doc. Adam Zbigniew Liebhart, PhD (1963-1969)
He was born in April 1905 in Kolomyia, and died in November 1976 in Wrocław. He graduated in musicology from the Jan Kazimierz University in Lviv under the supervision of Professor Adolf Chybiński, receiving a doctorate in philosophy for his thesis The Development of Progression in Early Medieval Music (1932).
After his studies, he was involved in music journalism as a correspondent for Warsaw and Lviv periodicals. He also taught in music schools, gave private lessons in music theory and piano playing, and occasionally led chamber ensembles, conducted choirs and accompanied. In addition, he graduated in symphonic conducting at the Lviv Conservatory (1941).
After arriving in Wrocław in July 1945, Liebhart set about organising the Department of Musicology at the Department of Art History at the University of Wrocław. Thanks to his tremendous efforts, the scientific musicological library was saved from destruction and was later placed in a building on University Square, where lectures for first-year musicology students began in November 1945. Liebhart, as assistant professor, was the only lecturer there at the time, as well as head of the department and librarian. He continued to teach in Musicology until the course was abolished in 1952.
Together with representatives of the Department of Culture and the Arts of the Voivodship Office and activists of the Lower Silesian Music Society, Zbigniew Liebhart took part in the organisation of music education at all levels in Lower Silesia. He was a member of the organising committee of the DTM, was a consultant and planner in the Department of Extracurricular Education, and took part in the musicalisation campaign throughout the voivodship. He was one of the initiators and organisers of the State Higher School of Music, where he worked from 1949 until his retirement in 1970, holding a number of responsible positions - dean of the Faculty of Pedagogy (1950-1953), dean of the Faculty of Theory, Composition and Conducting (1953-1963), head of the Department of Theory and Composition (1958-1969), and then rector (1963-1969).
Zbigniew Liebhart's oeuvre includes scholarly works (e.g. Manners of Progression in Fourteenth-Century Music, The Growth of a Sense of Form in the Middle Ages, Shortcomings of Systematics in Musicology, Script of Systematics), reviews of concerts, opera premieres, as well as polemical articles - all published in both the local and national press. His creative output includes musical illustrations for two radio plays and arrangements of folk songs for mixed choir. Liebhart hosted music-making programmes in the form of the so-called music box on the broadcasting station of Wrocław PR.
Zbigniew Liebhart has received a number of distinctions, including the Golden Cross of Merit (1959), the Golden Badge of Merit for Lower Silesia (1966), the Knight's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta (1968), the Order of the Millennium, the Meritorious Cultural Activist (1972), and twice the First Degree Award of the Minister of Culture and Art.