Ladislav Vycpálek

Ladislav Vycpálek (Vršovice, Prague, 23 February 1882 – Prague, 9 January 1969) was a Czech composer and violist. Vycpálek studied composition under Vítězslav Novák. However, he very soon found his own expressive style. He mainly composed vocal and choral works. Prior to World War I, he occupied himself with setting Czech and German symbolist poetry to music, then he drew inspiration from folk poetry. After the war, he turned towards a more humanistic philosophical reflection, creating three well-known cantatas: Cantata of the Last Things of Man (Kantáta o posledních věcech člověka, 1920–22), Blessed Be Man (Blahoslavený člověk ten, 1933), and the Czech Requiem (České requiem, 1940).