Josef Labor

Josef Paul Labor (29 June 184226 April 1924) was an Austrian pianist, organist, and composer of the late Romantic era. Labor was an influential music teacher. As a friend of some key figures in Vienna, his importance was enhanced. Biography Labor was born in the town of Hořovice in Bohemia to Josef Labor, an administrator of ironworks, and his wife Josefa Wallner, who came from a family of doctors. Both his parents came from Viennese families. His father belonged to the circle of Schubert-Friends and had been in his younger years a composer himself. At the age of three, he was left blind due to contracting smallpox. He attended the Institute for the Blind in Vienna and the Konservatorium der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde (Conservatory of the Society of Friends of Music) where he studied composition with Simon Sechter (teacher of Bruckner), and piano with (student of and Czerny). He toured Europe as a pianist and, in the process, formed lasting friendships with King George V of Hanover, who was also blind, and with Joseph Joachim, whom he met at Hanover. George named him Royal Chamber Pianist in 1865. In 1866, Labor followed the king’s exile and settled in Vienna, where he became a