John Henry van der Meer

John Henry van der Meer (born February 9, 1920 in The Hague ; † February 1, 2008 in Fürth ) was a Dutch musicologist specializing in instrument science .

Life

John Henry van der Meer grew up bilingual as the son of a Dutch English teacher and an English teacher. In 1926 he received his first piano lessons. In 1938 he began studying law and musicology at the University of Utrecht . On February 9, 1943, he was interned in the Herzogenbusch concentration camp in the course of arrests following an assassination attempt on a Dutch SS man . From June 1943 to April 1945 forced labor followed, first in an aircraft engine plant in Strasbourg , then in a quarry and a cement plant in Heidelberg .

After the war he received his doctorate in law (April 1946), but worked from 1946 to 1948 as a lecturer in ear training and other subjects at the Conservatory of Utrecht and from 1949 as a lecturer at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. In 1954 he became head of the music collection at the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag , where he was responsible for the musical instrument collection, the library and the graphic collection. In 1956 he received his doctorate in musicology with a thesis on Johann Joseph Fux as an opera composer.

On January 1, 1963, he took up the newly created position of head of the collection of historical musical instruments at the Germanic National Museum in Nuremberg, which he held until his retirement in December 1983. Until shortly before his death he was still active in research and wrote other publications, including some collection catalogs.

Services

In 1965, John Henry van der Meer was one of the founding members of the Comité International des Musées et Collections d'Instruments de Musique ( CIMCIM ) of the International Council of Museums (ICOM), for which he held the office of Secretary General until 1968. As the first director of the internationally important collection of historical musical instruments in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, he created the exhibition hall, which opened in 1969. In 1979 he founded the series of instrument catalogs of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum.

In 1983, the book Musical Instruments from Antiquity to the Present was his history of musical instruments. With more than 170 publications, including several inventory catalogs, mainly of Italian musical instrument collections, he has earned a reputation as a musical instrument researcher in specialist circles. For his services he was awarded two Festschriften, the Curt Sachs Award of the American Musical Instrument Society and the Theodor Heuss Medal of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum.

From 1972 to 1985 he was a corresponding member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences . From 1985 until his death he was the “dormant correspondent” of this institute.

Publications (selection)

• Johann Joseph Fux as an opera composer. Bilthoven 1961.
• The timbre identity of the piano works by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. (= Mededelingen of the Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, Afdeling Letterkunde, Nieuwe Reeks Deel , 41 no. 6). Amsterdam 1978.
• Directory of European musical instruments in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nürnberg. Volume 1: Horns and Trumpets. Membranophones. Idiophones. Wilhelmshaven 1979.
• together with Rainer Weber: Catalogo degli strumenti musicali dell'Accademia filarmonica di Verona. Verona 1982.
• Musical instruments from antiquity to the present. Munich 1983.
• Strumenti musicali europei del Museo Civico Medievale di Bologna: con appendici dei Fondi strumentali, delle Collezioni Comunali d'Arte, del Museo Davia Bargellini e del Civico Museo Bibliografico Musicale. Bologna 1993.
• with Gerhard Doderer : Cordofones de tecla portugueses do séc XVIII: clavicórdios, cravos, pianofortes e espinetas. Lisbon 2005.
• Alla ricerca dei suoni perduti: arte e musica negli strumenti della collezione di Fernanda Giulini. Briosco, Milan 2006.

literature

• Friedemann Hellwig (Ed.): Studia Organologica. Commemorative publication for John Henry van der Meer on his sixty-fifth birthday. Tutzing 1987, pp. 535-536 (short biography until 1983).
• Friedemann Hellwig (Ed.): Studia Organologica. Commemorative publication for John Henry van der Meer on his sixty-fifth birthday. Tutzing 1987, pp. 537-542 (list of publications up to 1983).
• musica instrumentalis. Journal of Organology , Vol. 3 (2001), John Henry van der Meer on his 80th birthday. Pp. 10-11 (list of publications 1984-2000).

Web links

• Literature by and about John Henry van der Meer in the catalog of the German National Library