Biography of composer, Bernhard Heiden
Biography of composer, Bernhard Heiden
August 24, 1910 - April 30, 2000
{Most recent update is Nov 07, 2007 1:14 PM}
First, I quote from the printed program of his Memorial Concert
Indiana University School of Music - Auer Hall
Bloomington, Indiana - September 18, 2000.
Following that are a few personal reminisces running through
my now and then connections through the years with the master.
Quoted from Memorial Concert Program
"Bernhard Heiden was bom in Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany on August 24,
1910 to Ernst and Martha (Heimer) Heiden. He became interested in music at the
age of five, and a year later composed his first pieces. When he began formal
music instruction he studied piano, clarinet and violin, in addition to his lessons
in theory and harmony. He was admitted to the Hochschule for Musik in Berlin
in 1929, and studied composition under Paul Hindemith, whom he considered his
principal teacher. In 1933, his last year at the Hochschule, he was awarded the
Mendelssohn Prize in Composition, and was married in 1934 to Cola de Joncheere,
[tenBosch] pianist [and dancer per other sources] and fellow student at the Hochschule.
"Bernhard and Cola came to the United States in 1935 and settled in Detroit,
Michigan, where Bernhard taught on the faculty of the Art Center Music School
for eight years. During this time he also served as staff arranger for local radio station WWJ and conducted the Detroit Chamber Orchestra, as well as giving
piano, harpsichord, and chamber music recitals, and supplying incidental music
for theatrical productions at Wayne State University.
"Having been naturalized as a United States citizen in 1941, Bernhard was
inducted into the US Army in 1943 and became Assistant Bandmaster of the
445th Army Service Band, for which he wrote over one hundred arrangements.
Following his discharge in 1945 he entered Cornell University, studying musicology
with Donald Grout and receiving his M.A. degree in 1946. He joined the
faculty of the Indiana University School of Music that same year, serving as chair
of the composition department until 1974, and remaining on the faculty until his
retirement in 1981. After retirement Bernhard's composing energies continued
unabated, and he remained an active figure on the IU and Bloomington music
scene until his death.
"Strongly influenced by Hindemith's devotion to craft, Bernhard Heiden's
music is described by Nicolas Slonimsky in Baker @ Biographical Dictionary of
Music and musicians as "neoclassical in its formal structure, and strongly polyphonic
in texture; it is distinguished also by its impeccable formal balance and
effective instrumentation." He was the recipient of many awards and prizes over
the course of his long career, including two Fromm Foundation awards and a
fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation; and his works were performed by
the symphony orchestras of Detroit, Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, Saint Louis, Rochester
and Chicago, the New York Philharmonic, and by numerous chamber ensembles
and eminent solo artists.
"As a gifted teacher and advisor to his students, Bernhard Heiden encouraged
experimentation in their work at the same time that he also searched for new and
broader outlets for his own creative energies. In addition to the shaping of an active
composition department at IU, Bernhard was also instrumental in establishing the
Indiana University Early Music Institute, having influenced its founder, Thomas
Binkley, to come to Bloomington.
"Bernhard is remembered with devotion by his many students and colleagues,
who will recall not only the high standards of his teaching and his deep knowledge
of the craft of composition, but also his affection, his concern for their well being
and careers, and his unfailing equanimity, dry wit, and self-deprecating
sense of humor. How fortunate we are that so many of those same qualities live
on in his music."
In Memoriam
After Heiden's death, and some time had passed, I, with that helpless sense of loss of the dead, decided I would like to visit his and Cola's graves and make some honorarium with them, not unusual in my estimation. I looked at Bernhard's newspaper obituary to check where their remains could be found. The obituary said nothing beyond the fact that arrangements were through the Day Funeral Home. So I called them, but they claimed that they could not reveal where the actual internment might be if it was not stated in the obituary; no doubt a fall-out from national security legislation. The County Health Department had a different view of matters, and easily told me where they had been shipped for cremation. After a few inquiries, I spoke to some persons who had been close to them in recent years and they thought both had been scattered on the Greek Island of Mykonos. Professor Emeritus, Juan Orrego-Salas, confirmed this, and it is my firm belief that this intensely romantic gesture tells us a lot worth knowing about Bernhard and his wife.
