Willem de Haan

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Willem de Haan

Willem de Haan (born September 24, 1849 in Rotterdam , † September 26, 1930 in Berlin ) was a Dutch conductor and composer.

Life

Willem de Haan was born in Rotterdam in 1849 as the son of the merchant Johannes Jacobus de Haan. At the age of ten he received his first lessons in a music school. He composed his first marches and dances and also an opera relatively early on. After graduating from school, at the request of his father, he started a freight forwarding business at the age of 17. He attended music school and was taught by Samuel de Lange (1829-1911) to play the piano and Willem Nicolai (1829-1896) in harmony. At the request of these two teachers, his father finally agreed and enabled the son to train as a musician. He became a student of Woldemar Bargiel (1828-1897) in Berlin. In 1870 he attended the Leipzig Conservatory for a year . He made various trips to Berlin, Vienna and Munich to get to know musical life there. In the spring of 1872, his overture to Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale play "The Little Mermaid" was performed in the Musical Society in Cologne. On the mediation of Ferdinand von Hiller (1811–1885) and Friedrich Gernsheim (1839–1916) he became director of the Cecilia Association in Bingen am Rhein . He worked here from March 1873 to the end of 1875.

In 1876 de Haan came to Darmstadt as the conductor of the Mozart Society . Here he succeeded Carl Amand Mangold (1813–1889). Under his leadership until 1886, the Mozart Society experienced a considerable boom. On September 1, 1878, he also received the position of 2nd Kapellmeister at the Grand Ducal Court Theater in Darmstadt. The family of Grand Duke Ludwig IV became aware of de Haan and hired him as the piano teacher of the Hereditary Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig and his siblings. In May 1881 he succeeded the court conductor Gustav Schmidt (1816–1882), who had retired early after an illness. De Haan composed two operas "The Emperor's Daughter" (1885) and "The Inca Sons" (1895) and performed Beethoven's operas "Egmont" and Lortzing's "Zar und Zimmermann" as well as the Wagner operas "Die Walküre" (1883) , "Siegfried" (1886), "Götterdämmerung" (1888), "Das Rheingold" (1889) and "Tristan und Isolde" (1891).

In 1889, after the death of Carl Amand Mangold, de Haan took over the musical direction of the Musikverein in Darmstadt, which was founded in 1832. He was in charge until 1919. On the board of the Musikverein at this time were u. a. Otto Wolfskehl and Georg Wickop .

In 1914 he gave up his position at the court theater and after 1919 retired almost completely from musical life. In the summer of 1923 he moved to his younger daughter in Berlin and died there at the age of 81. He was buried in the old cemetery in Darmstadt (grave site: IA 26).

Willem de Haan was married to Nina Schleuning (1853–1904) since 1877. The daughters Hanna (married Karl Wolfskehl , 1878–1946) and Wiesi (married Herzberg, 1882–1974) emerged from the marriage .

Honors

  • 1891: Award of the Knight's Cross 1st Class of the Order of Merit of Philip the Magnanimous
  • 1894: Awarded the Golden Medal of Merit for Science and Art
  • 1896: Permission to accept and wear the Order of St. Stanislaus II. Class awarded by the Russian Emperor
  • 1903: Appointment to the court councilor
  • 1910: Award of the Cross of Honor of the Order of Merit of Philip the Magnanimous
  • 1910: Permission to accept and wear the Order of St. Anne, 2nd class, awarded to him by the Emperor of Russia
  • 1913: Appointed Privy Councilor
  • 1917: Awarded the Commander's Cross, Class II, of the Brabant Star

literature

  • Willem de Haan. In: Stadtlexikon Darmstadt. Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 3-8062-1930-3 , p. 338.
  • Karl Esselborn: Willem de Haan, 1849–1930, musician. In: Hessian biographies. Volume 2, 1973, ISBN 3-500-26820-X , pp. 139-141.
  • Karl Esselborn: Willem de Haan. In: Volk und Scholle. Vol. 9, Issue 1, 1931, p. 24.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hugo Riemann: Music Lexicon . Reprint of the original from the 1916 edition. tape 1 . Salzwasser, Paderborn 2015, ISBN 978-3-8460-8632-2 , p. 232 ( limited preview in Google Book search).