Karel Husa ’06 completed study at the Paris National Conservatory and the Ecole Normale de Musique. He earned a doctorate from the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague in 1947.
Husa was a composer of world renown whose compositions have been recognized through the awarding of many national and international prizes, most notably a Pulitzer Prize in 1969.
Husa conducted major orchestras including those in Paris, London, Prague, Zurich, Hong Kong, New York, Boston and Washington, D.C., and he composed more than 90 works for orchestra, concert band, chamber ensemble, winds, chorale and keyboard, and three ballets.
His best-known work is the four-movement “Music for Prague 1968,” written after the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia and featuring such symbols of resistance and hope as a 15th-century Hussite war song and the sound of bells. The Ithaca College Concert Band commissioned the piece, which premiered in January 1969 and has been performed more than 8,000 times worldwide.
Husa won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1969 for his String Quartet No. 3 and the 1993 Grawemeyer Award for his Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, as well as many other composition prizes over his career. Husa was Kappa Alpha Professor of Music Emeritus at Cornell University from 1954 until his retirement in 1992. He was also elected associate member of the Royal Academies for Science and the Arts of Belgium.
Husa is considered by the world music community as one of the few major composers of the 20th and 21st centuries. He shared his love of music and composing by touring universities to guest conduct and lecture, and he visited the University of Central Arkansas in April 2006 to provide this opportunity to UCA’s music students.
UCA conferred the honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree to Husa Feb. 17, 2006.