I knew that they had taken to spending their summers on this Greek Island where he accomplished so much composition, and she was able to read and spend her time in pursuits pleasing to her. Hoping to hold that comforting togetherness to the end, he likely cast it in his will, and from there it took shape according to his plan. I can see no reason to withhold the knowledge of such enduring love from the world. I only wish there was a permanent stone monument somewhere to make these facts known for however long our civilization survives.
Personal Recollections
In the briefest of form for the time being, I start as follows in recent years, then slip further back in time to explain 'ancient' matters. So, here it is and I do this to bring this marvelous teacher's life and methods to the web; but out of necessity I present it in the narrow perspective of my own and others whose experience I can vouch for.
After my retirement and return to Bloomington in the fall of 1989, I always made it a point to be at any performance of Heiden's work. One piece in particular I recall was the Voyage in five movements for wind ensemble, dedicated to Cola and composed on Mykonos in the summer of 1991. After the premier in February of 1992 I encountered him in the entrance-hall to the Musical Arts Center and gave congratulations. I asked if he would autograph my program. He grinned slightly, and replied, "I've given you so many autographs; why do you want another?" I had to reply that I wanted one to frame; in fact, I couldn't recall any autograph except the occasional note on a counterpoint exercise nearly forty years before. I didn't want to admit I didn't remember any. Widening to almost a smile he scribbled, "An autograph! Bernhard Heiden" with a barely working ball point pen he pulled from somewhere.
Acid humor that escaped my immediate appreciation. But, I shook his hand again and thanked him, departing still feeling like the "barely acceptable" student of 1950. He was my most admired teacher ever, yet I still was nearly frozen in his presence. You can imagine what it was like to be me, in his score reading class. Where was my great playing of the high-school piano concertos? What concertos?
Please read on.
"sharpened to transfix all error"
Let me say some more about that frozen feeling first. Over the years I have often felt a twinge of jealousy for so many of his students and associates who seemed to have, the much commented on, open comradery and warmth with Bernhard and Cola. For me it was more a kind of strained sensation one had with a close relative where you could never think, in the moment, of any topic of mutual interest to discuss, even though there lurked huge banks of common interests. Obviously, ridiculous on any level. How could I not communicate with my teacher? Truth was I could, but it was one way. I suppose I would have to go through the many details of my years as a student, an almost Freudian analysis with some mythical psychiatrist to really flesh this out, yet it is necessary to convey my personal regret side of the high level of admiration and gratitude for all this man presented. It was always like my mind was paralyzed by merely standing near him. He was so obviously brilliant, wise, knowlegable, expert in so many subjects, not just music. Don't be surprised that for a while my tale of him will verge on a bad outcome before improving, and all is still not satisfactorily explained from my perspective. He certainly gave a great deal to me, and in the end forgave my shortsidedness or at least inmaturity in order to train a talent that did little for his position.
I reveal all this because I know there were students who wished to study with him and he either refused outright or dismissed them after a while; I never got that feeling from him. The impression was more that he wished to correct some artistic naivety or lack of training, and my brain promptly evicted all other matters and stood waiting for that scrap of knowledge that would shortly appear, sharpened to transfix all error.
First Meeting
My very first encounter with Professor Heiden was in the early fall of 1950 after school had been in session for about a week. I was enrolled in freshman "pre-med" per my parents wishes, but had met a student of Heiden in my residence hall; I knew nothing of Bernhard Heiden at that point. The student, John Balamos, hearing of my indecision about my life's direction, urged me to knock on Heiden's studio and see if he thought I had any talent. A scary idea, but in my naivety I simply did that one afternoon. Heiden listened to my stammered story; then asked, "Do you have any pieces with you?" I said I could bring some. Then he suggested, "Just play me something," and so I played my first piano concerto. I told him I had premiered it with the Speedway (Indianapolis west side) High-School band. He let me go on to the end which took about seventeen minutes.
