Václav Nelhýbel
Czech composer (1919-1996)
Václav Nelhýbel (September 24, 1919 – March 22, 1996) was a Czech-American composer, mainly of works for student performers.
Life and career
Nelhýbel was born the youngest of five children in Polanka nad Odrou, Ostrava, Czechoslovakia. He received his early musical training in Prague, going to both Charles University in Prague and Prague Conservatory. In 1942 he went to Switzerland, where he studied at University of Fribourg; after 1947 he taught there. In 1957 he came to the United States, where he taught at several schools, including Lowell State College. He served as composer-in-residence at University of Scranton for several years until his death. The university's Department of Performance Music continues to house his full collection of works.
Some of his music is for wind instruments or concert band, and most of his published music is designed for student performers. He used non-functional modal writing, pandiatonicism, and motor rhythms extensively.
He was an advocate of the use of a flute in F, sitting between (and notably aurally bridging) the standard (and far more common) C Flute and C Piccolo.
“Václav Nelhýbel” enters the record as czech composer (1919-1996). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Václav, Nelhýbel and Czech can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q707021. VIAF identifies the subject as 7807034. The Library of Congress control number is n79072705. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1919, 1996, 1942 and 1947.
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This entry incorporates text from “Václav Nelhýbel” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.