Hans Helmuth Chemin-Petit (24 July 1902 – 12 April 1981) was a German composer, conductor and music educator.
Born in Potsdam, the son of and a concert singer[1] studied from 1920 to 1926 violoncello with Hugo Becker and composition with Paul Juon at the Musikhochschule Berlin. He began his musical career as a cellist. In 1929 he celebrated his first national compositional successes with the chamber opera Der gefangene Vogel at the Duisburg opera festival and in 1933 with the premiere of his 1st Symphony in Dresden under Fritz Busch. In addition to Busch, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Siegmund von Hausegger and Hans Joachim Moser were also among his patrons. From 1929, he taught at the Academy for Church and School Music in Berlin.
After the Machtergreifung by the Nazis, Chemin-Petit was in the Nazi, which from 1938 called itself the National Socialist Altherrenbund of German Students. He also became a member of the National Socialist People's Welfare and of the National Socialist Factory Cell Organization (NSBO),[1] of which he was no longer a member in 1938.[2] He was appointed a member of the Werkprüfungsausschuss der Deutschen Komponisten.[1] As late as 7 October 1934, he was able to perform in a concert of the Berlin Philharmonic. On 7 October 1934, he was still able to perform excerpts from the incidental music to Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy in a concert of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.[1] In 1936, he was appointed professor at the Berlin University of the Arts. On 24 May 1938, Chemin-Petit's cantata An die Liebe was performed as part of the Reichsmusiktage.[1] [3] In 1939, he took over the direction of the Reblingsche Gesangsverein and the cathedral choir in Magdeburg, and in 1943 of the . In the final phase of the Second World War, he was briefly a member of the Volkssturm from 6 December 1944.[1] [4]
In 1945, he was re-employed at the Berlin Musikhochschule and additionally became director of the Potsdam Municipal Choir.[1] [5] He gave lessons in music theory, composition and choral conducting. In Potsdam, he founded the "Collegium musicum" in 1945. In 1965, he was appointed deputy director of the Hochschule für Musik, a post he held until his retirement in 1969.[1] [6] In 1963, he was appointed a member of the Academy of Arts, Berlin, where he became director of the music department in 1968. His students included Magdalene Schauss-Flake.[7]
Chemin-Petit was considered one of the most important choral conductors of his time and made a special contribution to the Berlin Philharmonic Choir, which he conducted from 1943 to 1981.[8] [9] Besides standard works from Baroque, classic and Romantic music, the then contemporary music formed an important cornerstone of his repertoire. Thus, he conducted numerous premieres and first performances of the works of composers such as Paul Hindemith, Johann Nepomuk David, Boris Blacher, Rudolf Wagner-Régeny, Günter Bialas and Harald Genzmer, as well as his own compositions.
Chemin-Petit died in Berlin at the age of 78 and was buried at the .
Chemin-Petit's main works are in the field of choral-symphonic vocal music. His cantatas and psalms settings are particularly noteworthy. He also wrote orchestral works, operas, chamber music and numerous smaller pieces for choir a cappella. He was a conservative composer whose works are consistently tonal. What is striking about many of his compositions is a great preference for contrapuntal forms of composition, such as canon, fugue and passacaglia, which he was able to shape with sovereign mastery, even in their most complicated forms. Chemin-Petit's style unites various influences from Heinrich Schütz and Johann Sebastian Bach to Anton Bruckner, Max Reger and Paul Hindemith and can be characterised overall as Neoclassicism rooted in the tradition of German late Romanticism, in which archaising and modern elements come together.