As I recall, he said, "You play much better than you compose. You have a lengthy piece which demonstrates your fascination with C minor. I could accept you as a student but you need to take the theory exemption test. If you pass that, then I will take you." I did exempt out of the first theory course. which was probably a bad idea because I never did learn much about formal harmony and chord naming, only enough to play from a pop-music "fake book." I started with him in the spring of 1951 after my single semester of "pre-med" which I passed as well, I think with a B average. I lost my science scholarship after the science classes were gone. My parents were aghast at my creative career management. It was only years later that I realized I had never introduced my parents to Heiden; he probably wondered about my family origins, but they were from such different cultures that it never crossed my mind that they even lived in the same universe.
Self Deprecating Humor
People talk of Heiden's humility and self deprecating humor and I have to acknowledge that as true. On one occassion he had reason to mention in passing that some group would be playing the Heiden quintet. I was trying to help set up the stage and didn't hear the context clearly. I brazenly asked, "Which Heiden?" He instantly responded, "The real one!" meaning Haydn rather than Heiden of course.
I studied with Heiden for the next four years, typically earning an "A" in his counterpoint and composition classes, maybe a little less in some other courses. I think Thomas Beversdorf gave me a "B" the semester I spent with him while Heiden took sabbatical; small wonder as I blew off the entire workshop portion of the course in favor of the credit-less composing, orchestrating, and conducting the pit orchestra for the Jordan River Review of 1954. Obviously, Beversdorf knew about my review efforts as he came to hear it with nice congratulations, but it didn't truly match the requirements for the composition course. My co-author, Bob Aichele, did the same with the same result.
Heiden's reaction before his sabatical on hearing that Bob Aichle and I had won the competition for the Jordan River Review was that he would not "loan" us any tunes. I promptly hummed a lyrical snatch of "Dreamers on a Slack Wire," which I said I liked and was going to steal over any of his objections. He said, "Fine, that's not mine since I never heard any of that before." I was never quite sure whether that was my bad humming or more of that self deprecating humor that others were more familiar with.
Hindemith Arrives
Apparently Heiden was on fairly good terms with his emminent teacher, Paul Hindemith. Don't forget that 1933 Mendelssohn Prize in Composition which Hindemith must have had some say in naming its recipient. I think there were perhaps two occassions when Hindemith visited the music school while I was a student. Heiden pulled out all the stops arranging concerts of Hindemith's music, master classes, lectures from the stage of recital hall. While we as undergraduate students could attend the master classes we did not sit on the stage with Hindemith but in the audience. I think all the undergrads were introduced as supplicants, and nothing on a chummy basis occurred. It seems to me that my friend, Herman Chaloff reported later that his master class was somewhat stiff at the personal level as well. Curiously, I was unaware of this reputed stiffness, and seeing Hindemith at a free moment walked up and presented his (hard back version with red cover - an extravagance for me) basic theory book volume 1 and asked him for an autograph. He seemed to recognize me from the class and pleasantly signed the book with some short comment, merely as "Paul Hindemith." I thanked and left, then told Heiden of my collectors item. He seem startled and said, "Hindemith is almost supersitious about autographs and never signs them. You have quite an item there." I foolishly loaned the book to a friend to take the class at a later date and he brazenly refused to return it because of the autograph.
Quite a contrast to the curious visit of Sir Ralph Vaughn Williams to our campus while Heiden was on his sabbatical in 1954. Dean Bain introduced me to this huge headed composer as one of the school's promising composition students. Sir Ralph snickered me with a scabarous blue eye and said "Mmmmmmmmmmmwhy?" Evidently, that was beyond Dean Bain's translation capabilities, and he quickly presented a more useful, yet hapless person for inspection.
The Dreaded Gauntlet of Many Perils
The "upper division music exam," critical to admission to senior level music courses and graduation with a Bachelor of Music, the elite of undergrad degrees, was a fearful experience. Heiden decided that we should do it in a silent room with no piano access. When the few of us finished after four hours we took our work to Heiden and he had Ed LaBounty (a grad student at that point taking Heiden's course as well) play and comment, while he, Heiden, listened and told us his decision immediately. My play-through took a turn for the better as LaBounty said things like
"See that brilliant imitation at the fourth, and "Hmm.... amazing.... hmm, etc."
