Sepp Thaler

Sepp Thaler (born June 9, 1901 in Auer , South Tyrol ; † March 10, 1982 there ) was a South Tyrolean composer .

Memorial plaque in Auer

Life

Sepp Thaler was a choirboy in the church choir in his early youth. His father was a local school overseer, chief rifleman and member of the church choir. His mother came from a well-known theater family at Gasthaus Pausa . From 1908 to 1913 he received singing, piano and organ lessons from the cooperator Nikolaus Pfaffstaller, who was a student of the composer and church musician Ignaz Mitterer , and violin lessons from Otto Graf. His parents ran a grocery store, which is why he attended the commercial school in Feldkirch from 1914 . He lived in the Stella Matutina boarding schooland was the only one who received permission to take organ lessons from Alois Both. After graduating from commercial school, he worked as a choir director and organist in his home town of Auer from 1917, especially since all clubs were in a state of emergency during the war.

In 1922 Sepp Thaler took over the position of Kapellmeister in Auer. 1922 was also the year fascism came to power in Italy. Although he did not engage in political activity, he was suspected by the authorities and sentenced to five years in prison by a court in Trento . As part of the resettlement agreement South Tyrol Option Agreement between Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini were so-called German active political prisoners in Trento released from custody and the Brenner Pass spent and there the authorities of the German Empire passed and out of the country - Sepp Thaler after seven months of imprisonment. Through the mediation of Sepp Tanzer , he got work at the folk song archive in Innsbruck . Both of them took four years of private lessons with Josef Eduard Ploner in harmony and counterpoint . In mutual correspondence they called themselves a so-called clover leaf with Sepp I for Ploner, Sepp II for Thaler and Sepp III for Tanzer. Due to the fall of Mussolini and the occupation of Italy by German troops, Sepp Thaler received the order from Gauleiter Franz Hofer in September 1943 to rebuild the music bands in South Tyrol. Sepp Thaler now lived in Kaltern , where he took over the leadership of the band. He only moved back to Auer in 1947.

In 1948, when the Association of South Tyrolean Music Bands was founded, Sepp Thaler was elected bandmaster of the association, a position he held for 32 years until 1980. Thaler led the Auer band for 58 years and was director and organist of the church choir for 62 years. In addition to a large number of brass music works, he composed secular and sacred choral works, several occasional compositions and three singspiels.

Awards

• Walther von der Vogelweide Prize
• Cross of Merit of the State of Tyrol
• Merit star of the Association of South Tyrolean Music Bands
• Austrian Brass Music Association : Golden Cross of Merit
• Golden ASM sponsor medal

literature

• The [Sepp] clover Ploner-Thaler-Tanzer. Pp. 71-72. In: Gerhard Sammer: Sepp Tanzer (1907-1983). Life - work - environment. a monograph. Diploma thesis, Innsbruck 1995.
• Church music and the church musicians of South Tyrol. Sepp Thaler. S. 265. In: Kurt Drexel, Monika Fink (Ed.): Music history of Tyrol III. 20th century. Schlern-Schriften - 344, Wagner, Innsbruck 2008, ISBN 978-3-7030-0451-3 .
• Alexander Rausch : Thaler, Sepp (also Giuseppe Simonini). In: Oesterreichisches Musiklexikon . Online edition, Vienna 2002 ff., ISBN 3-7001-3077-5 ; Print edition: Volume 5, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 2006, ISBN 3-7001-3067-8 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Sepp Thaler in the catalog of the German National Library
• Association of South Tyrolean Music Bands: portraits of Tyrolean composers. Sepp Thaler