Wilhelm Petersen (15 March 1890 – 18 December 1957) was a German composer and conductor. His body of work includes, among other things, five major symphonies, a piano concerto, a violin concerto, an opera ''Der goldene Topf'' (premiered in Darmstadt 1941), and a mass, as well as numerous choral and chamber music pieces, along with songs. Petersen's works are stylistically positioned at the vague boundary between late Romanticism and Modernism and are mostly composed in his own distinctive tonal language. He was born in

Athens Athens ( ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Greece, largest city of Greece. A significant coastal urban area in the Mediterranean, Athens is also the capital of the Attica (region), Attica region and is the southe ...

and spent his childhood in

Darmstadt Darmstadt () is a city in the States of Germany, state of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Frankfurt Rhine Main Area, Rhine-Main-Area (Frankfurt Metropolitan Region). Darmstadt has around 160,000 inhabitants, making it the ...

. From 1908 to 1913 he studied in

Munich Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...

with Friedrich Klose, Felix Mottl and Rudolf Louis. In addition to music he wrote lyric and dramatic poetry and was on the fringes of the circle around Stefan George. Petersen was an apprentice conductor in

Lübeck Lübeck (; or ; Latin: ), officially the Hanseatic League, Hanseatic City of Lübeck (), is a city in Northern Germany. With around 220,000 inhabitants, it is the second-largest city on the German Baltic Sea, Baltic coast and the second-larg ...

under

Wilhelm Furtwängler Gustav Heinrich Ernst Martin Wilhelm Furtwängler ( , ; ; 25 January 188630 November 1954) was a German conductor and composer. He is regarded as one of the greatest Symphony, symphonic and operatic conductors of the 20th century. He was a majo ...

in 1913-14; at the end of the First World War he was active as a writer in the Expressionist movement in Munich but from 1919 devoted himself entirely to music. His early music is described as radically Expressionistic, but in the 1920s he progressively clarified his style, arriving at a monumental tonal style typified by his ''Grosse Messe'', op. 27 of 1928-29, premiered in 1930 in Darmstadt under Karl Böhm. From 1927 he was a lecturer in the Music Academy at Darmstadt, and in 1934 became professor of music in

Mannheim Mannheim (; Palatine German language, Palatine German: or ), officially the University City of Mannheim (), is the List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, second-largest city in Baden-Württemberg after Stuttgart, the States of Ger ...

. He died in Darmstadt.

Sources

Wilhelm-Petersen-Society
Darmstadt (Germany) * Booklet for Wergo WER 6213-2 (recording of Petersen's ''Grosse Messe') {{DEFAULTSORT:Petersen, Wilhelm 1890 births 1957 deaths Musicians from Athens Anthroposophists University of Music and Theatre Munich alumni 20th-century German composers