he learned at Lwów’s GTM Conservatoire and the Königliches Musik-Institut Berlin. He also studied at the University of Berlin, obtaining a doctoral degree in musicology (1921). In 1916–18 he served in the army of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and later in the Polish Army. In 1918 he became a teacher at the PTM Conservatoire in Lwów, which he later headed in 1930–39. He taught classes of counterpoint, harmony, music history and aesthetics, solfeggio, and composition. He and Koffler worked together at that school for fifteen years (1924–39), and from 1930 Sołtys was Koffler’s superior. Sołtys was also the president (later – honorary president) of ISCM’s Lwów Branch (1930–33).
In that same hall, during Mieczysław Sołtys's directorship in 1928, Koffler's Idyll was performed for the first time.
Adam Sołtys was well known in Lwów as a conductor, and he led most of the PTM concerts from 1924 onwards, including the world premiere of the full version of Karol Szymanowski’s Symphony No. 3 ‘Song of the Night’ in 1928. Adam Sołtys’s own compositions (before 1939) included Symphony No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 8 and 11 Songs for voice and piano to words by, among others, Polish poets of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Under the Soviet occupation, the PTM Conservatoire was closed down and Sołtys became the head of the Polish section and dean of Conducting Department at the LGK Conservatoire established in its place (1940–41). Together with Koffler, he was a member of the LGK’s delegation to the Kyiv Assembly of the Union of Soviet Composers. After 1945, Sołtys remained in Lwów (Lviv, Ukrainian SSR) and declared Polish nationality. He again took up a teaching post at the LGK Conservatoire.
