Josef Leopold Zvonař

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Josef Leopold Zvonař (born January 22 in Kublov, 1824; died January 23, 1865 in Prague) was a Czech composer, pedagogue, and music critic.

Zvonař studied at the organ school in Prague with Pitsch, and worked as an assistant teacher and organist there; he was briefly the school's director. In 1860 he became director of Žofín Academy, a woman's music school.

Some of his early music is set to German texts, but after 1848 he aligned himself with Czech nationalism. His reviews of music appeared in Dalibor and Slavoj. He was a co-founder of the Hlahol choral society and the Umělecká Beseda, an artists' union. He may have taught Antonín Dvořák.

Zvonař composed overtures, chamber music, cantatas, an opera, a requiem, and piano works, and his manuscripts are held at the National Museum in Prague. His songs were popular in his lifetime. However, he his best remembered as an educator; he was the author of the first history of Czech music, Dějiny české hudby (1860), as well as the first Czech language harmony treatise, Navedení k snadnému potřebných kadencí skládání (1859). His papers on Czech folk music were among the earliest founding documents of study in the field.

[edit] References

Cerny/Ludvova, "Josef Leopold Zvonař". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. London: Macmillan, 2001.