Musicatlas
Music
Up to the present time, Vladimír Franz has composed music for almost ninety theatre performances (some of them were released on CD), about 150 songs, folk suittes The Love and Death (Laska a smrt) and The Shrovetide (Masopust), music for a mystery The Tower of Babel Building (Stavba Babylonske veze) and for a multi-art performance The Rise of Icaros (Ikaruv vzestup), a chamber cantata The Screaming of Ghosts (Krik strasidel) to the same-name poem of a famous Czech poet and the Nobel Prize winner Jaroslav Seifert, and a cantata for a mixed choir Tractatus Pacis (based on a text of a medieval European peace agreement proposal and some parts of biblical Apocalypse). Vladimír Franz also composed music for a T.V. play The Historical Events (Dejinne udalosti), for a documentary The Travel to Sambhala (Cesta do Sambhaly), music for a Czech movie The Stone Bridge (Kamenny most), an oratorio Ludus Danielis and the same-name opera.
Life
Prof. Dr. Vladimir Franz is a prominent Czech composer and painter, stage music author and since the beginning of 1990´s also one of the leading personalities of newly forming face of Czech post-modern drama.
By his stage music compositions he affected and inspired the work of the most important representatives of the new generation theatre directors, i.e. J.A.Pitinsky, Vladimir Moravek, Jiri Pokorny nad Sergej Fedotov, among others. In his work he follows the principles of his own theoretical concept of independent status of stage music as one of the determining components of the drama.
Besides stage, film and TV music he has composed monumental as well as chamber music pieces, which includes several oratorios, a musical, cantatas, songs, artificial folk songs or madrigals. The most important pieces of music he has yet composed are represented by an opera-oratorio Ludus Danielis and the First sypmhony named Songs on solitudes (Pisne o samotach).
Vladimir Franz´s artwork on the field of painting arches from symbolistically elaborated elementary natural motifs and water-coloured impressions to large expressive variations to musical themes and large "altarpieces". He has had artwork in almost ninety exhibitions and art competitions both home and abroad. His paintings can be found in galleries and private collections on three continents.
Vladimir Franz was born on May 25, 1959, in Prague. In 1982 he graduated from the Faculty of Law of Charles University. While studying law, he was privately studying painting (under famous Czech painters Karel Soucek and Andrej Belocvetov), composing, history of arts and history of music. In 1981 he co-founded the Kytka Theatre, where he worked as a composer, art designer and set designer.
He teaches at Prague’s Academy of Performing Arts as head of the incidental music department; since ‘96 till ‘99 he was a chairman of its Academic Panel. He is a three-time winner of the prestigeous Alfred Radok Foundation Award (1998, 2000 and 2002) and holder of the Czech Theatre News Prize for 2001.
In 2004 the Orpheus Publishers introduced the title Vladimír Franz: Dialogues (Vladimir Franz: Rozhovory) by the art theoretician Petr Kurka, written in the form of an extensive interview on several topics.