Rosy Wertheim
Rosy Wertheim, fully Rosaly Marie Wertheim, was a Dutch composer. She was born in Amsterdam on 19 February 1888 to Jewish parents, Johannes Gustaaf Wertheim, a banker, and Adriana Rosa Enthoven. Her interest in classical music began while she attended a boarding school in Neuilly, France, where she took piano lessons.
After returning to the Netherlands, Wertheim studied piano with Ulfert Schults. She passed the state piano examination in 1921 and received a diploma from the Dutch Society of Music Artists. She also studied harmony and counterpoint with Bernard Zweers and Sem Dresden, and began composing songs and choral works.
From 1921 to 1929, she taught at the Amsterdam Music Lyceum. She directed several children’s choirs, including the Eilandenkinderen choir from a working-class Amsterdam neighbourhood, and conducted women’s choirs, including that of the Religious Socialist Association.
Wertheim moved to Paris in 1929 and remained there for six years. She composed extensively, reported on Parisian musical life for the Amsterdam daily Het Volk, and studied composition and orchestration with Louis Aubert. Her apartment was a meeting place for Dutch artists and French musicians including Arthur Honegger, Jacques Ibert, Darius Milhaud and Olivier Messiaen.
In 1935 she went to Vienna to study counterpoint with Karl Weigl. The following year she travelled to New York, where she gave lectures and heard performances of several works, including a string quartet, the Divertimento for chamber orchestra, and piano pieces. She also worked as a correspondent for Dutch daily newspapers, returning to Amsterdam in 1937.
Her Piano Concerto was performed in The Hague in 1940 by the Residentie Orchestra conducted by Willem van Otterloo. During the German occupation, she initially organized house concerts in a specially fitted-out basement, presenting music by Jewish composers whose works were prohibited by the occupiers. After September 1942, she went into hiding in locations including Amstelveen and the Gooi region, escaping deportation.
After the war, Wertheim taught for a time at the music school in Laren. Serious illness soon prevented her from composing. Her output comprises more than ninety works, chiefly songs and chamber music, and also includes choral works, orchestral music, and piano pieces. Her music has been described as highly lyrical and harmonically varied: initially late-Romantic in orientation, it later showed French influence and used layered musical textures.