100 years ... Bernhard HEIDEN

HILVERSUM - On 24 August 1910 Bernhard HEIDEN was born in the German town of Frankfurt am Main.
At that time nobody could imagine that he would die almost 90 years later as an established and respected American composer.

Heiden wrote his first little compositions at the age of six. At age fifteen, Heiden began studying theory and harmony with Bernhard Sekles, who had been a teacher of Paul Hindemith and was director of the Hoch's Conservatory, an important music school in Frankfurt. During this time, Heiden continued studying piano, studied violin for four or five years, and, at the recommendation of Sekles, began clarinet lessons. From 1929 to 1933 he studied composition with Paul Hindemith at the Berliner Hochschule für Musik. At the end of this period Heiden was awarded the prestigious Mendelssohn Preis for a piano concerto.

In 1934 he married a Dutch fellow-student, pianist Cola de Joncheere. A year later the couple emigrated to the United States, where they settled in Detroit (Michigan). During this time, from 1935 to 1943, Heiden was active as a composer, arranger, conductor, teacher, and multi-instrumentalist. He taught at the Art Center Music School and was an active participant in the Detroit Music Guild, ultimately becoming its president. After gaining American citizenship (in 1941) Heiden was assistant bandmaster of the 445th Army Service Band for which he wrote more than one hundred arrangements.

After the war Heiden pursued a Master's degree in musicology, with Donald Grout at Cornell University. Immediately after that he was appointed to the faculty of the Indiana University School of Music in Bloomington, where Heiden taught composition, counterpoint, score-reading, and twentieth-century analytical techniques. He remained at Indiana University until his retirement in 1981. His wife Cola also taught at this institute. After his retirement Bernhard Heiden kept on composing; until his death on 30 April 2000 he stayed concerned with musical life in Bloomington.

Heiden wrote chamber music pieces (e.g. the much played Sonata for alto saxophone and piano (1937, a recording exists with Cola Heiden as a pianist)), orchestral works (a.o. two symphonies and solo concerto's for cello, French horn, tuba, recorder and bassoon), vocal music (choral works and songs) and one opera: The darkened city, premiered in 1963 at Indiana University.
Nicolas Slonimsky describes Heiden's music as follows: ‘Neoclassical in its formal structure, and strongly polyphonic in texture, it is distinguished also by its impeccable formal balance and effective instrumentation’.

Recently the mysterious Klavierkonzert (1933) re-emerged in a re-cataloguing process at the Netherlands Radio Music Library. In 1976 Dutch pianist Herman Kruyt had donated the handwritten parts to the library. After some research we found a reference to this work only in Thomas Walsh's thesis (see Links below). According to Walsh the concerto won Heiden the Mendelssohn Prize in the year of its creation. It's a two-part concerto, written for a 'standard' orchestra. Whether the work has been performed is unknown to us. It doesn't feature in the composer's work list. During the library's Muziekschatten-project ('Musical treasures') it will be digitized and made available to the public. Some scanned pages can be seen next to this article.

LINKS:
• Overview of editions of Bernhard Heiden's compositions in our sheet music catalogue
• Thesis A Performer's Guide to the Saxophone Music of Bernhard Heiden (1999) by Thomas Walsh (12MB)
• Biography with various video's of performances of Heiden's works
• Personal in memoriam by Julian Livingston, one of Heiden's former composition students

Laatste aanpassing op Monday 30 August 2010

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