Composer. One of the leading Czech composers of his generation, he was born in Pilsen, Bohemia, and attended the National Conservatory in Prague from 1901 to 1904, taking master classes with composer Antonin Dvorak. During World War I he served on the Russian front in the Information Division of the Austro-Hungarian Army and later with the Czech Legion. In 1919 he was appointed professor of composition at the Prague Conservatory. Karel was a transitional figure in his country's musical development, combining late Romanticism with austere polytonality; his style later became warmer and more lyrical. His opuses include six symphonies (1909 to 1938), the operas "Islein's Heart" (1909) and "Gevatterin Tod" (1933), "Theme and Variations" for piano (1910), the "Scherzo Capriccio" for orchestra (1911), and a String Quartet (1936). A strong-willed nationalist and anti-Fascist, he responded to the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia with his "Rebirth Symphony" (1938) and "Revolution Overture" (1941), while also acting as a key member of the Prague resistance movement. The Gestapo finally caught up with him in March 1943 and he was imprisoned at Pankrac. Despite torture and illness he managed to write a short folk opera, "Tri vlasy deda Vseveda" (first performed in 1948), and his most famous work, the "Nonet" for winds and strings, using charcoal on loose scraps of paper and even pieces of floorboard. In February 1945 Karel was transferred to the Theresienstadt (Terezin) concentration camp, where he died of dysentery and exposure the following month. He was buried in a mass grave in the camp's Little Fortress compound; after the war this grave was exhumed and the remains transferred to Terezin's new National Cemetery. Karel's "Nonet" was premiered on Czech Radio in December 1945. An authoritative edition was published in 1985 and the piece has been recorded several times.