Czech Music Festival Stamps (1957)

This post features a set of six musicians on music festival stamps from Czechoslovakia in 1957. Some countries celebrate their musical culture on stamps more than many others. Germany and Austria, for example, have a lot of musical stamps over many decades beginning in the 1920s and 30s. Another country with many musical stamps is Czechoslovakia, and subsequently, the Czech Republic. For instance, you can read about a set of stamps featuring music in art from 1982 in this article. Or, learn about stamps celebrating the great composers Antonin Dvorak and Bedrich Smetana here.

This set of stamps is a bit unusual. In 1947, the Prague Spring International Music Festival took place for the first time. The festival features symphony orchestras and chamber ensembles from around the globe. The following year a competition for young classical musicians was added to the festival. It became a very prestigious festival and competition that the Czech people took great pride in hosting. Then, in 1957, it was one of the founding members of the World Federation of International Music Competitions.

The set of stamps I am featuring in today’s article depicts six Czech musicians in honor of the prestigious festival and the creation of this international body that united the most prestigious classical music competitions in the world.

The Stamp Designs

This set of stamps each features a single musician with a portrait printed in a different single color. Below most of these portraits is a snippet of music notation, as most were composers. On two stamps, there are also violins, indicating that these musicians were known for their violin playing. All six stamps have the same value of 60 Czechoslovakian haler. The design for these stamps is by the famous team of Czech stamp creators Max Svabinsky and Jindra Schmidt. You can learn more about this famous team and their stamps here.

Jan V. Stamic (1717-1757)

Jan Vaclav Stamic, better known by his German name Johann Wenzel Anton Stamitz, was a composer and violinist. He was born in 1717 in Bohemia. He attended the University of Prague in 1734-35, but left to be a professional violinist. In 1741, he earned an appointment at the court in Mannheim. Then in 1754, he spent a year in Paris, where he introduced (and later published) many of his musical works. He returned to Mannheim in late 1755 and died there, at the age of 39, two years later. He is a transitional figure in classical music, and his compositions bridge the gap between baroque and classical music, with elements of both.

Ferdinand Laub (1832-1875)

Ferdinand Laub was born in Prague into a German-speaking Bohemian family. He was an early prodigy on the violin, performing in public at age six and giving a full solo recital at ten. From 1843 to 1846 he attended the Prague Conservatory before moving to Vienna to start his professional career at the Viennese court. He began touring Europe as a virtuoso violinist in 1850, spending significant time in Weimar and Berlin. Then, from 1866 until 1874 he was a professor at the Moscow Conservatory. Tchaikovsky called Laub the “best violinist of our time.” Due to his skill on the violin, the stamp features a violin below his portrait.

František Ondříček (1857-1922)

The second stamp that features a violin rather than musical notation honors the Czech violinist František Ondříček. He was born in Prague to the violinist and conductor Jan Ondříček, studying first in the Prague conservatory and then in Paris. Famously, František gave the premiere of Dvorak’s violin concerto in Prague in 1883. Later that decade, he began teaching in Vienna, eventually publishing a treatise on violin technique in 1909. Following the First World War, Ondříček returned to Prague where he taught at the Prague Conservatory. He was also a composer, writing several works for violin.

Josef Foerster (1859-1951

Josef Bohuslav Foerster was also born in Prague, of German ancestry. His father was a composer and teacher at the Prague Conservatory. Josef Foerster was musician who performed, taught, and worked as a music critic. He worked for ten years in Hamburg, where he met, and married the Czech soprano Berta Lauterova. She took a job at the Vienna Hofoper in 1903, and so Foerster followed her there. After the founding of the Czechoslovak Republic in 1918, he went back to Prague to teach at the conservatory. His compositions include operas, symphonies, and chamber music. He was named a National Composer in 1946.

Vítězslav Novák (1870-1949)

The fifth stamp in the set depicts the Czech composer and pedagogue Vítězslav Novák. He was born in a small town in southern Bohemia. His family relocated in 1872 to Pocatky, where he studied the violin and piano. As a teenager, Novák studied at the Prague Conservatory, including attending masterclasses with Antonin Dvorak. By the late 1890s, Novák was creating his own musical style beyond the conservator aesthetics of his contemporaries. He was interested in impressionism and used techniques of bitonatily and parallel harmonies, rather progressive at the time. From 1909 until 1920, he was a teacher at the Prague conservatory. Novák became active in politics in the Czechoslovak Republic, particularly in arts and culture. In the 1930s, he returned to composition and premiered many of his largest works. He wrote several operas, ballets, and symphonic works.

Josef Suk (1874-1935)

The last musician in this set of six stamps is the composer and violinist Josef Suk. He was born in Bohemia and began studying organ, violin, and piano with his father. Famously, Suk began studying with Antonin Dvorak and became his best known pupil. Suk and Dvorak were close and the younger man even married the composers daughter, Otilie in 1898. Sadly, Suk lost both his mentor and his wife in the span of less than two years in 1904 and 1905. Suk wrote mostly instrumental music and famously followed Dvorak’s nationalist style, though in later works he began to show greater independence and experiment with modernist elements. He retired in 1933, two years before his own death.