Today we celebrate the birthday of one of Dvorak’s composition pupils: one Julius Fucik, who was born in Prague on today’s date in 1872.

Fucik studied with Dvorak at the Prague Conservatory, where he also took lessons in violin and bassoon—and perhaps only a bassoonist could have conceived of a work with a prominent bassoon part entitled “The Old Bear with a Sore Head.” Is this possibly a musical recollection of one of his old Conservatory teachers in a particularly grumpy mood?

In any case, the bassoon was the instrument Fucik played at the German Theater in Prague, and he was also the bassoonist of the Czech Wind Trio. In 1897 he was appointed bandmaster of the 86th Austro-Hungarian Regiment, and started writing works for wind band. Fucik’s first appointment with the Regiment took him to Sarajevo, and in 1910 he became bandmaster of the 92nd Regiment stationed at Theresienstadt, or Terezin as the town is now called.

Now, in the years before World War I, “Sarajevo” and “Theresienstadt” did not have the ominous connotations of political assassination, concentration camps, and ethnic cleansing that they do for us today. In any case, Fucik retired from the military in 1913 and died in Berlin in 1916.

But speaking of connotations, one wind band composition by Fucik, entitled “Entry of the Gladiators,” has a quite specific connotation for most Americans... Even if you’ve never heard of Julius Fuick, chances are you’ve heard this music, since it was taken up by American circus bands as the unofficial anthem of life under the big top.