Bernard Wagenaar

Vocation

Dutch-American composer, conductor and violinist (not related to the Dutch composer Johan Wagenaar). He studied at Utrecht University before starting his career as a teacher and conductor in 1914. He moved to the USA in 1920, where he became a citizen in 1927. From 1925 to 1968 he taught at the Juilliard School where Ned Rorem, Jacob Druckman, Bernard Herrmann, Robert Ward, Tutti Camarata, Charles Jones, Alan Shulman and James Cohn were among his pupils. He was an active member of the League of Composers and similar organisations, and was an officer of the Order of Orange-Nassau in the Netherlands. He wrote four symphonies (1926, 1930, 1936 and 1946), and a quantity of other orchestral, vocal, and chamber music in a broadly neoclassical style. His second symphony was one of the few American works Arturo Toscanini performed with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra; the first performances were on 10-11-13 November 1933 in Carnegie Hall. He died in York, Maine on 19 May 1971. Link to Wikipedia biography