Ave Maria – TB/TTB/TTBB

German composer Franz Xaver Biebl (1906–2001) produced more than 2000 works of classical music, simple part-songs and folk song arrangements of which the majority were for choirs. He obtained his Master of Music degrees in composition and choral conducting from the State Music Academy in Munich after completing his music studies at the Humanistic Gymnasium in Amberg. 

Following the consummation of his music studies, Biebl was hired as the choir director for a parish church in a Munich neighborhood. Later, in Salzburg, Austria’s Mozarteum’s Musikhochschule and Jugendmusikschule, appointed him Lecturer of Music Theory and Choral Singing. He taught music for seven years there until his career was abruptly paused. Biebl was drafted into the military in 1943, where served as a soldier and prisoner of war until 1946. Shortly after the conclusion of WWII and his time spent in a POW camp, Biebl took a position as the choir director at the parish church of St. Magdalena in Fürstenfeldbruck where he remained for eleven years.

He produced music as a consultant for the Bavarian State Radio while he was at St. Magdalena, and in 1959, Bayerische Rundfunk invited him to form a choral department. Biebl supported regional choral organizations throughout Germany and he relentlessly labored to populate the station’s archives with well-known choral music. 

Throughout his career, Franz Biebl continued to practice his professions of teaching and writing music. He worked extensively as a composer to increase the repertory of German folk songs by creating a great many arrangements for various choral ensembles. His unquestionably most accomplished and well-known composition, a complex six-minute arrangement of a frequently used liturgical text, “Ave Maria,” will no doubt be cherished for generations to come.