Karel Husa’s masterful Music for Prague 1968 is widely regarded as a staple of wind band repertoire. Since its premiere in January 1969, performers, reviewers, and audiences alike have embraced the poignancy of the work’s message of the brutality of war and the universal longing for freedom. For the composer, the composition was a very personal response to the overnight invasion of Czechoslovakia, Husa’s home country, on August 20–21, 1968, by Warsaw Pact forces aiming to end the liberal regime of Alexander Dubcek and suppress the country’s movements toward democracy. As Husa listened to radio reports of the invasion from his summer cottage on New York’s Cayuga Lake, the composer was inspired to memorialize the event—and his beloved homeland—through his music. The previous May, Husa had accepted a commission from Dr. Kenneth Snapp and the Ithaca College Concert Band, and so the composer fueled his anger and disbelief about the invasion into the piece. Reflecting on this work, Dr. Mark Davis Scatterday, Professor of Conducting and Ensembles and close friend of Karel Husa, observed, “The emotional impact, historical significance, musical stature and personal dignity embodied in [Husa’s] music provides a unique opportunity for ensembles, conductors and audiences to perhaps experience some of the commitment to the dignity and freedom of mankind that Karel Husa must have known when he wrote Music for Prague 1968 and re-lives every day of his life.”[1]

In November 2016, the Karel Husa Archive<https://www.esm.rochester.edu/sibley/files/Karel-Husa-Archive.pdf>—an extensive collection of the composer’s manuscripts and sketches, performance scores, recordings, and papers—arrived at Sibley Music Library, having been transferred at the composer’s request from its first home at Ithaca College. Music for Prague 1968, along with many of Husa’s other masterpieces, is intimately preserved in the Archive in sketches and scores, recordings, newspaper reviews, photographs, letters, and innumerable documents, many of which testify of the work’s powerful and lasting impact.