Jan Bernátek - Life and Choral Works

The thesis focuses on the personality and composer work of the contemporary Czech composer Jan Bernatek. The life and professional career of the composer are introduced; a large part of the thesis is dedicated to the author's compositions focusing on pieces meant for vocal ensembles. Essential pieces of his work were chosen from a complete list of all choir pieces, and these are introduced to a deeper extent. The most space is given to the choral piece Missa brevis and the folk cycle Mezi dvěma vinohrady. Musical analyses of these compositions contain the complete text documents and are accompanied by score samples. The scores of both given pieces are part of the thesis. We tried to describe characteristic features in Bernatek's work and to specify his compositional techniques on the basis of detailed analyses of fifteen pieces. A separate chapter is given to his composer's successes and awards