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. Although such a flute is now commercially available from Kotato, he wrote of it in hypothetical terms That band used it as a replacement for the pre-Boehm (simple-system) flute in A.