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Dirk Schäfer –

Top 10 Facts about Dirk Schäfer

Dirk Schäfer was born on November 25, 1873. He was a Dutch concert pianist and composer. His compositions include the piano pieces “Sonate Inaugurale” Op. 9 and chamber music, such as his distinctly Brahmsian piano quintet in D flat Opus 5 and his sonatas for violin and piano, Op. 11. He also wrote a Javanese Rhapsody. He recorded performances of works by Chopin and Francois Couperin in his lifetime. 

During his life, Schäfer lived on both the Van Breestraat named after musician Johannes van Bree and the Händelstraat named after the composer Georg Friedrich Händel. Dirk Schäfer was buried at the Zorgvlied cemetery in Amsterdam. Amsterdam has a Dirk Schäferstraat. Here are the top 10 facts about Dirk ³§³¦³óä´Ú±ð°ù.

1. Dirk was born in Rotterdam to bookkeeper parents

Dirk’s parents were Johannes Hendrikus Schäfer and Johanna Wilhelmina Schäfer Johannes was born on June 27 1831, in Den Haag and Johanna was born on March 28 1843, in Den Haag.

Rotterdam is the second largest city and municipality in the Netherlands. Rotterdam’s history goes back to 1270 when a dam was constructed in the Rotte. In 1340, Rotterdam was granted city rights by William IV, Count of Holland.

2. Dirk was famed for composing chamber music

Pianist Dirk Schäfer portrayed by Jan Toorop –

Chamber music is a form of classical music that is composed for a small group of instruments traditionally a group that could fit in a palace chamber or a large room. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers, with one performer to a part in contrast to orchestral music, in which each string part is played by a number of performers. However, by convention, it usually does not include solo instrument performances.

3. Dirk studied with a royal grant at the Cologne Conservatory

Dirk studied from 1890 with a royal grant at the Cologne Conservatory with teachers Max Pauer, Gustav Jensen and Franz Wüllner. He graduated in 1894 with a Preis-Zeugniss for piano playing and composition.

The Hochschule für Musik und Tanz in Cologne is the largest conservatory in Europe with over 1500 students. The training is divided between the cities of Cologne with four departments, Aachen and Wuppertal with two departments each.

4. Schäfer received piano lessons from Joh.H. Sikemeier 

Dirk Schäfer –

Johannes Hendrikus Sikemeijer, known as Joh.H. Sikemeier, was a Dutch pianist, but especially a piano teacher. 

Schäfer received piano lessons from Joh.H. Sikemeier at the music school of the Society for the Promotion of Toonkunst in Rotterdam. Other teachers were Theodoor Verhey, Friedrich Gernsheim and Richard von Perger.

5. Dirk married Ida Antonia Schäfer

He was married to the Kampen teacher and later piano teacher Ida Antonia Schäfer-Dumstorff. They got married in 1925 when he was 51.

 Ida Antonia Schäfer was a teacher in Kampen. Kampen is a municipality in the Dutch province of Overijssel, named after its main town, the city of Kampen.

6. Schäfer became international and performed outside the Netherlands

Dirk Schäfer in 1911 –

Schäfer was a renowned pianist who also performed outside the Netherlands, sometimes with Gérard Hekking. He was particularly known for his performances of the works of Frédéric Chopin.

Frédéric Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist of the Romantic era . He is widely regarded as the greatest composer Poland has produced and is regarded as one of the greatest composers in music history. 

7. In 1921, Schäfer made a concert tour of the European capitals

 In the 1913-1914 season, for example, he played a series of 10 concerts on so-called historic evenings in the Kleine Zaal of the Amsterdam Concertgebouw. It is known that in 1921 he made a concert tour of the European capitals. Between 1896 and 1921 he gave fifteen concerts with the Concertgebouw Orchestra, era Willem Mengelberg (13x) and Karl Muck (2x).

The Royal Concertgebouw opened on April 11, 1888, and is a building with several concert halls, located on the Van Baerlestraat opposite the Museumplein in Amsterdam. It is home to the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.

8. Schäfer generally wrote orchestral rather than pianistic

Onze Musici –

As a composer, Schäfer generally wrote orchestral rather than pianistic. His writing style is related to that of Richard Strauss, particularly in his polyphonic passages.

Richard Strauss was a German composer and conductor. The Richard-Strauss-Institut has been running an archive and museum about him in Garmisch-Partenkirchen since 1999.

9. Schäfer was a romantic with a classicist streak 

Romanticism is an art movement from the 19th century. In the romantic period of classical music, composers made increasingly larger compositions with more and more notes and more difficult rhythms. The orchestras got bigger and they use many and strange musical instruments that have not been used before. 

10. Schäfer’s music is characterized by rich harmonies 

Dirk Schäfer, pianist, componist –

Schäfer’s music is characterized by rich harmonies with lush colours and a sonorous sound. Schäfer is by no means a typical Dutch composer in his composing: according to Eduard Reeser, the music is ” exuberant and stylistically not free from strange blemishes “.