Josef Prantl (composer)

Josef Prantl (born July 6, 1895 in Schwaz , † November 23, 1951 in Bludenz ) was an Austrian composer and music director .

Life

After finishing school, Prantl attended the teacher training college for two years , but then studied music in Innsbruck with Josef Pembaur , in Prague with Alexander von Zemlinsky and in Neuchâtel . He took the final exam in Bochum  . He then worked as a theater conductor in Germany, Switzerland and Brazil. In Joinville , he and colleagues founded a private conservatory and enjoyed great success as a composer, especially with his opera Yara, which premiered in 1936, on an Indian subject.

In 1937 he returned to Europe to establish himself in Germany, which he did not succeed in doing. In the early years of the Second World War he worked as an office assistant in the Schwaz tax office. In autumn 1941 he was appointed music director in Bludenz, where he was responsible for the music school, the municipal orchestra and a mixed municipal choir.

When the music school resumed operations after the end of the war in May 1946, the previous choir regent  Hans Rubey was appointed director. It is unclear why the line was not transferred to Prantl again. As a NSDAP member, he was considered a Nazi collaborator, even if the Austrian democratic resistance movement issued a declaration of no objection to him immediately after the end of the war. Prantl was initially unemployed, but appeared as the head of an "orchestral association" that had split off from the municipal orchestra. In 1949 he was finally offered a position as a piano teacher at the music school, which he also accepted.

After an injury sustained in the First World War, Prantl was considered war-damaged. From the age of five he suffered from severe asthma. His health was correspondingly unstable and he died in November 1951 after a violent cardiac asthma attack .

Works

• Yara , Opera, premiered in Joinville in 1936
• The twins , operetta
• Jakob Stainer , opera (unfinished)
• Songs

literature

• Barbara Boisits: Prantl, Josef. In: Oesterreichisches Musiklexikon . Online edition, Vienna 2002 ff., ISBN 3-7001-3077-5 ; Print edition: Volume 4, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 2005, ISBN 3-7001-3046-5 .
• Thomas Greiner: Chronicle of the city music school Bludenz. (PDF; 765 kB)