He died as a refugee in New York on New Year's Day 1942. Like Mozart, he was thirty-five years old. One of the greatest composers of modern Czech classical and popular music, an eternal child, a lover of beer, bullshit and dark blue blues, a boy from Žižkov who looked through binoculars high into the lights of the big cities and had to keep his beloved room close to his eyes. He always lived and played to the fullest. In spite of all the limitations, sorrows and pains. And his music needs no extenuating circumstances.
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