| Ocupação | Compositor, Musicologista, Professor |
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| Categorias | Contemporanea, Trilha Sonora |
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Vladimír Godár (born in Bratislava) is a Slovak composer who is active in the fields of contemporary classical music and film music. He is also known for his collaboration with the Czech violinist, singer and composer Iva Bittová. As an academic, he is a writer, editor and translator of books on historical music research. He has been active in reviving the music and reputation of 19th Century Slovakian composer Ján Levoslav Bella.
He studied composition under Juraj Pospíšil and piano under Mária Masariková at the Bratislava Conservatory. In 1979 he began work as editor of the music books department of OPUS, and he taught at the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava from 1985.
His work is largely unknown in the English-speaking world, but much of his music has been released by Slovart Records.
Godár began learning piano at aged 8 while at elementary school in Bratislava and then private composition lessons from the age of 13. He went on to attend the Conservatory in Bratislava, and then studied composition at Academy of Music and Performing Arts there, leaving in 1980, graduating with his Symphony No. 1 for orchestra. His student works were influenced by Bartók, serial technique and the sonorities of the Polish school. However, even then he had begun to take a keen interest in older European music, stimulated by his continuo playing with early music groups at the house of the distinguished Slovak musicologist Ján Albrecht. From 1979 he worked for nine years as the editor of the music books department of the OPUS publishing house. He became a member of the Union of Slovak Composers in 1984, and in 1988 became a postgraduate student at the Institute of Musicology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences for four years. He later worked there as a musicologist from 1992. From 1991-6 he was Chief Editor of the Slovenská hudba (Slovak Music) review. He was Composer-in-Residence at the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra from 1993-4, and since 1996 has been a lecturer at the Department of Aesthetics of the Faculty of Philosophy of The Comenius University. From 2001-7 he taught composition at the Academy of Arts in Banská Bystrica. He was also the director of the publishing department of National Music Centre from 1997-9 and is director of the publishing house Scriptorium Musicum.
