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First name: Gunther
Last name: Bialas
Dates: 1907-1995
Category: Quartet
Nationality: German
Opus name: Herbstzeit (1984)
Publisher: Gravis
Peculiarities: to order a copy: Eur. Zentrum der Künste https://catalog.loc.gov/vwebv/holdingsInfo?searchId=9432&recCount=25&recPointer=56&bibId=5597662 https://www.editiongravis.de/verlag/product_info.php?info=p1256_Herbstzeit.html
Information: Günter Bialas (July 19, 1907 - July 8, 1995) was a German composer. Bialas was born in Bielschowitz (today Bielszowice, a subdivision in Prussian Silesia. The adolescent Bialas received lessons in piano and music theory from Fritz Lubrich, a former student of Max Reger, in Kattowitz (Katowice) between 1922 and 1925. After graduating from the German Minderheiten-Gymnasium in Kattowitz in 1926, he studied musicology, Germanistics, and history at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Breslau from 1927 to 1931. He then proceeded to study music at the Prussian Academy of the Arts in Berlin and subsequently taught at the Ursuline Girls' School in Breslau-Karlowitz from 1934 to 1937. He pursued further studies in composition with Max Trapp in Berlin. Through some of his Romanian friends, he made the acquaintance of Sergiu Celibidache and prepared for the entrance examination to the Berliner Musikhochschule. In 1939, he became a lecturer in music theory and composition at the Institute for Music Education at Breslau University. After his German military service and Allied captivity from 1941 to 1945, he and his wife, the singer Gerda Specht, had to flee Silesia. They settled in Bavaria in 1946 and Bialas found work conducting the Munich Bach-Verein. From 1947 to 1959, he taught composition at the Nordwestdeutschen Musikakademie, now the Hochschule für Musik Detmold. He transferred to become a professor at the State Academy of Music in Munich in 1959, where he remained until his retirement in 1972. After his death in 1995, a street in his adopted hometown of Glonn was named Bialas-Strasse in his honor and marked with a sign bearing his biographical details.