One of the most prominent representatives of Czech popular and dance music, Václav Vačkář studied the violin and the flugelhorn as a child, and was a member of a local band in his hometown of Dobřejovice. Because of his social position he could not afford to study at a conservatory. He thus enrolled as an apprentice with a military band. After three years, however, he was invalided out of military service owing to a hearing disorder. Afterwards, he became a soloist in a concert orchestra in czarist Russia. From the age of nineteen, he worked for several years as a conductor of Josef Faltys' theatrical company.
In 1903 he became a soloist and assistant conductor with a municipal band in Šibenik, Yugoslavia. Between 1908 and 1912 he was a conductor in Boskovice, and for a short time he worked at a theatre in Krakow. In 1913 he settled down in Prague for good. He was a violinist and, later on, a solo trumpetist with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra. In 1919, on Otakar Ostrčil's recommendation, Vačkář joined the orchestra of the Vinohrady Theatre. He was also a member of Šak's Philharmonic Orchestra. After this orchestra had been disbanded, he accepted the post of conductor in the Alma and Minuta cinemas in Prague. It is his popular piece "The Remembrance of Zbiroh" (Vzpomínka na Zbiroh) that made him go down in Czech music history in the first place, yet he also composed other music, orchestral marches, polkas, and waltzes. Together with his son he published the book Instrumentation of Symphonic and Wind Orchestra (Instrumentace symfonického orchestru a hudby dechové, 1954).
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