It got a little more frosty with Heiden's comments of just "Hmm," but I was very happy when he finally wrote "A" on it. I graduated easily from music school with a BM in Composition, usually on the Dean's list for academic excellence, and no idea of what to do next except take an ROTC commission and join the army. Heiden answered none of the letters from my first command on Pang-yong-do, Korea.
The Decision Point
When I returned from the army in the spring of 1957, I audited a few of Heiden's classes in graduate counterpoint without enrolling which he never questioned. I then let him know that I had made a decision to try engineering school at Purdue. He seemed indifferent and without much comment, but Cola told me later, while I was taking her to the airport on some family emergency, that he was so angry he couldn't speak. She could not believe I was going in to engineering after all Bernhard had done for me. I was dumbfounded to the point that I didn't believe her. He had seldom said anything positive about my prospects beyond a few counterpoint exercises which he told me to be sure to retain as I might be teaching that some day and they would be good examples.
I especially remember the premier of my first quartet which he took about a half hour of the composition workshop, just after the classes spring recital, to publically berate it for having too few dynamic levels in the last movement; and, my piano sonata he said would probably impress the audience with how noisy it was. The sonata got its world premier in Lincoln Center, New York City, but that is another story entirely. The contrast to this was earnest praise from Bela Nagy, a faculty big-name pianist, for my woodwind quintet and the doctoral student, Herman Chaloff's praise. Chaloff confessed to me that Heiden was strangely hyper-critical with him as well.
I know there was no greater student talent in those ancient days in the school than Herman Chaloff, who was called on to play at sight the orchestral score of the Choral Union's first rehearsal of Koldaly's Hungarian Mass. I remember Dean Bain saying he was sorry, but he had been unable to locate a piano score of this complex modern work. The chorus parts were written in the style of orchestral instruments, namely, what was needed by that single instrument, the human voice with no piano reduction of the other instruments present. In fact, it was obvious to all that Dean Bain really preferred Herman to accompany his Choral Union rehearsals over any other, faculty included, and he had some big names on the faculty. I can recall Heiden on another occasion, in an orchestra read through of Herman's "Concert music for trumpet and orchestra," a symphonic length piece, written as part of Chaloff's doctoral thesis, being short and acidic about the success of Herman's orchestration choices. Nor was he pleased with Herman's calligraphy of the orchestral parts; there was no audience performance of this work that I ever heard. It still exists in the catalog of the library but it is no longer to be found on the shelf of the library. Heiden did grant Chaloff's composition doctorate in 1958; I think Chaloff got a doctorate in piano about the same time. Chaloff, born in 1913 was only three years younger than Heiden, was dead of a heart attack by the mid-1960s. He had only recently finally been tenured to an academic position, and sadly today there is little left to show his passing.
"Oleander Red" Treads the Boards in Cincinnati
In contrast to this I saw Heiden's treatment of a another grad student's work, like then grad student, Ronald R. Williams' chamber opera (called dramatic scene or something like that since one could not write an opera for the master's - too hard), Oleander Red which Heiden turned handstands to premier at a convention, if I remember correctly a Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia convention in Cincinnati in 1952. Somehow, a large group of us traveled to Cincinnati to hear this. My friend, Ken Stubblefield, sang, likely a baritone or tenor role as the overseer and preying lover of the plantation owner's wife. I cannot remember the name at this late date who sang the female role, but Ken was very excited about the whole matter, the fictional romance somehow turning into something else. Also there was the cuckolded stage husband who's real name I do not remember, a small amount of scenery, and a chamber orchestra. I can recall Heiden showing the piano score to our class, as proud as if he had written it himself, pointing out various passages where Ron Williams had quite successfully achieved large dramatic effects with very modest orchestral resources. If I remember this correctly the most admired passage had various contrapuntal voices conjealing after extended meandering through increasing harmonic tension to a highly consonant cadence in conjunction with the completion of action. Hindemith be praised!! I confess I liked it very much.
