr and Jarmil Burghauser. He spent the last years of his life in the peaceful foothills of the Bohemian forest, where he dedicated himself to his composing in the village of Červené Dvorce near Sušice. He is buried in the Vyšehrad cemetery in Prague.
caption: A plaque commemorating the family home of the Křička brothers in Kelč.
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