Holler, Augustin

Georg August(in) Holler is a native northern Upper Palatiner from Sperlhammer (see Luhe Wildenau), in Bavaria, at that time “Machinhammer”. He was baptized on 18 June 1744 in Rothenstadt near Weiden in Upper Palatinate. Around the year 1750 the family Holler left Sperlhammer and then is again at the Zangenstein Hammer Mill, Pfarrei Altendorf (parish "Schwandorf") in Schwarzach. His brother Johann Georg who was also born there later became known as Benedictine priest and monastery composer Aegidius Holler at the monastery in Attl am Inn.

Georg August Holler probably attended high school in Freising, where the composer Placidus von Camerloher also worked as music teacher and conductor. There, in 1763 he is “Augustin Holler, Palatinatus”, who writes music for a Latin school production.

From 1769 on he is again discovered to be documental: in Munich he marries as “citizen and musician” on 26 June in Frauenkirche the miller's daughter Maria Anna Uebelhoer from Wessobrunn. In 1773 he applies for a position as city musician and becomes successor to the city musician Franz Albert on 4 June 1773. Munich town musicians (singers), a traditional guild, were responsible for public music life. They were in each case divided in companies and assigned to certain city quarters. Reasons for making music were many: trumpet fanfares, weddings, funerals, anniversaries, concerts by day and also by night at the squares in the city, serenades, dance music in pubs, that was their life. Also in the places of worship in Munich they were partially responsible for the church music, whereby they also performed original compositions.

Perhaps Holler could have been one of those five town musicians, who belonged to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart beginning October 1777 in the Munich inn "Zum schwarzen Adler" on Kaufingerstrasse with a “Musique” for two clarinets, two horns and bassoon. In a letter to his father Leopold to Salzburg he writes appreciatively: “They really didn't play badly together”.

Holler composed his eight-part “Serennata (sic!) in C” in 1778, obtained as possible autographed scores in the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York City. It is a serenade with an extraordinarily large orchestration (in each case two flutes oboes, clarinets, basset horns, bassoons, four cornets, two trumpets and string orchestras with two violins, violas, violoncello and violone), which actually is only capable of a large court orchestra to pass off. Mozart could have used it as model for his Gran Partita KV 361, as Dr. Josef Saam (1900-1985) assumed.

From 1780-1798 Holler is active at the academy "Herzoglich Marianischen Landesakademie" and starting from 1789 at the military academy (Bayerisches Kadettenkorps) as “Instructor in Music” or “Master of Spiritual Training in Music” (specified in “court and state calendars” under “Electoral Military Academy” from 1795 to 1797). Starting from 1795 at the same time Wilhelm Legrand is active and takes over Holler's position in 1798. Almost completely blind Holler died on 13 February 1814 in Munich. The necrology of the Frauenkirche calls him “Stadtmusicus”. In the “History of the Royally Bavarian Cadetten Corps” he is identified as the “City Music Master”.

The composer wrote numerous worldly and religious works in a simple and down-to-earth way. The collecting activity of the "Müllner-Peter"-known Peter Hueber (1766-1843) is to be thanked for Holler's still many obtainable compositions.

The principal part of the works from Georg August Hollers (masses, litanies, serenades, offertories, symphonies, vespers, instrumental quartets and quintet ,etc.) is now in the music department of the Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek in Munich.