Jewish Heritage

Wiliam Bukovy (1968)

Dec 5, 2025

His real name was Viliam Brühl. He was born on January 18, 1932, in Lučenec, Slovakia, and died on July 31, 1968, in Prague.

The Brühl family had to go into hiding in 1942, so after the war, all members of the family changed their surname to Bukový.
Wiliam graduated from high school in Lučenec (1951) and at the same time studied music with private teachers.
He then moved to Prague, where he studied music education at the Faculty of Arts (1952–56).

While still a student, he appeared as an actor in a supporting role in the musical comedy Hudba z Marsu by Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos (1955).
After graduating, he remained in Prague and began composing; he soon made a name for himself in Hollywood and Paris, where he occasionally worked.
Initially, he arranged and composed dance songs and chansons (his compositions were performed by
Rudolf Cortés, Hana Hegerová, Eva Pilarová, and actors Josef Bek and Josef Zíma, among others). He used lyrics by Vladimír Sís, Rudolf Skukálek, Ludvík Aškenazy, and others for his compositions.

In the 1960s, he also devoted himself to ballet; his Hiroshima (also known as Rozkaz and Svědomí) from 1962, with a libretto by Vladimír Vašut,
premiered in Budapest that same year and a year later in Brno, achieving international recognition.

However, the most significant part of his work was in the field of film. During his short life, he composed music for seventy films of various genres.
He collaborated on films by Jiří Sequens (Taxi, prosím, Kolik slov stačí lásce, Smrt na Cukrovém ostrově), Vladimír Sís (U nás v Mechově, Akce Kalimantan),
Hynek Bočan (Nikdo se nebude smát) and Juraj Jakubisko (Kristove roky).

He also left his musical mark on numerous feature films, puppet films, special effects films, and animated films for children.
His collaboration with Břetislav Pojar (since 1959) proved to be fruitful when his music for Pojar's film Lev a písnička won an award at the international animated film festival in Annecy, France.
He also provided music for Pojar's popular animated series Potkali se u Kolína and his animated/puppet films Ideál, Jak zařídit byt and Půlnoční příhoda (with Jiří Trnka).
In addition to the aforementioned Pojar films, we can also mention, for example, Zdeněk Miler's cartoon series about Krteček, Štěňátko, and Cvrček.

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