Joseph Alois Holzmann

Joseph Alois Holzmann (born October 22, 1762 in Hall in Tirol ; † April 17, 1815 there ) was an Austrian organist  and composer .

life and work

Holzmann was the son of a musical family, his father was a parish musician in Hall, his mother the daughter of a musician at the Haller Damenstift, famous for his band . After the early death of his father (1765) his mother married the musician Johann Prohaska, who was parish organist in Hall from 1774. This promoted the musical talent of his stepson, leaving him in Fiecht  at the prestigious music teacher Magnus Dagn the basso game and especially organ and harpsichord learn. As a ten-year-old, his stepfather took him on concert tours through Austria-South Germany, where he performed as a harpsichord and organ virtuoso in residences and monasteries and was celebrated as a child prodigy and “Tyrolean Mozart”.

Holzmann took over the office of a second parish organist under his stepfather in Hall. In 1779 he was employed as a "supernumerarius", in 1785 as a real parish musician. Financially much more lucrative job offers, among others from Bozen  and Mannheim , he turned down and he remained organist in Hall until his death in 1815. Holzmann not only had an excellent reputation as an organist and composer, but also as a teacher, the best-known among his numerous students is Johann Baptist Gänsbacher .

As a composer, he mainly created works for the choir of the parish church in Hall , sacred vocal music such as masses , requiems , offertories , graduals , hymns , vespers and antiphons , as well as organ and piano music, but also oratorios and at least one music for theater. Around 200 compositions are stored in the music archive of the parish church in Hall. His works formed a basis of the church music repertoire in Tyrol until the second half of the 19th century, but were also spread far beyond the borders of the country. They are characterized by being accessible to the people, easy to perform and variable scoring, his most ambitious compositions are very close to the works of Haydn and Mozart .

literature

• Constantin von Wurzbach : Holzmann, Joseph . In: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich . 26th part. Kaiserlich-Königliche Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, Vienna 1874, p. 394 ( digitized version ).
• Uwe Harten : Holzmann, Joseph Alois. In: Oesterreichisches Musiklexikon . Online edition, Vienna 2002 ff., ISBN 3-7001-3077-5 ; Print edition: Volume 2, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 2003, ISBN 3-7001-3044-9 .
• Franz Gratl: Classical Tyrolean music traces: Tyrol also had its Mozart. In: Tyrolean and South Tyrolean cultural departments (ed.): Music. 2011 cultural reports from Tyrol and South Tyrol. Innsbruck / Bozen 2011, pp. 26-27 ( PDF; 7.6 MB )
• Christian Kayed: The "Tyrolean Mozart" from Hall. In: Haller Blatt, December 2012, p. 66 ( PDF; 143 kB )

Web links

• Joseph Alois Holzmann , Music Land Tyrol
• Joseph Alois Holzmann , Hall from A to Z