Life
Zach was born in Čelákovice, Bohemia into a wheelwright's family. In 1724 he moved to Prague and started working as violinist at St Gallus and at St Martín. According to Dlabacž, he studied organ under Bohuslav Matěj Černohorský, who lived in Prague in 1720–27. Zach's career as organist started at St Martín, and by 1737 he was also playing the organ at the monastic church of the Merciful Brethren and the Minorite chapel of St Ann. In 1737 he competed for the position of organist at St. Vitus Cathedral, but was not successful. Details of what happened next are unknown: he was reported to have left Bohemia, but apparently remained in Prague at least until 1740. By early 1745 he was living in Augsburg and then on 24 April 1745 he was appointed Kapellmeister of the Electoral orchestra at the court of Johann Friedrich Karl von Ostein, Prince-Elector of Mainz. He visited Italy in 1746 and, briefly, Bohemia in 1747.
Zach evidently had a complex and eccentric personality, which led to numerous conflicts that plagued his life at Mainz. He was suspended from his position in 1750 and finally dismissed in 1756. From that point on it appears that Zach never again had steady employment. He traveled through Europe and supported himself financially by performing and selling copies of his works, teaching, dedicating his compositions, and so on. He visited numerous courts and monasteries in Germany and Austria, stayed in Italy in 1767 and between 1771–72, and may have worked as choirmaster at the Pairis Abbey in Alsace. He stayed several times at the Stams Abbey at Stams, Tyrol, where he may have had connections, and served as music teacher at the Jesuit school in Munich, for several brief periods of time. The last mentions of Zach in contemporary sources indicate that in January 1773 he was at the Wallerstein court, and according to the Frankfurt Kayserliche Reichs-Ober-Post-Amts-Zeitung of 5 June 1773 he died on a journey, at Ellwangen. Zach was buried in the local church of St Wolfgang.
Read more about this topic: Jan Zach
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“All the lies and evasions by which man has nourished himself—civilization, in a word—are the fruits of the creative artist. It is the creative nature of man which has refused to let him lapse back into that unconscious unity with life which charactizes the animal world from which he made his escape.”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)
“Modern equalitarian societies ... whether democratic or authoritarian in their political forms, always base themselves on the claim that they are making life happier.... Happiness thus becomes the chief political issue—in a sense, the only political issue—and for that reason it can never be treated as an issue at all.”
—Robert Warshow (1917–1955)
“There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers. Yet it is admirable to profess because it was once admirable to live. To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)