Ostravská léta německého skladatele, dirigenta a hudebního pedagoga Antona Aicha (1913–1945)

Anton Aich was probably the most significant German musician of the first half of the 20th century, living between 1913 and 1945 in Ostrava. A native of Měcholupy (born on 22 February 1878) after graduating from the grammar school in Louny left for the Prague Conservatory to study organ and then composition and conducting. After graduating in the class of Antonín Dvořák in 1901, he became an opera conductor at German theatres until he settled for thirty-two years in Ostrava, where he worked as a conductor of the German opera, choir director, composer and music educator. From his compositional work only a small torso has survived. About the majority of his compositions there is only mediated information in the contemporary press of his era, which completely eliminates the possibility to make a complete listing of his works and their exact dating. Yet in the Annex of this paper a "selected" list of Aich's compositions is presented which contains altogether 31 titles in the field of symphonic and chamber music, including songs and compositions written after the war, when he left Ostrava in the summer of 1945 and moved to Traunskirchen in Upper Austria. From 1950 to 1952 he taught music in Linz and (then) spent his last years in Wels, Upper Austria, where he died on 14 January 1963.