Bernard Heinze

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Sir Bernard Thomas Heinze AC (born July 1, 1894 in Shepparton , Victoria , Australia , † June 10, 1982 in Bellevue Hill , Sydney ) was an Australian musician , conductor and music teacher .

Live and act

Bernard Heinze was the fourth child of the jeweler Benjamin Heinze and his wife Minnie Frederica geb. Greenwell. He attended St. Patrick's College in Ballarat and received his first musical training from Walter Gude, the founder of the Ballarat Lyric Orchestra. In 1910 he received a grant from the Australian Music Examinations Board for the Melbourne University Conservatorium. There he received the William Clarke Scholarship after a year and was able to study at the Royal College of Music in London , among others with the violinist Achille Rivarde , the pianist Herbert Sharpe and the composers Frank Bridge and Charles Villiers Stanford .

During the First World War , Bernard Heinze was drafted into the Royal Garrison Artillery in 1915 and served on the Western Front as an assistant to Major General Herbert Guthrie Smith's Artillery Director. After demobilization , he continued his studies and wrote music reviews for the London Saturday Review . From 1920 he was able to study on a scholarship at the Schola Cantorum in Paris , including music history and composition with Vincent d'Indy , violin with Nestor Lejeune and Solfège with Guy de Lioncourt ; he also attended rehearsals for the Concerts Colonne under Gabriel Pierné . In 1922 he completed a concert tour of southern Europe with Nestor Lejeune's string quartet for a few months. He then went to Berlin and studied violin with Willy Hess .

In 1923 he returned to Australia. In 1924 he became a violin teacher at the Melbourne University Conservatory, conductor of the Melbourne University Symphony Orchestra and founded the Melbourne String Quartet. In 1925 he received the Ormond Professorship in Music at the Melbourne University Conservatory . Heinze should improve public music performances and ensure the professionalism of the players. He introduced free school concerts and subscriptions and organized celebrity concerts in Melbourne with international artists. In 1927 he became director of the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic Society with an SATB choir and orchestra. In 1931 he became a Fellow of the Royal College of Music. In 1933 he united the University Symphony Orchestra with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra directed by Fritz Hart and remained its director until 1956 (from 1949 under the name Victorian Symphony Orchestra). He conducted classical and new music composers such as Ludwig van Beethoven , Peter Tschaikowski , Edward Elgar , Richard Strauss , Gustav Mahler , Jean Sibelius , Percy Grainger , Nikolai Rimski-Korsakow , Alexander Borodin . In 1936 he conducted the first performance of the 8th Symphony in C minor by Anton Bruckner in Australia.

Heinze's influence increased through his public functions. In 1929 he became part-time music director of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and in 1934 music advisor to the Australian Broadcasting Commission, where he was responsible for musical performances on the radio and organized educational concerts. In 1936 he was (until 1957) the representative for musical education of the Victorian Council of Public Education. In 1938, while traveling through the United States of America and Europe , he investigated the possibilities of broadcasting in promoting music. He also conducted concerts in Paris , Berlin , Budapest and Helsinki and was a juror at the Concours Ysaÿe in Brussels .

During the Second World War , Bernard Heinze was released from teaching duties at the university and organized celebrity concerts for the Australian Broadcasting Commission, for which mainly Australian soloists were hired. Works by international composers such as Ludwig van Beethoven and Arthur Honegger and Australian composers such as Roy Agnew , Hooper Josse Brewster-Jones , Clive Douglas , Miriam Hyde and Robert Hughes were performed .

After the Second World War he resumed his work as Ormond Professor and continued to work for the Australian Broadcasting Commission. While visiting Canada for the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of British Columbia in 1947 . After his return he introduced concert series for young people and intensified the concert subscriptions. Works by Dmitri Schostakowitsch , Benjamin Britten and Béla Bartók as well as Australian composers such as Donald Banks , James Penberthy and Peter Sculthorpe have been performed . In 1949 he was knighted as a Knight Bachelor and since then has had the suffix "Sir". In the same year he received an honorary doctorate in music from the University of Western Australia . Heinze continued to work in public positions, such as vice-patron of the regional department of the Arts Council of Australia in Victoria, 1953 as the international representative of Australia on the National Advisory Committee of UNESCO and from 1955 to 1965 as vice-patron of the regional department of the Arts Council of Australia in New South Wales.

In 1956 he finished his professorship at Melbourne University Conservatorium. In 1957 he succeeded Eugène Aynsley Goossens and was director of the New South Wales State Conservatorium of Music until 1967 . He continued to actively support the promotion of music. From 1957 to 1966 he was a board member and later trustee of the Sydney Opera House . In 1958, despite the difficult political circumstances, he went on study trips to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe . In 1967 he co-founded the Commonwealth Assistance to Australian Composers and 1968 the Australia Council for the Arts.

In 1974, the 50th anniversary of his first conducting was publicly celebrated in Melbourne Town Hall and Heinze was named Australian of the Year . In 1975, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation broadcast the biographical feature The Bernard Heinze Story. In 1976 he was named Companion of the Order of Australia , in 1979 he was the first Australian to receive the International Music Council Award from UNESCO.

Bernard Heinze died on June 10, 1982 in Bellevue Hill. After the funeral mass in St. Peter's Catholic Church in Toorak with the Requiem by Gabriel Fauré , he was buried in Brighton Cemetery in the Caulfield South district of Melbourne. He was married to Valerie Antonia Hennessy, daughter of then Lord Mayor of Melbourne David Valentine Hennessy , since July 6, 1932 . They had three sons.

Sir Bernard Heinze Memorial Award

In 1985 the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra launched a call for an annual Sir Bernard Heinze Memorial Award for special contributions to music in Australia. The medal for the award was designed by the Australian medalist Michael Meszaros .

The first winner in 1987 was the music teacher Ruth Alexander . Other winners include Malcolm Williamson (1989), Peter Sculthorpe (1994), Yvonne Kenny (1995), Don Burrows (2000), Graeme Koehne (2004), Barry Tuckwell (2008), Richard Bonynge (2009), Brett Dean ( 2010), Simone Young (2011) and Anne Boyd (2014).

Awards and honors

In 1957, the Australian painter Paul Fitzgerald presented a portrait of Bernard Heinze to the Melbourne University Conservatory.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The Realm of Music. First Performance in Australia of Bruckner's Eighth Symphony. In: The Advocate. December 23, 1936, p. 5.
  2. ↑ Sir Bernard Heinze AC 1894–1982 on liveperformance.com.au
  3. ↑ Sir Bernard Heinze AC on portrait.gov.au
  4. ↑ In: The Age from Melbourne. February 15, 1999, p. 18 ( OCR text online )
  5. ↑ Sir Bernard Heinze: Paul Fitzgerald, Artist. In: The Age from Melbourne. May 1, 1957, p. 3.
personal data
SURNAME Heinze, Bernard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Heinze, Sir Bernard Thomas (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Australian musician, conductor and music educator
DATE OF BIRTH July 1, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Shepparton , Victoria , Australia
DATE OF DEATH June 10, 1982
Place of death Bellevue Hill , Sydney