Martinus Sieveking
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Martinus Sieveking (March 24, 1867 – November 26, 1950) was a gifted classical composer and pianist. He was born in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
A pupil of Julius Röntgen, he was the accompanist of the Lamoureux Orchestra in Paris. Though some of his many charming compositions are best described as salon music, he also wrote serious works that display amazing invention and which are infused with powerful rhythm. Some of his compositions are: "Etude De Concert," "Sketch," "Moto Perpetuo," "Souffrance," "Valse de Concert," "Nocturne," "Variations et Fugue," "Cornemuse," "Praeludium", and "L'Angelus". He arranged a number of Frédéric Chopin's piano pieces and those versions have become the "standard" which are performed regularly to this day.
In 1895-1896, Sieveking visited America on tour and performed a solo concert on December 8, 1896 at Carnegie Hall, New York City. He also performed in Atlanta, Georgia the following year, among other cities.
He married a young woman named Therese (1881-1961) in Dover, Kent, England in June, 1899. They had a son Leonard, born in 1905.
In 1915 Sieveking travelled to America and founded a piano school in New York for advanced-level pianists. He was an advocate of The Dead-Weight Principle style of playing and he wrote articles about the subject for several publications.
Sieveking returned to Paris, then emigrated to the United States with his Austrian-born wife Therese and then 13 year old son Leonard on June 23, 1918 on the S.S. Chicago from Bordeaux, France. In New York, he worked as an accomplished music teacher and concert pianist. He had a particularly broad reach of nearly two octaves. He wrote, arranged and performed for piano roll companies. Rolls on which he performed are found in antique shops to this day.
Sieveking met the famous physical culturist and bodybuilder Eugen Sandow. Sieveking, inspired by Sandow, became a physical culturist, and developed an impressive physique. He became a "pupil" and his measurements were mentioned in one of Sandow's books as: Height: 5 ft 11 in (180 cm), Weight: 175 lb. (80 kg), Chest: 43 in (109 cm), Biceps: 16 1/4 in (41 1/4 cm), Waist: 26 in (66 cm), Thighs: 23 in (58 cm). Martinus wrote music for several of Sandow's vaudeville acts and later, he then travelled with Sandow and accompanied him at his "Muscle Display Performances". They were inseparable for quite a while and even lived together for a brief time in New York City. It is generally believed the one musical composition credited to Sandow entitled March of the Athletes is clearly the work of Sieveking. Sieveking is discussed in Sandow's biography Sandow the Magnificent by David L. Chapman and mentioned in the novel Lost Horizon, written by James Hilton.
Therese was working as a governess by 1930 and clearly separated from Martinus, but there was no record of a divorce. She died in California in 1961. There is no record of Leonard Sieveking after the 1920 census.
Martinus Sieveking died on November 26, 1950 in Pasadena, California, and though it has been reported he is buried at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, California, this has never been confirmed and his actual burial place remains unknown at this time.
