Henri Herz (1803 – 1888) was a virtuoso pianist,
composer and piano manufacturer, Austrian by birth and
French by nationality and domicile. He was a professor
in the Paris Conservatoire for more than thirty years.
Among his major works are eight piano concertos, a
piano sonata, rondos, nocturnes, waltzes, marches,
fantasias, and numerous sets of variations.
Herz was born Heinrich Herz in Vienna. He was Jewish by
birth, but he asked the musical journalist
François-Joseph Fétis not to...(+)
Henri Herz (1803 – 1888) was a virtuoso pianist,
composer and piano manufacturer, Austrian by birth and
French by nationality and domicile. He was a professor
in the Paris Conservatoire for more than thirty years.
Among his major works are eight piano concertos, a
piano sonata, rondos, nocturnes, waltzes, marches,
fantasias, and numerous sets of variations.
Herz was born Heinrich Herz in Vienna. He was Jewish by
birth, but he asked the musical journalist
François-Joseph Fétis not to mention this in the
latter's musical encyclopaedia, perhaps a reflection of
endemic antisemitism in nineteenth-century French
cultural circles. As a child he studied with his
father, and in Koblenz with the organist Daniel
Hünten, father of the composer Franz Hünten. In 1816
Herz entered the Conservatoire de Paris, where he
studied piano with Louis-Barthélémy Pradher, harmony
with Victor Dourlen and composition with Anton Reicha.
He won first prize in piano in 1818. Herz's style of
playing was, by his own admission, strongly influenced
by Ignaz Moscheles. His brother Jacques Simon Herz
(born Jacob-Simon; 1794–1880) was a fellow-pupil at
the Conservatoire who also became a pianist and
teacher. In the first of many extended concert tours,
Henri Herz—along with the violinist Charles Philippe
Lafont—visited Germany and England in 1831 and 1834,
respectively, winning great acclaim.
In 1825 Herz joined the piano workshop of Henri Klepfer
et cie as a partner, but that connection proved
unsuccessful, and in 1839 he founded his own piano
factory, which became one of the three most important
factories in France, the others being Erard and Pleyel.
All three were awarded the "Médaille d`honneur" for
"Pianos d'une sonorité très-remarquable" at the Paris
World's Fair in 1855. Among important developments of
Herz's early time as a piano maker in the 1820s and
1830s was the change from a single-layered hammer to
one that was multi-layered, on the inside two layers of
leather, several layers of fabric, and rabbit fur; on
the outside wool felt in up to nine layers of
decreasing hardness. The characteristic sound of
Frédéric Chopin's grand pianos, to which the
labor-intensive, hand-made hammers after Herz's patents
make a distinctive contribution, disappeared with
mid-century developments in the USA (Steinway). The
Herz hammer sets have the drawback that pianos cannot
be played quite as loud, because the hammers are less
densely pressed, but the dynamics and colorfulness –
in combination with traditional materials of wrought
iron strings (before the invention of Bessemer steel)
– are very finely graduated and fiery. In the second
half of the 19th century, simplification and
impoverishment of the piano's sound variety occurred
with two-layer, industrially produced Dolge hammers. To
Herz's work as a piano maker can also be attributed the
implementation of a simplified version of Sebastian
Erard's double repetition. Through the "Herz spring"
(Repetierfeder) the mechanics of the instrument found
their modern form.
Among the most important performance venues in Paris
were halls built by the instrument manufacturers. In
1838, Herz and his brother Jacques Simon Herz followed
this model and built the 668-seat Salle des Concerts
Herz on the rue de la Victoire, used for performances
by Berlioz and Offenbach. The Ecole Spéciale de Piano
de Paris, which the brothers founded, was housed in the
same building. The building was still in use for
concerts as late as 1874 but was demolished in that
year.
Herz composed many pieces, the opus numbers of his
published works reaching 224, according to Laure
Schnapper's catalogue (Henri Herz, magnat du piano,
2011, p. 270-280). Virtually all are for the piano,
including eight piano concertos. Among his many musical
works, he was involved in the composition of Hexaméron
(the fourth variation on Bellini's theme is his). Many,
however, found his piano style showy and shallow.
Robert Schumann was among those who criticized it, but
his wife Clara saw in it the praiseworthy quality that
it could challenge a performer's interpretation.
Inventions
Source: Wikipedia
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Herz).
Although originally composed for Piano, I created this
Interpretation of the "Rondeau sur un air français"
(Opus 16) for Flute & Piano.
SHEET MUSIC