Lukáš Matoušek
composer, founder and director of ensemble Ars cameralis, clarinetist and performer of historical musical instruments is considered as an expert in medieval music and medieval musical instruments. His compositions are performed at home and abroad. He is also active as recording director.
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Biography
Doc. MgA. Lukáš Matoušek was born on May 29th, 1943 in Prague. After graduating from the Conservatory in Prague (1967), where he studied the clarinet (with Milan Kostohryz), conducting (with Václav Smetáček), and composition (with Zdeněk Hůla), Matoušek completed a two-year course of electronic music in Czechoslovak Radio (1967-1969). In the years 1969-1975 he took private lessons of composition from Miloslav Kabeláč. In 1981 Matoušek graduated from the Janáček Academy of Performing Arts in Brno, having studied composition there with Ctirad Kohoutek. In the same year he studied medieval music in London as a scholarship holder of British Council.
Matoušek was active in 1970s as a professor of clarinet, in 1980s as a recording director of Czechoslovak Radio, in 1990s as a music director and programme director of CD label Studio Matouš and in 2000 - 2006 he was a programme director of Prague Symphony Orchestra FOK. Since the year 2001 he is teaching on Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. He is founder (1963) and director of the vocal-instrumental ensemble Ars Cameralis. In this ensemble, which performs medieval and contemporary music, Matoušek plays the clarinet and historical instruments. He is considered as an expert in medieval music and medieval musical instruments. With his ensemble Ars Cameralis he gives plenty of concerts in many countries, he recorded several CDs and also much other music for Czech and European Radios and TV stations. Several years he collaborated with Prague Madrigalists. He is a member of Umělecká beseda association (UB) since 1969 till its abolishment by comunist’s arbitrariness in the year 1972. After its reconditioning in 1990 he is again a member. In years 1994-2008 he was chairman of its Musical department and in 2008-2016 he was a mayor chairman of whole UB. Since 1990 Matoušek is also a member of Atelier 90, association of composers, performers and musicologists.
Since the early 1960s Matoušek have inclined in his compositions to dodecaphony and "new music". For some time in the 1970s he was also influenced by aleatory and timbre composition. At the same time he have always tried to look for the mutual links between the principles of the music of our time and those of the closer and more distant history of music. In the 1970s and 1980s his music was more often performed abroad (also at leading music festivals in the world) than at home. The reason being the ban of his Cantata, which responded to the occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and the subsequent award it won at an international competition in Nürnberg.
Among performers of Matoušek´s music are for example such conductors as Sir Charles Mackerras, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Jiří Bělohlávek or Ole Schmidt. Since the early 1990s his music is more often performed and recorded also in his native country.
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