< /p> Leading creator of Czech contemporary music, Marek Kopelent (pictured on December 16, 2022).
Prague – Composer, pianist, columnist and pedagogue Marek Kopelent died this morning at the age of 90. The information of the Lidovky.cz server was confirmed by ČTK composer and Kopelent's son-in-law Miroslav Pudlák. Kopelent was one of the most important figures in the Czech musical life of the last half century and a pioneer of the so-called New Music. He is the author of several oratorios as well as chamber vocal and instrumental music.
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“He died today at five o'clock in the morning after a short illness,” Pudlák told ČTK. He added that he succumbed to the disease at the Faculty Hospital in Motola.
Kopelent was one of the leading representatives of the so-called New Music. others, he was the chairman and founder of the association of composers, performers and musicologists Ateliér 90, a tireless promoter of contemporary classical music and, last but not least, he was professor of composition at the Prague Academy of Music from 1991.
Kopelent's extensive repertoire includes both chamber compositions, for example String Quartet Number Three from 1963, with which he first gained international acclaim, as well as a number of vocal, orchestral and mixed compositions.The double performance of his three-dimensional oratorio Lux mirandae sanctitatis (Light of strange holiness), which he composed on the occasion of the canonization of Agnes of Bohemia, was a great success in 2001 .
Marek Kopelent has received a number of prestigious awards for his work and activity. In 2003, he became the first to receive the newly introduced Prize of the Ministry of Culture for contribution to the tricks of music. In France he was awarded the title of Knight of the Order of Arts and Literature, and in Germany the prestigious Herder Prize.
