Carlos Veerhoff

Carlos Enrique Veerhoff (* 3. June 1926 in Buenos Aires; † 18. February 2011[1] in Murnau) was an Argentine-born German composer of classical music. Carlos Veerhoff germanized his second forename later and varied first between „Heiner“ und „Heinrich“, but later focussed on „Carlos Heinrich Veerhoff“.[2]

life and work

Carlos Enrique Veerhoff was born with his twin brother Wolfgang Otto as premature infants. The father could only find a hospital with an incubator two days later, so that the birth date in the birth certificate is the 05. June 1926. The father Heinrich Veerhoff was German and the head of an own company in Buenos Aires. The mother Karla Veerhoff was a violinist and the daughter of conductor Karl Panzner and singer Ida Panzner.

The Veerhoff family moved back to Germany in 1930 due to a job change of the father, but already in 1933 the family moved on to South Africa. The countryside and the way of living in Africa had a great impact on the young Carlos Veerhoff and these impressions found their way into several compositions of his later years. Beside the impressions of Africa, another experience at the time in South Africa was important for Carlos Veerhoff: In 1935 the first airline of South Africa was founded and the young Carlos got the opportunity to take part at a pleasure flight. After this occasion he developed an enormous interest in flight engineering, which was only replaced later by music. But Carlos Veerhoff kept his addiction to natural science his whole life.

After the return of the Veerhoff family to Germany in 1935 Carlos started to visit orchestral and chamber music concerts. Also the music played at home - his father was a good pianist and his mother a professional violinist - contributed to the upcoming interest in classical music. This development concluded in the fact that Carlos Veerhoff decided at the age of 15 to become a composer. At that time he got his first lesson in composition theory and in 1942 he became a student at the „Musisches Gymnasium“ in Frankfurt am Main.

After a 6 day short mission as a soldier in World War II in which he was injured, Carlos Veerhoff continued his compositional studies at the Universität der Künste Berlin with Hermann Grabner and later privately with Kurt Thomas and got piano lessons from Walter Gieseking. During the time of an internment in Düsseldorf in 1946 he studied with Walter Braunfels (composition) and Günter Wand (conducting) at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln. In 1947 Carlos Veerhoff moved to Argentina and taught music theory at the university of San Miguel de Tucumán at the Departemento Musical, which was newly founded by Ernst von Dohnányi. He also attended conducting lessons of Hermann Scherchen in Buenos Aires at that time. In 1950 Ferenc Fricsay was looking for a composition by an Argentine composer for an upcoming concert in Buenos Aires. From a selection of compositions he chose the „Musica concertante for chamber orchestra“ by Carlos Veerhoff and later conducted the world premiere. Fricsay offered a position as an assistant to him and so Carlos Veerhoff followed Fricsay to Berlin. But from his point of view the atmosphere in Germany was anti-artistic and so he went back to Argentina just a year later.

In the following decades Carlos Veerhoff created dozens of compositions of which nearly all received performances. In many cases renowned and acclaimed musicians performed the world premieres of his works: Hans Rosbaud (WP of „Mirages“), Ruggiero Ricci (WP of the Violin concerto No.1), Bruno Maderna (WP of "Cantos"), Stanislaw Skrowaczewski (WP of "Gesänge auf dem Wege"), Ladislav Kupkovic (WP of „Gesänge aus Samsara“ and the Symphony No.4), Gerhard Oppitz (WP of the Piano concerto No.2), Thomas Zehetmair (WP of the Violin concerto No.2) or Peter Sadlo (WP of the Percussion concerto No.2).

Despite his success and the performances of his music Carlos Veerhoff remained an musical outsider:

„Carlos Veerhoff remained a composer in the German musical life who did not follow actual composition fashions. He called himself „clique-free“ and paid this freedom with the fact that he was never offered a professorship and could not find a renowned publishing house for his compositions. Among the circle of influential German composers and critics he was never accepted as a real avant-gardist, because his advancement of the dodecaphony was unorthodox and beside all contemporary aspects always kept references to tradition.“[3]

Due to the exclusion from the close music corporation in Germany Carlos Veerhoff often went back to Argentina. Only from 1970 on he permanently stayed in Germany to his end. From 1988 he lived in Murnau (Bavaria) near Munich. His collection of papers is located at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek and in a private archive.[4]

compositions

orchestra works

6 symphonies

concertos

chamber music

vocal music

stage music

notes

    1. ↑ Archive copy at the Wayback Machine
    2. ↑ Carlos Veerhoff archive: on the website of Tobias Broeker
    3. ↑ Messmer, Franzpeter (2006): Musikalischer Weltbürger - Der Lebensweg Carlos Heinrich Veerhoffs. In: Komponisten in Bayern. Band 47: Carlos H. Veerhoff. Tutzing: Hans Schneider; S.28
    4. ↑ Carlos-Veerhoff-archive, see http://www.tobias-broeker.de/rare-manuscripts/carlos-veerhoff-archive/

    literature

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