ACDA Salutes: Julius Herford

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1. Stephen Winn Klyce says

   March 1, 2015 at 4:03 pm

   I was a student of Dr. Herford’s for over 6 years – 2 years at Union Seminary in the mid-50’s, and 4 years at Indiana University in the late 60’s.  The most compelling

   reason to go to I.U. was because Herford had just been appointed as Professor in the Choral Analysis field by Dean Baines of I.U.

   Some of Herford’s sayings that he would utter often were:

   * “this section dovertails into the next section;

   * “be aware of the ‘timings and spacings’ always”;

   * “I’ve made YOUR nonsense for a while, now you can make MY nonsense.”  (After the students would offer lame or erroneous ideas about a passage of music.)

   *  I overheard Herford discussing Schubert’s output, and a fellow Professor remarked that Schubert’s length in some of his works could get trying;  Herford answered:

      “Ah, but what lovely melodies and harmonies are in those long movements.”

   Two anecdotes:

          In  1958,  I was living  in NYC and were standing in line to go into Tully Hall of the new Lincoln Center, to hear Lukas Foss conduct the orchestra and large chorus in a festive performance including several works of J.S. Bach.  While standing in line, I spotted Julius and Hannah Herford a short distance away.  Foss was a student of Herford’s at Berlin’s Music Academy in the early 30’s.  Both emigrated to the US. in the mid-thirties for obvious reasons.  We had a  great conversation there and I felt very lucky and grateful to run into my favorite and finest professor at this concert.  Most Notable was that Foss opened up the program by turning around and announcing to the audience that they were dedicating the concert to the memory of Jean Sibelius who had died earlier that day.

         In 1967 while studing at Indiana University, most of the doctoral choral people were at Herford’s rural home and grounds, and he decided to go for a German-style “Spaziergang” down a back trail.  We were busy discussing all about various musical toics, and Herford off-handedly whistled me a theme;  I recognized it as a Beethoven Symphony which was fine.  And running through which one it might be, I piped up with “Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony–the 6th.”  He shook his head while grimacing and said:  “Every DOG in Germany knows that theme” (because that’s how people would alert their pets to come in).  And he added rather perturbidly “It’s the Eighth, first movement.”  I have a vivid memory of that exchange almost 50 years ago; you can bet I know exactly where that theme occurs to the present day.

       Herford was very approachable, never harsh or critical of the students, despite all their misconceptions and error, graded many of our written essays with copius corrections and kind or non-condemnatory comments in red pencil and everyone learned so much in every encounted with Herford.  One always profited immensely by his “section to section” analyses of the various masterworks for chorus, a system never heard of before or since to better understand the score.  One needs to always know “the timings and spacings” of the work being studied.

       Don V Moses, also a professor at I.U. in the late 60’s made an accurate remark at Herford’s 80th birthday in about 1980, with Robert Shaw conducting, that Julius took in everything, and waving and smiling at the appreciative crowd acted as always like a coy and curious person, almost like a child would do.  Thus was this “gentle musical giant.”

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