Biebl, Franz Xaver (b Amberg, 1 September, 1906 - d 2 October, 2001)
Biebl studied under Joseph Haas at the Musikhochschule (State Music College) in Munich, and obtained a position teaching theory and choir at the High School for Music in Salzburg, Austria. During the second World War Biebl was drafted in to the army in 1943 and his unit was captured by the Americans in Italy in 1944. Biebl was interned at Fort Custer, near Battle Creek, Michigan, as a prisoner of war.

After the war he returned to Austria, and later to Germany where he worked in church music and choir schools (as organist and choirmaster, and teacher at Furstenfeldsbruch Kirche near Munich), until his appointment by the Bavarian Radio Broadcasting Company (Bayerischen Rundfunk) as their first head of choral music programming. In this capacity, along with his continuing composing and directing, he had a large influence on choral music in Germany. In his retirement he continued to compose, despite a disabling stroke in 1998. He died after a brief illness one month after his 95th birthday.

Biebl is chiefly known in America through his setting of Ave Maria written in 1964, but popularised by the Chanticleer recording 30 years later