Surprise - Grades are a "Hidden" Message
I suppose I should have accepted the "A"s in composition and counterpoint as his positive indication for an undergrad student, but the student lore was that your major music professor gave only two grades "A" and "D" for your work; the "D" was your opportunity to transfer into some other line of education without irrevocable damage to your academic career. Actually, there was some vague quality indications over and beyond that. One of my classmates, who later became a nationally recognized music and stage critic on a major newspaper, typically received an "A" in composition but often received a "B" in counterpoint. (We all knew each other's grades somehow.) His grade compared to my typcial "A" in counterpoint. Just in passing, much later in life this student, as the highly honored critic, told me that he had never written any music after graduating, even though I knew him to have sufficient talent in composition easily to do so. The point is not to agrandize my meager gifts but to say that Heiden did give me encouragement in the form of all "A"s instead of that occassional "B"; I was just not sophisticated enough to read this.
My Most Fortunate Finale
The next forty years were spent by me, mostly in New Jersey as an engineer rising in my technical field, finally as Distinguished Member of Technical Staff at Bell Telephone Laboratories. During that time I wrote a lot of pieces on the side, including piano music for my wife, Lillian Malouf, a fellow student at IU, a single movement orchestral work for the New Jersey State Symphony under Murray Glass, and a commisioned opera (1977) Twist of Treason for the Battlegound Arts Center in Freehold, New Jersey. The opera was revived in 2005 at the Waldron Arts Center in Bloomington, but I only showed up again in, the hard to gain entry, Recital Hall stage, IU School of Music, as my daughter, Diana Livingston-Friedley, sang my song cycle, Poseidon and Aphrodite (1988, poems by Richard Slezak, a Bell Labs colleague) in one of her Master's Degree recitals in 1992. Since it was a premier for me, I decided to invite the Heidens to come to "my" recital as well. I had a couple of years earlier stood next to Heiden in a line going to congratulate someone. I said to him, "I don't know if you remember me, but my name is Julian Livingston. I was a student of yours in...." He immediately interrupted, brusquely, "I know who you are!" and not much more at that point.
Typically, I still didn't know what to say to him at Diana's recital, but lined up adjacent anyway when we were going back-stage to congratulate Diana. He was immediately cordial, seeming pleased.
He said, "Very nice song cycle. Did you like the applause?"
(There had been an amazing three bows for me thanks to Diana (Aphrodite) and
her clarinet (Poseidon) and piano (the Sea) friends' artistry.)
I said, "Oh yes!"
He said, "I do too." (short silence)
I said, "Well, I never stopped composing."
He said, "As I told you long ago,
no one can make the real ones stop. They just keep composing
regardless of what else they try to do."
That was true - he had said that in that first fateful meeting in 1950. Cola, silent, was carefully keeping her eyes elsewhere. Certainly, from the great distance of six inches she surely could hear little of this (grin). But I have to say, that exchange smoothed down a patch of hair that been standing straight up on me since 1957. Not every thing was fantastic thereafter, as the autograph incident shows, but we were back to "normal" at least. I was truly glad because nearly everything of significance I learned about music, came from his small classes in that mini-mini studio he occupied in the rear western hallway of the Jacobs School of Music, main floor of Merrill Hall. It finally came together, as they say.
Postlude Enlarges to Requiem
Some five years later I went to one of the occasional all-Heiden recitals, I had cause to greatly admire Heiden's music once again. Among the pieces being presented was a set of two part inventions for two cellos written in 1967 which I had not heard before. I know Heiden would not appreciate all the romance I fed into watching this piece take place, but I could not help but observe what I took to be a younger student of a cello master was performing the second part with her teacher. Since I don't mention the names I feel somewhat free to note that the student was doing her best to please, and I'm sure her teacher felt it was a fine performance. I know I was greatly impressed as I heard them unleash this dramatic small work that assumed much large proportions in their hands.
I have taken the liberty to attempt to build a performance of the final movement, "Vivace," in imitation of the one I heard that evening. If you have the right midi player installed you can hear it here. The mp3 version takes longer to download but plays according to my selection of instruments. Please note that in a sense this represents my performance of the work and besides being experimental in nature there are aspects of the playback that I cannot control. If you let me know if you encounter problems, I will try to improve your reception of the performance.
Midi File: