Elisabeth Kuyper

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Signature 1926

Elisabeth Johanna Laminia Kuyper (born September 13, 1877 in Amsterdam ; died February 26, 1953 in Muzzano ) was a Dutch - German conductor and composer of the late Romantic period .

Life

Kuyper, the eldest of the three children of Joannes Kuyper and his wife Elisabeth, née Robin, began playing the piano at the age of six. From 1889 she received singing and music lessons at Maatschappij tot Bevordering der Toonkunst . Her teachers included Anton Averkamp , Frans Coenen and Daniel de Lange. In 1895 she passed the final exam at this academy with distinction; During this time she also wrote her first compositions and a one-act opera.

From 1896 to 1900 she studied at the music academy in Berlin; Karl Heinrich Barth was one of her teachers there . In 1901 she was the first student to be admitted to Max Bruch's master class for composition at the Prussian Academy of the Arts in Berlin. Her first work appeared in print in 1902. Bruch valued her compositions, developed into their patron, recommended them to the Dutch government for scholarships and enabled her to acquire German citizenship.

In 1905 she was the first female composer to receive the Mendelssohn Prize , a state scholarship to promote young composers. Her best-known work, a violin concerto in B minor, was premiered in February 1908 under the direction of Bruch himself. From April 1908 she was finally the first teacher of composition at the Berlin University of Music, but only as an assistant teacher. Also in 1908 she began working as a correspondent for the Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant .

Due to obstacles in her career - musicians were denied entry to leading orchestras - she was also involved in the women's rights movement. On the advice of the music professor Wilhelm Altmann , she founded the (professional) women's choir of the Lyzeum Club in 1909 and the Berlin Tonkünstlerinnen Orchestra conducted by her in 1910 , which was disbanded at the end of 1912 for financial reasons despite great audiences. In 1912 she also got a job at the Berlin University of Applied Sciences as an extraordinary teacher, but despite her best efforts, she never got a full job. During the First World War she was practically penniless and worked to the limit of exhaustion.

Her mentors Max Bruch and Engelbert Humperdinck died in 1920 and 1921 . Her apprenticeship contract at the university was terminated, she could not find any new jobs and left Germany due to intrigues directed against her. Despite efforts, she did not receive a pension from the university until the end of her life.

Kuyper gathered singers and musicians for the International Women's Peace Congress in The Hague and conducted these groups during the congress. In 1923 she founded the London Women's Symphony Orchestra in London and in 1924 the American Women's Symphony Orchestra in New York City . As in the case of the Berlin orchestra, all of these attempts to put the music associations, each rated positively by critics, on a solid financial basis failed, as there was no state funding.

In 1925 she returned to Europe and spent extended periods of time relaxing in various parts of Switzerland, but also regularly went to Berlin to fight unsuccessfully for a pension. She continued to be entered in the composers 'and musicians' directories of the German Reich until 1940 and sent petitions to Joseph Goebbels , among others , until the start of the war, until she realized that her pension claims were illusory; she was meanwhile also a nursing case. She stayed in Switzerland from 1939 and died in Muzzano near Lugano in 1953 in humble circumstances.

Fonts

  • My way of life. In: Elga Kern (Hrsg.): Leading women in Europe. Munich 1999 [1928], pp. 194-205.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Willem Jeths: Elisabeth Kuyper In: Zes vrouwelijke componisten . Walburg Pers, 1991. ISBN 9060117336 .
  2. ↑ Isolde Weiermüller-Backes: Elisabeth Kuyper on klassika.info
  3. ^ A b c d e Claudia Friedel: Women composing in the Third Reich: Attempting a Reconstruction . Münster / Hamburg 1995. ISBN 3-8258-2376-8 . M50-M53. Digitized
  4. ^ Elisabeth Kuyper: My way of life . Autobiography in: Elga Kern : Leading Women in Europe . Munich: Ernst Reinhardt, 1928, pp. 214–227
  5. ↑ Ursula Köhler-Lutterbeck; Monika Siedentopf: Lexicon of 1000 women , Bonn 2000, p. 194. ISBN 3-8012-0276-3
personal data
SURNAME Kuyper, Elisabeth
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kuyper, Lize; Kuyper, Elisabeth Johanna Lamina (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch-German composer and conductor
DATE OF BIRTH September 13, 1877
PLACE OF BIRTH Amsterdam
DATE OF DEATH February 26, 1953
Place of death Muzzano TI