Hermann Heiss (29 December 1897 – 6 December 1966) was a German

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Defi ...

, pianist, and educator. His work was part of the music event in the art competition at the

1932 Summer Olympics The 1932 Summer Olympics (officially the Games of the X Olympiad and also known as Los Angeles 1932) were an international multi-sport event held from July 30 to August 14, 1932 in Los Angeles, California, United States. The Games were held duri ...

Life

Heiss was born in Darmstadt and studied composition first in Frankfurt with Sekles in 1921, and then in Vienna with

Josef Matthias Hauer Josef Matthias Hauer (March 19, 1883 – September 22, 1959) was an Austrian composer and music theorist. He is best known for developing, independent of and a year or two before Arnold Schoenberg, a method for composing with all 12 notes of th ...

from 1924 to 1926. After leaving Hauer's tutelage he returned to his native city to study the piano and compose. In 1928 he relocated to the island of

Spiekeroog Spiekeroog is one of the East Frisian Islands, off the North Sea coast of Germany. It is situated between Langeoog to its west, and Wangerooge to its east. The island belongs to the district of Wittmund, in Lower Saxony in Germany. The only vi ...

in the North Sea, where he taught music at the Herman-Lietz School until 1933. He then moved to Berlin where he unsuccessfully sought performances of his works. During the war he composed music for the Luftwaffe and for other military groups . He was also self-taught. Hauer dedicated his book ''Twelve-Tone Technique'' (1925) to Heiss, who later claimed to have collaborated with Hauer on its contents . He introduced

twelve-tone music The twelve-tone technique—also known as dodecaphony, twelve-tone serialism, and (in British usage) twelve-note composition—is a method of musical composition first devised by Austrian composer Josef Matthias Hauer, who published his "law o ...

Darmstadt Darmstadt () is a city in the States of Germany, state of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Frankfurt Rhine Main Area, Rhine-Main-Area (Frankfurt Metropolitan Region). Darmstadt has around 160,000 inhabitants, making it th ...

in 1946 and composed

electronic music Electronic music is a genre of music that employs electronic musical instruments, digital instruments, or circuitry-based music technology in its creation. It includes both music made using electronic and electromechanical means ( electroac ...

at the

Studio for Electronic Music (WDR) The Studio for Electronic Music of the West German Radio (German: ) was a facility of the Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) in Cologne. It was the first of its kind in the world, and its history reflects the development of electronic music in the second ...

Cologne Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western States of Germany, state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 m ...

in 1956, where his ''Elektronische Komposition I'' was performed and broadcast in a concert of the Musik der Zeit series on 30 May 1956. He then founded a studio of his own in Darmstadt .

References

Sources

* *

External links

Hermann Heiss, "Elektronische Komposition I" (1956)
by Werner Kaegi (Translation: Desmond Clayton) (archived from 10 October 2009). {{DEFAULTSORT:Heiss, Hermann German classical composers 20th-century classical composers Twelve-tone and serial composers 1897 births 1966 deaths Georg Büchner Prize winners German male classical composers 20th-century German composers Musicians from Darmstadt Place of death missing 20th-century German male musicians Olympic competitors in art competitions