1811–1885 · Germany
Ferdinand Hiller (1811–1885) was a German pianist, composer, conductor and teacher. Born in Frankfurt am Main, he studied with Hummel, lived in Paris and was a friend of Chopin and Mendelssohn. For many years he was a conductor in Cologne, where he founded the conservatoire. Schumann dedicated a piano concerto to him, and Chopin dedicated three nocturnes.
Ferdinand Hiller was born on 24 October 1811 in Frankfurt am Main. His family was wealthy, Jewish and in trade. His father dealt in textiles; he had once been called Isaac Hildesheim and later became Justus Hiller.
People noticed the boy's talent early. He learned the piano from Alois Schmitt and composition from Georg Jacob Vollweiler. At ten he was already playing a Mozart piano concerto in public. His father then sent him to study with Johann Nepomuk Hummel in Weimar.
With Hummel, Hiller devoted himself to composition and grew a great deal as a pianist. He took part in work on Maria Stuart, and through it he came to know Goethe. In 1827 he travelled to Vienna and met Beethoven: together with Hummel he visited the composer, who was gravely ill.
Back in 1822 Hiller had met the young Felix Mendelssohn. When the two met again in 1825, a close friendship quickly formed between them. It lasted until 1843.
After a short stay at home, Hiller went to Paris and lived there until 1836. There he taught at the music school of Choron, but he dropped that work so that he could improve as a pianist and composer. Paris brought him close friendships with Chopin, Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer, Berlioz, Bellini and Liszt.
In May 1834 Hiller went with Chopin to the Lower Rhine Music Festival in Aachen. A version of Handel's oratorio Deborah, arranged by Hiller, was performed there, and the two met Mendelssohn again.
During his Paris years Hiller gave concerts every year, as a pianist (Beethoven, Bach) and as a conductor. He gave the first Paris performance of the fifth of Beethoven's piano concertos. Hummel's recommendation opened to him the salons of leading musicians and poets.
Hiller's bond with Berlioz was especially close and lasted all their lives. It was Hiller who showed Berlioz Beethoven's piano sonatas, and he treated Berlioz's music seriously while others still struggled to accept it. Berlioz came to Cologne at Hiller's invitation in 1867 and gave his final concert in Germany there.
His father's death brought Hiller back to Frankfurt for a time. Then in Milan he staged his opera Romilda; Rossini helped him with it, but the opera was a failure. Around then Hiller began his oratorio The Destruction of Jerusalem, which is counted among his best works.
Mendelssohn helped to present the oratorio to the public in Leipzig in 1840. In 1840–1841 Hiller was in Italy, studying the art of the old masters under Baini. There he married a singer. Wherever they settled, their home drew the intelligentsia.
In the 1843–1844 season Hiller conducted the Gewandhaus concerts, taking Mendelssohn's place. His long friendship with Mendelssohn ended in 1843.
In Dresden Hiller wrote two operas, Der Traum der Christnacht and Konradin, in 1845 and 1847. This was where he first met Richard Wagner, and in October 1845 he lent a hand with the Dresden staging of Tannhäuser. In the same year Robert Schumann dedicated his piano concerto to him.
In 1847 Hiller became a conductor in Düsseldorf, and in 1850 in Cologne. There he led the Gürzenich concerts and headed the conservatoire he had founded in 1850. He remained Kapellmeister in Cologne until 1884 and was twelve times director of the Lower Rhine Music Festival.
Hiller's best-known pupil in Cologne was Max Bruch. Hiller's tastes stayed conservative. In 1884 he proposed Brahms or Bruch as his successor, but the post went to Franz Wüllner, who began with concerts of Wagner, Liszt and Richard Strauss.
In 1849 Hiller became a member of the Royal Academy of Arts in Berlin, and in 1868 the University of Bonn awarded him an honorary doctorate. In 1875 he received the Order of the Württemberg Crown and, with it, personal nobility.
Hiller also wrote about music. He published Mendelssohn's letters and his memories of him, as well as the books Wie hören wir Musik? (1880) and Erinnerungsblätter (1884). A portion of his wide correspondence with fellow musicians has been published, in seven volumes.
In 1884 Hiller retired, and in May 1885 he died in Cologne. His grave is in the Melaten cemetery in Cologne.
Over his life Hiller composed more than two hundred works: six operas, two oratorios and cantatas, a great deal of chamber music and a piano concerto that was popular in his day. His output covers almost every genre, vocal, choral, chamber and orchestral. Today this large body of work is mostly forgotten. His other works include a violin concerto and incidental music for the play Prinz Papagei.
There are three piano concertos: No. 1 in F minor (Op. 5), No. 2 in F-sharp minor (Op. 69) and No. 3 in A-flat major (Op. 170). Hiller also wrote sonatas for solo piano (Op. 47 and Op. 59), chamber music with piano, including the Piano Quartet in B minor, Op. 1, and the Piano Quintet, Op. 156, and several symphonies, among them the Symphony in E minor, Op. 67.
Hiller's operas were staged in Milan, Dresden, Cologne and Wiesbaden: La Romilda (1839), Der Traum der Christnacht (1845), Konradin (1847), Der Advokat (1854), Die Katakomben (1862) and Der Deserteur (1865). He also wrote a Konzertstück for piano and orchestra, Op. 113.
Schumann and Chopin dedicated works to Hiller: Schumann a piano concerto, Chopin the three Nocturnes, Op. 15. Hiller answered by dedicating his Trois Caprices, Op. 14, to Chopin.
For now the site has one piece by Hiller: “115 - gavotte, sarabande, courante” for solo piano, at the Intermediate+ level. It is a place to begin getting to know this composer.