1826–1880 · Sweden
Hermann Berens was born in Hamburg on 7 April 1826 and died in Stockholm on 9 May 1880. From 1847 he lived and worked in Sweden, where he was a conductor and a teacher of composition, and wrote operas, chamber music and songs. He is known mainly for his piano music; among his works are studies and teaching collections.
Johann Hermann Berens was born in Hamburg on 7 April 1826. His father was Carl Berens.
Hermann received his musical education in Dresden from the conductor Carl Gottlieb Reissiger.
In 1847 Berens set out for Sweden. There he first performed in Stockholm, at the public quartet evenings held in the Trädgårdsföreningen pavilion.
From 1848 to 1860 Berens was music director of the Life Regiment Hussars (Livregementets husarkår) in Örebro. In 1860 he moved back to the capital and took the post of conductor at the Mindre teatern theatre.
In 1861 Berens became acting teacher, and in 1868 full teacher, of composition and instrumentation at the Academy of Music (Musikaliska akademien). In 1864 he was invited to join the academy as member number 382.
Richard Andersson and Johan Lindegren are named among his pupils.
Berens was well regarded as a piano teacher. For some time he directed the music studies of Queen Lovisa and her daughter.
Berens wrote the operas Violetta (1855), Lully & Quinault (1859), En utflygt i det gröna (1862) and Riccardo (1869), as well as the operetta En sommarnattsdröm. All of them were staged at Stockholm theatres and warmly received.
In the early 1860s he also wrote music for stage plays: vaudevilles, comedies with songs, and a folk play with choruses and couplets.
Berens was the father of Herman Berens the younger. He died in Stockholm on 9 May 1880.
Berens is known mainly for his piano music. His pieces include salon works, nocturnes, village scenes (Dorfgeschichten and Neue Dorfgeschichten), fantasies on opera themes and transcriptions. There is also Musikaliska Europa, twelve fantasies on themes, for entertainment or for practice.
Berens also has teaching works: Utile et agréable, six children's studies (Op. 3); Barnetyder utan oktavgrepp, children's studies without octave stretches; Förstudier (Op. 66); Poetische Studien, thirty melodic and characterful pieces (Op. 77); Melodiska övningsstycken (Op. 62); Övningskurs i skalor, ackord och prydnader, 28 studies in progressive order (Op. 88); and Die Pflege der linken Hand for the left hand (Op. 89).
Berens did not write only for the piano: his list of works includes orchestral pieces, trios, quartets, choruses and many songs with piano. The site offers Piano Pieces for Beginners, Op. 70, at the level 'Intermediate+'.