As a son of a baker, Alfred Kowalsky took music lessons from Gustav Kahnt before attending the Paris Conservatory of Music, where he studied composition, orchestration, and counterpoint with Charles-Marie Widor. Upon his return, he became organist of the Pfaffenthal parish church and the Redemptorist Church.
After the outbreak of World War I, he moved to Berlin, where he enrolled at the Stern Conservatory of Music. A pupil of Richard Strauss and Georg Schumann, he composed the opera Flammentod there. Alfred Kowalsky probably returned to Luxembourg in 1916. In 1919 and 1920, he studied music and Indology in Heidelberg. In 1926, he became director of the municipal music school in Esch-sur-Alzette. He was choirmaster of several choirs, including Sang a Klang and the Municipal Orphéon, and editor of the magazine d’Musek. In 1940, he moved to Metz, where he spent his last years with his sister’s family. Alfred Kowalsky composed masses, symphonies, chamber music, as well as numerous variations and improvisations on other musical works. He also composed the music for several operas, including Nicholas Welter’s Griselinde. He also set songs and poems by many Luxembourgish authors to music, including Céline Clemen, Pe’ter Gérard, Willy Goergen, Lucien Koenig, Michel Lentz, Demy Schlechter, Nicolas Wampach, Batty Weber and Nik Welter, and composed the music for the local revue in Luxembourg-Limpertsberg in 1908. The planned opera about Jang de Blannen was never realized. As a poet, Alfred Kowalsky wrote patriotic and religious texts, including D’Sprangprossession, but also the love tragedy Vera (1932), conceived as a musical drama with ballet. This was a kind of rearguard reaction to fin de siècle aestheticism.
(Source: www.autorenlexikon.lu)