Oldřich Pulkert

A significant Czech musicologist whose main interest lies in the music of the 18th century and his editorial work, Pulkert studied violin from 1942 to 44 at the Conservatory in Brno under Rudolf Jedlička.

After the war he attended the grammar school in the town of Hranice na Moravě, finishing it in 1950. He then entered the Philosophical Faculty of Charles University in Prague where he graduated in 1956 in the field of musicology and aesthetics.

In 1985 he obtained his doctor’s degree at the Philosophical Faculty of Masaryk University in Brno. In the years 1964–1974 he worked in the music department of the National Library, and he was also engaged as the secretary of the Czechoslovak section of the Association Internationale des Bibliothèques Musicales (1967–1975) and the executive of the Mozart Community in the Czech Republic (1986–1996).

Currently, he is a member of several musical associations (International Musicological Society, Wiener Beethoven Gesellschaft). Among Pulkert’s most creditable feats in his musicological endeavours belongs the detection, identification, and publication of Joseph Haydn’s Concerto C major for violoncello or the discovery of an alternative version of Ludwig van Beethoven’s opera Fidelio. In 2004, he published, together with Miroslav Hronek, a book entitled Beethoven: The Ingenious Personality in Correspondence (Beethoven: Osobnost génia v korespondenci). As a researcher he concerns himself, among others, with Carl Ditters from Dittersdorf, whose life and work he has dealt with in several treatises. Pulkert has also compiled Ditters’ list of works, and has prepared two of Ditters’ composition for publication – his Concerto D major for violoncello and orchestra, and the comic opera The Doctor and the Apothecary (Lékař a lékárník).

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