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Forgotten Masterpiece Friday: Jeanne Beyerman-Walraven, Concert Overture
It's Forgotten Masterpiece Friday!
Many concertgoers like to read program notes before hearing their local symphony orchestra; some of the more avid classical listeners like to listen to several recordings of a piece and think about the varying interpretations of it. But Jeanne Beyerman-Walraven (1878-1969) took her concert obsession to a totally different level. She and her equally obsessed husband, according to their daughter, would study scores and sometimes even read through the music on two pianos before attending concerts.
Perhaps that was the kind of obsession it took to become a highly competent composer, given her musical isolation early on in her life. Jeanne Walraven was born in Semarang in the Dutch East Indies (for the first few years of her career she may have been the most significant composer born in Asia) in a banking family that moved back and forth between the East Indies and the Netherlands through her childhood. Because of long stretches in Asia, her only music training before adulthood consisted of piano lessons from her mother. She studied composition in The Hague for a time in her twenties, but was a mostly self-taught composer. Her style changed dramatically over the decades that she was active. Her compositions from before 1920 were late Romantic in style. In 1911 she married Theo Beyerman, a physician who was an avid concertgoer; attending concerts on a regular basis shifted her own compositions first toward French impressionism and then toward the serialism of the Second Viennese School. From the 1930s onward, she was regarded as a “revolutionary” composer at the extreme forefront of modernism.
Though Beyerman-Walraven's compositions were played by world-renowned musicians during her lifetime, most were forgotten after only a handful of performances. She did little to promote her own music, as she was uncomfortable in the spotlight. Apart from attending concerts with her husband, her daughters described her as a “recluse.” Her Concert Overture, composed in 1910, is one of those pieces that were quickly forgotten. It was Beyerman-Walraven's first successful piece for orchestra, hailed as a masterpiece when first performed in Utrecht in 1910, but completely disappeared from concert halls after early 1911. It was not heard again until 1981, when it launched a revival of interest in the Romantic period in her career.
Many concertgoers like to read program notes before hearing their local symphony orchestra; some of the more avid classical listeners like to listen to several recordings of a piece and think about the varying interpretations of it. But Jeanne Beyerman-Walraven (1878-1969) took her concert obsession to a totally different level. She and her equally obsessed husband, according to their daughter, would study scores and sometimes even read through the music on two pianos before attending concerts.
Perhaps that was the kind of obsession it took to become a highly competent composer, given her musical isolation early on in her life. Jeanne Walraven was born in Semarang in the Dutch East Indies (for the first few years of her career she may have been the most significant composer born in Asia) in a banking family that moved back and forth between the East Indies and the Netherlands through her childhood. Because of long stretches in Asia, her only music training before adulthood consisted of piano lessons from her mother. She studied composition in The Hague for a time in her twenties, but was a mostly self-taught composer. Her style changed dramatically over the decades that she was active. Her compositions from before 1920 were late Romantic in style. In 1911 she married Theo Beyerman, a physician who was an avid concertgoer; attending concerts on a regular basis shifted her own compositions first toward French impressionism and then toward the serialism of the Second Viennese School. From the 1930s onward, she was regarded as a “revolutionary” composer at the extreme forefront of modernism.
Though Beyerman-Walraven's compositions were played by world-renowned musicians during her lifetime, most were forgotten after only a handful of performances. She did little to promote her own music, as she was uncomfortable in the spotlight. Apart from attending concerts with her husband, her daughters described her as a “recluse.” Her Concert Overture, composed in 1910, is one of those pieces that were quickly forgotten. It was Beyerman-Walraven's first successful piece for orchestra, hailed as a masterpiece when first performed in Utrecht in 1910, but completely disappeared from concert halls after early 1911. It was not heard again until 1981, when it launched a revival of interest in the Romantic period in her career.