Maria heart

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Maria Herz (born August 19, 1878 in Cologne , † October 22, 1950 in New York City ), also Albert Maria Herz or A. Maria Herz , was a German composer and pianist .

biography

Born the youngest of three siblings, Maria (Mariechen) Bing grew up with her older brothers Moritz and Hugo in a well-known Jewish textile merchant family in Cologne. She received her musical training from pianists Max von Pauer (1866–1945) and Josef Schwartz (1848–1933), violin teacher at the Conservatory for Music in Cologne, composer and conductor of the Cologne men's choir. On March 21, 1901, she married Albert Herz in Cologne. The couple settled in England. Herz had emigrated to Great Britain at the end of the 19th century because of strong anti-Semitism .

In the following years, despite the birth of her four children Herbert, Robert, Nora and Marga, Maria Herz gave numerous concerts in the county of Yorkshire and had lessons in harmony and composition with Arthur E. Grimshaw (1868-1913), who in 1910 composed a string quartet entitled Variations on a theme by Mrs Herz . She worked as a concert organizer, performed as a pianist in numerous concerts, introduced composers and their works and performed her first own compositions.

In 1914, the entire family of six in Germany attended the wedding of Albert Herz's younger brother, Julius Herz (1875–1960), when the First World War broke out. This forced the family to stay in Cologne. Albert Herz was drafted into the German army and had to serve as a chemist throughout the war. As a result, Maria's musical activities were massively reduced or even made impossible. The early death of Albert during the flu epidemic in 1920 put Maria and her teenage children under great strain. Nevertheless, the resumption of music studies with August von Othegraven (1864-1946), Hermann Hans Wetzler (1870-1943) and mainly Philipp Jarnach (1892-1982) followed. In honor of her deceased husband, but also for practical reasons (women composers were hardly taken seriously at that time), she signed her compositions with the artist name Albert Maria Herz.

The period from 1920 to 1935 was her most fruitful creative period, during which a considerable compositional oeuvre emerged. Maria Herz maintained a lively exchange with many leading musicians of that era. Her circle of friends included the Budapest String Quartet, the Quartetto di Roma, the singer Ilona Durigo , the baritone Hermann Schey , the cellists Gregor Piatigorsky , Emanuel Feuermann and Gaspar Cassadó as well as the conductors Hermann Abendroth , Otto Klemperer , Peter Raabe , Hans Rosbaud and many others

Her list of works contains numerous songs for voice and piano (some cycles have been orchestrated), chamber music, solo concertos for piano and violoncello, as well as choral and orchestral works. These speak their own, authentic language, move stylistically between late romanticism and early modernism and sometimes place high demands on the interpreters. After the National Socialists came to power in 1933, Jewish composers were banned from performing. The Nazis forced the family to leave Germany, and so she and her younger son Robert lived in England for a good ten years . Here she wrote lectures on composers from different countries and periods. After the war she emigrated with her son Robert to live with their daughters in the USA, where she died in New York in 1950 after a brief serious illness and was buried in Springfield (New Jersey).

Only five songs (1910, Stainer & Bell) and their arrangement for the Bach'schen Chaconne string quartet (1927, Simrock No. 774a, b) were published during her lifetime; the rest of her compositions have been preserved as a manuscript.

Maria Herz's estate has been in the estate collections of the music department of the Zurich Central Library since October 2015 .

Compositions (selection)

  • opus 1 Variations on Chopin's Prelude op.28 No 20 - 11 variations for piano
  • opus 2 12 (Valses) Länders for piano
  • opus 4 concerto for piano and orchestra
  • opus 5 Five small pieces for string quartet
  • opus 6 string quartet in B minor
  • opus 7 Sonata in C Minor for violin - pianoforte (1909)
  • opus 8 Four short orchestral pieces for large orchestra (1929)
  • opus 9 radio music for 8 instruments
  • opus 10 Concerto for Violoncello and Orchestra
  • opus 11 Choral Fantasy for mixed choir, soprano solo and orchestra
  • opus 13 Suite for orchestra
  • opus 14 Seven stories with obbligato music from “Picture Book Without Pictures” by Hans Christian Andersen
  • opus 15 Concerto for Harpsichord (or Piano) and String Orchestra (Feb. 1935)
  • String quartet arrangement of the Chaconne for solo violin by JS Bach
  • Piano Sonata in F minor
  • Two songs. 1. Pippa passes (Pippa's song. Words by R. Browning) 2. Spring is coming (spring has come); London: Stainer & Bell, (1910)
  • Two songs. 1. The Fair Maid. (The beautiful maiden.) 2nd Shadow March. (Shadow March. Words by RL Stevenson.); London: Stainer & Bell, (1910)
  • La Fileuse. Words by J. Fane; London: Stainer & Bell, (1910)
  • Three songs for baritone and orchestra

estate

Youtube

Web links

swell

  1. ^ Wedding picture of Maria Bing-Herz. Accessed May 1, 2019 .
  2. ^ Robert Demaine - Individual and Institution in the Musical Life of Leeds 1900–1914 (pp. 189, 190)
  3. ↑ http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com
  4. ^ Family photo of the Herz family, probably August 1914
  5. ↑ Die Musik XXII / 3, December 1929; World premiere in Cologne, direction: Hermann Abendroth
  6. ↑ Die Musik, XXIII / 7, April 1931; 4th Rheinisches Musikfest (Essen), performance April 4, 1931, conducted by Max Fiedler
  7. ↑ Die Musik, XXIII / 4, January 1931; World premiere by Südwestdeutscher Rundfunk; Head: Hans Rosbaud
  8. ↑ Anbruch - monthly for modern music, XII year, issue 1, January 1930
  9. ^ Theodor W. Adorno: Volume 18: Musikalische Schriften V; IV Concert introductions and radio lectures with music examples: For the radio concert on November 7, 1930
  10. ↑ Die Musik, XXI / 2, November 1928; Review by Wilhelm Altmann
  11. ^ Neue Musik-Zeitung 1927, issue 11/12
personal data
SURNAME Heart, Mary
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Herz, Albert Maria (full name); Heart, A. Maria
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Jewish composer and pianist
DATE OF BIRTH August 19, 1878
PLACE OF BIRTH Cologne
DATE OF DEATH October 22, 1950
Place of death New York City