Josef Leopold Zvonař

Who was Josef Leopold Zvonař?

Josef Leopold Zvonař was a Czech composer, pedagogue, and big music critic.

Zvonař was born in Kublov, 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. He died in Prague.

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 entitled Záboj, 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, as well as the first Czech language harmony treatise, Navedení k snadnému potřebných kadencí skládání. His papers on Czech folk music were among the earliest founding documents of study in the field.