Ivana Loudová

Ivana Loudová (8 March 1941 – 25 July 2017) was a Czech composer who composed over a hundred orchestral, chamber, vocal and choral works. Early life and education Ivana Loudová was born on 8 March 1941 in Chlumec nad Cidlinou. Her mother taught her piano from a young age. When she attempted to make improvements to classical pieces, her mother disapproved, telling her “What’s given in the notes has to be played according to the notes. If you want it to be different, then write it yourself, separately”. From then Loudová began to write her own short piano pieces. In 1958, Loudová entered the Creative Youth Competition in Bratislava, where she got to the middle round of the competition. She played Beethoven’s Sonata Pathetique and her own composition Ten Variations on a Theme of My Own. When the jury rated her own piece higher than her piano performance, Loudová decided that she wanted to become a composer. Due to a scholarship from the French government, Loudová was able to intern at the Centre Bourdan in Paris and study under Olivier Messiaen and Andre Jolivet. In her choral works, she composed Vocal Symphony in 1965. However in her later choral works she focused on writing pieces f