Werner Haentjes: Violin concerto (1949)

[violinconcerto]

Werner Haentjes (1923-2001), a German composer and active part of the Darmstadt School in the late 1940s and 1950s, composed a Violin concerto in 1949. The Violin concerto was premiered at the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music in the same year. Unfortunately the score wasn't published in all the years and so the work fell into oblivion. Therefore I am very happy that I got the permission from the Haentjes family to typeset the manuscript and publish the full score on my website free of charge:


https://www.tobias-broeker.de/rare-manuscripts/violin-concertos/werner-haentjes/


A small biography about Werner Haentjes:

Werner Haentjes was born on 16 December 1923 in Bocholt (Germany). His family moved to Cologne when he was only one year old and Cologne would become his lifelong home. He became a choirboy at the Cathedral of Cologne and in 1939 began his music studies under Philip Jarnach and Heinrich Lemacher. The outbreak of World War II put an abrupt end to  that. After the war Werner Haentjes first worked as a Kapellmeister in Bielefeld and Heidelberg. In 1949 he returned to Cologne and started to work as a composer. At that time he became an active part of the Darmstadt School, was a student of Rene Leibowitz and several of his compositions were premiered at the concerts of the Summer Courses for New Music.
In addition to his modern, avant-garde compositions in twelve-tone technique Werner Haentjes worked in a second field - he composed stage music for the "Schauspiel Köln", the main theatre in Cologne. First he composed only on request, but in 1974 Werner Haentjes became the musical director of the theatre and formed the productions with his music for many years until his retirement in 1989. Over the years he worked together with such renowned directors like Hansgünther Heyme, Jürgen Flimm or Peter Zadek.
Werner Haentjes died on 20 July 2001 in Cologne (Germany).

Beside the hundreds of compositions for stage Werner Haentjes composed 2 symphonies (the first premiered by Ferenc Fricsay in 1952), concertos for violin and for horn, 3 operas (Leonce und Lena, Nichts Neues aus Perugia, Gesucht werden Tote), and a wealth of sacred, choral and chamber music. His work "Preisungen" on psalm translations of Martin Buber was performed at a commemoration at the concentration camp Dachau during the festivities of the Olympic Games in 1972.