Viktor Kalabis was born on 27 February 1923 in Červený Kostelec, a small town in East Bohemia. He began learning the piano at the age of five. From 1934, he attended a secondary school. World War II brutally afflicted his youth, especially when, in 1944, within the “total commitment”, the German occupation authorities deployed him as a forced labourer to an aeroplane components factory. In 1943, Kalabis started travelling to Prague to take private harmony lessons from Jaroslav Řídký. After WWII, he studied composition with Emil Hlobil at the Prague Conservatory, as well as musicology, aesthetics, philosophy and psychology at Charles University. Kalabis spent just three years at the Prague Conservatory, throughout which he hoped for the return of Bohuslav Martinů, with whom he really wanted to study. (An ardent admirer of the composer, after the collapse of the Communist regime in 1989 he served as President of the Board of the Bohuslav Mar tinů Foundation in Prague for 12 years.) When it was clear that Martinů would not come back from the USA, Kalabis left the Prague Conservatory and joined the class of his former teacher Jaroslav Řídký at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. There he met Zuzana Růžičková, his future wife and later on a globally celebrated harpsichordist.