Heinrich von Herzogenberg

Who was Heinrich von Herzogenberg?

Heinrich Picot de Peccaduc, Freiherr von Herzogenberg was an Austrian composer and conductor descended from a French aristocratic family.

He was born in Graz and was educated at a Jesuit school in Feldkirch and also in Munich, Dresden and Graz before studying law, philosophy and political science at the university of Vienna. He soon turned his energies to music, however, and attended the composition classes of Felix Otto Dessoff until 1864. Early on he was attracted to the music of Richard Wagner, but after studying J. S. Bach's works he became an adherent of the classical tradition and became an advocate for the music of Brahms. In 1866 he married Elisabet von Stockhausen, who had been a piano pupil of Brahms; Brahms's letters to and from both Herzogenbergs form one of the most delightful sections of his correspondence. They lived in Graz until 1872, when they moved to Leipzig: in 1874, with the Bach scholar Philipp Spitta, Herzogenberg founded the Leipzig Bach-Verein, which concerned itself with the revival of Bach’s cantatas. Herzogenberg was its artistic director for ten years, during which time Ethel Smyth was one of his composition pupils. From 1885 he was Professor of Composition at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin: it was in this capacity that he advised the young Ralph Vaughan Williams to study with Max Bruch. He died suddenly in Wiesbaden, aged 57; in his last years he used a wheelchair due to necrosis of the joints.