Niedermeyer, (Abraham) Louis

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Niedermeyer, (Abraham) Louis

Niedermeyer, (Abraham) Louis, Swiss composer; b. Nyon, April 27, 1802; d. Paris, March 14, 1861. He was a pupil in Vienna of Moscheles (piano) and Förster (composition), in 1819 of Fioravanti in Rome, and of Zingarelli in Naples. He lived in Geneva as an admired song composer, and settled in Paris in 1823, where he brought out 4 unsuccessful operas (La casa nel bosco, May 28, 1828; Stradella, March 3, 1837; Marie Stuart, Dec. 6, 1844; La Fronde, May 2, 1853). He then bent his energies to sacred composition, and reorganized Choron’s Inst. for Church Music as the École Niedermeyer, which eventually became a flourishing inst. with government subvention. He also founded (with d’Ortigue) a journal for church music, La Maîtrise (1857–61); they publ. Traité théorique et pratique de I’accompagnement du plain- chant (Paris, 1857; 2nd ed., 1876; Eng. tr., N.Y., 1905). He wrote masses, motets, hymns, romances (Le Lac; Le Soir; La Mer; L’Automne; etc.), organ preludes, piano pieces, etc.

Bibliography

A. Niedermeyer, L. N.: Son oeuvre et son école (Paris, n.d.); Vie d’un compositeur moderne (by Niedermeyer’s son; Fontainbleau, 1892); M. Galerne, L’École N. (Paris, 1928).

—Nicolas Slomnisky/Laura Kaun/Dennis McIntire

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