Burghauser's parents were painters František Viktor Mokrý and Zdenka Burghauserová.
[1] He continued his musical education by studying composition with Václav Talich at Prague Conservatory.
After the short-lived Prague Spring, he incurred the disfavor of his country's Communist regime and had to adopt the pseudonym Michal Hájků in order to write a series of compositions in a style which evoked earlier periods of music, called Storia apocrifa della musica Boema.
It is to replace the traditional opus number, which is not only incomplete but also confusing for the case of Dvořák.
Today academic references to Dvořák's works often use the Burghauser number from the catalogue.